I think it's pretty difficult
to do a very long skincare routine.
Katie via Facebook.
She's 30 years old.
Very long skincare routine.
Six to 10 products daily, including cleansers, face oils,
serums, eye creams, and lotions.
Well, that's my kind of girl.
I have a history of oily skin and acne.
So making sure my routine is done properly
is very important to me.
I would love to know which products
I should be prioritizing.
And what's the specific order
I should be putting them on in?
Great questions.
Great, loaded.
Take it away, doc.
That is a great question.
And patients come in with long lists
of things that they're using,
and pictures, and they bring the products in.
And I really wanna try to pare Katie's routine
down to five or under, because I think
it's pretty difficult to do a very long skincare routine.
So for Katie, the first thing you wanna do,
you're already doing it, which is cleanse your skin.
To make sure you're getting a nice, even skin complexion.
You wanna remove the oils and the dirt.
But start with a mild hydrating cleanser as your first step.
And then once your skin is cleansed
you're gonna then put on your eye cream.
So the eye is our most sensitive part of the face.
You're gonna just dab a little bit of eye cream on.
And you're also gonna use your serum
because serums are our most concentrated ingredients,
and they penetrate better into clean skin.
You're next gonna hydrate your skin
with your moisturizer that you're already using.
And then you're gonna seal that in with your face oil.
So that's a good thing to use right after the moisturizer.
And finally, I'm so glad you're using a sunscreen.
You're gonna wanna use your SPF as your final step.
As long as it's at a physical sunscreen that has zinc,
or titanium dioxide, you can put it on last.
If it's a chemical sunscreen,
they have to be absorbed in the skin,
and they should be your second step right after your wash.
Hi, Amy.
Hi.
So I'm turning 40
and I've started to see some significant changes in my skin.
So I really wanna start making
my skincare routine a priority.
I have heard that Retinol can help with anti-aging,
but I've put off starting to use it
because I recently had a baby
and it was recommended to not use
while I was pregnant and breastfeeding.
I'm since done breastfeeding
and I would love to find out if Retinol
is something I should start to use now.
And how you would recommend I incorporate it
into my skincare routine.
Well Amy, that is a fantastic question.
And Retinol is one of the most popular things
that people ask me about.
It's one of the most popular things
that are searched online.
And that's because it's one of the most
important ingredients that we can use for in our skin.
It's actually a vitamin that was discovered in the 1970s.
And it's a healthy vitamin for our skin
that really helps it keep grow properly
so that our pores stay open,
so that we have a more even skin tone,
that we have less darkness in our skin,
and that we have less fine lines and wrinkles.
So Retinol is really a staple of skincare,
but it's not something you can just jump in
and use right away, like a moisturizer or a sunscreen.
So it's really important to kind of
think about how you use it, and to really start gradually.
I advise my patients to really ease into using Retinol,
because if they put it all over their face every night,
they're gonna have redness, stinging, irritation.
And they're gonna hate it, and they're gonna stop using it.
So what I generally advise my patients
to do is to start slow.
So you're gonna put it on at nighttime,
and you're only gonna use it one night a week
for the first week.
And we apply it at nighttime because Retinol,
yeah, it's inactivated by the sun
so it's not something you generally wanna do in the morning.
But right after you wash your face
you can put on a pea size amount.
And that's what I kind of advise patients to do,
is to start just one night a week with a pea size amount.
They're gonna put just from the middle of your face out.
This is the amount you should be using.
And put it all over your face.
Now, if you tolerate it one night a week,
then the next week you can start using it two nights a week.
And if you tolerate it two nights a week,
then the next week you can go to three nights a week,
and et cetera, et cetera,
until you find that that happy balance with your skin.
Now, the other thing that's important
is that sometimes patients need,
there's different types of Retinol to do.
This is actually a cream based one by RoC,
which I really like.
It's a milder one.
I think it's a great starter product.
There's some more intensive ones on the market now.
This is one by Neutrogena called Retinol Pro Plus,
which is a little bit more intense.
But you, like I said, you wanna start slowly.
You wanna use a pea size amount.
And for some patients, it's a really good idea to buffer it.
So what buffering means
is you're gonna mix it with a moisturizer.
So I have the same amount of moisturizer here.
I'm mixing them together, and then you can apply
the pea size amount to the whole face.
Again, work from the middle of your face out.