If you have talked to me about aesthetic skincare in the office, you may have been encouraged to start the first of October. Why? I’m about to let you in on my secrets.
Summer is not a time of discipline. We are having fun, relaxing our schedules, playing in the sun and on vacation. None of these jive well with starting a skin care regimen. One of my things about the Spring Boutique is that I want people to be delighted and impressed with the products they buy. A new sunscreen is great for summer, everything else, not so much. Summer is not a recipe for success.
The other thing about timing is that most skin care regimens take awhile to become a habit. It takes at least 6 weeks to be impressed with your results and skin to normalize. Here’s a few things I do and step up and encourage patients toward during October.
RetinA/tretinoin is a mainstay of a great skin care regimen. However, there is usually a transition period where the skin is red, flaky and crepey. While this is normal, we are getting rid of old dead skin to grow a new layer of skin, I find most people have limited tolerance for this. The first of October is a GREAT time to start. The excessive sun exposure of summer is over, and the transition period is usually over by Thanksgiving (6 weeks) and really good by Christmas/New Years (12 weeks). For those who find prescription strength tretinoin to intense, Skin Better’s AlphaRet is a gentler yet potent alternative.
Bleaching and Blending creams for brown discoloration. I usually try to discourage first time users of bleaching creams from starting in the summer. No matter how good someone is with sunscreen, with extra summer sun exposure we are “swimming up stream”. It’s a recipe for disappointment. October is great! Starting these creams the first of October provides visible improvements by Thanksgiving and great change by the Christmas holidays. These creams can be used once or twice a day until the brown spots disappear. Then, any stubborn spots can be treated procedurally in the winter. My favorite and most effective of these are ZO Skin Health’s hydroquinone creams. The ZO Pigment Control + Blending Crème is designed to be used with tretinoin and is a really effective duo. For those wanting a simple option, ZO’s Retinol Brightener is a great alternative.
Don’t relax on the sunscreen. Just because it’s fall and winter doesn’t mean that sunscreen is not needed. We still get significant exposure in the fall and winter both outdoors and from blue light in our screens. To see the best results from bleaching/blending creams, daily sunscreen with zinc is essential.
Photodynamic Therapy is a great procedure to jumpstart your skin health and appearance. FDA and insurance approved to treat precancerous Actinic Keratoses, this treatment also provides a chemical peel like result and can be done solely for aesthetic purposes. In addition to the peel, this procedure stimulates growth of collagen and elastin providing an overall more youthful look to the skin long term. This is something that Dr Rosenberger personally does at least yearly, usually in either October or January. It does require 2 days indoors and 4-7 days of redness and peeling but it is definitely worth it.
This combination of products and procedures is at the top of my to do list each October. Try these things out and you’ll see why I’m like a broken record year after year. To learn more about these products, check out ZO Skin Health and SkinBetter’s website and stop by our Spring Boutique for a trial size and one on one help.
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