Progressive Exfoliation

Exfoliation is the single most important treatment you can do for more beautiful, younger and healthier looking skin. Chemical exfoliation is far superior to physical exfoliation. And the stronger the chemical exfoliant is, the more effective the exfoliation, but the greater the chance for irritation, redness, burning, or flaking. Today I'm going to discuss a technique that you can use with chemical exfoliants to get the best, most effective results, without irritation.

When it comes to exfoliation, where do you start and how can you get the BEST results? I call the process "Progressive Exfoliation" and it's simple and fast. In fact, it's just like starting weight training at the gym. You don't start with 100 pound weights. You start with 30 pounds and gradually work your way up to 100.

While there are several different chemical exfoliants you can perform Progressive Exfoliation with, today I'll discuss it using glycolic which I believe is the gold standard. So in this case, what I recommend for my patients is to start with an 8% glycolic serum. It's an effective starter strength to jump start the process. After a few weeks, you'll gradually progress to 10% glycolic pads. And after a few more weeks, you finally use a 15% glycolic cream.

By gradually increasing the strength of the glycolic, just like increasing weight at the gym, and through feedback and adaption, Progressive Exfoliation trains the skin to receive, tolerate, and respond to higher and therefore much more effective levels of glycolic without irritation. And without the need to rest between treatments since daily exfoliation is critical to achieving your younger looking skin.

It's important to understand that not all chemical exfoliants are the same. For Progressive Exfoliation to work, the chemical exfoliant must be gentle but effective, which for glycolic, requires it to be balanced and chemically buffered.

Now that you understand Progressive Exfoliation, why should you do it? Effective Progressive Exfoliation, as, for example, I described with glycolic, will deliver skin that's brighter, clearer, more even toned, smaller pored, and that just glows. But notice that I didn't discuss wrinkles. That's because younger looking skin isn't just about wrinkles. If you make a map of your face, wrinkles account for less than 5% of your face. Of course they count, but when a 55 year old woman comes to me to fix her lines and wrinkles, after her treatment, she doesn't look like a 35 year old woman... she looks like a 55 year old woman without lines and wrinkles. That's because the rest of her skin, the 95%, is still 55 year old skin. Sure, fixing lines and wrinkles can make you look a little better, but it doesn't make you look younger! While so many other treatments and methods focus on wrinkles... the 5%... Instead of treating the 5%, Progressive Exfoliation targets the 95%, delivering radiant, younger looking skin.