Except for fine wines and vintage cars, aging is generally an unwelcome process. After the age of 21, we are thrilled when someone says “you don’t look your age”. As you know, nothing reveals (or hides) our age like the condition of our skin.
Maybe because we all lead healthy, active lifestyles, none of us can resist the opportunity to look as young on the outside as we feel on the inside. Continue reading »
We asked Catherine Orentreich, M.D., a dermatologist affiliated with the New York University School of Medicine, to wade through the hype on summer skin-care products.
Q. What’s the difference between “sunscreen” and “sunblock,” and “water-resistant” and “waterproof”?
A. Sunscreen absorbs the sun’s damaging rays from within the skin; sunblock acts as a physical barrier to the sun by reflecting rays. Water-resistant products last 40 minutes in the water, whereas waterproof products last 80 minutes. (But you should always reapply the product after a dip, as you will probably towel much of it off.) Continue reading »
No one is safe. Adults have them. So do eight-year-old children. Even the most sleep obsessed, can’t-function-without-a-solid-eight-hours kind of person isn’t 
immune. The problem is twofold: darkness and puffiness are inherently two different issues, requiring very different treatments. And getting enough rest isn’t one of them.
“Under-eye inflammation is much easier to treat than dark circles,” says New York City plastic surgeon Dr. Sherrell Aston, whose jam-packed surgery schedule keeps him in the operating room a good 10 hours each day. “Remove the fat pads in the eyelids, and the puffiness is gone. Darkness requires more persistence, and you always run the risk of removing too much pigment. Once it’s gone, it can’t be put back.”
Dr. Fredric Brandt, a dermatologist with practices in New York and Miami, uses a number of treatments—bleaching creams, lasers, chemical peels—to treat dark circles. “I like bleaching creams,” he says. “They’re great for lightening brown spots under the eyes caused by the sun, and unlike laser lightening treatments and peels, require no recovery time.”
All dark circles, however, aren’t created equal. Those with a bluish hue are a vascular problem—the blood vessels under the eyes are more dilated, more visible—and do not respond to pigment lightening procedures. The only solution is eyelid surgery or collagen injections.
Covering up circles is also an option, but too much concealer can accentuate dry skin, fine lines, and wrinkles. “Concealer is the quickest way to make a woman look prettier: awake, young, and alive,” says Valerie Sarnelle, the founder of Valerie Beverly Hills. Continue reading »
Is it obesity? Heredity? Plain bad luck? Whatever the cause, cellulite makes an enormous amount of money—literally billions of dollars for purveyors of all manner of treatments: body scrubs, dietary supplements, firming creams, endermologie, and even acupuncture.
“Skinny, fat, young, and old—cellulite affects everyone,” says Kacy Duke, a personal trainer whose celebrity-filled client list keeps her jetting between New York and Los Angeles. “Even really thin models have it.”
Despite raging controversy and ridiculous-but-ardent promises (one new pill, Cellasene, claims to reduce cellulite all by itself, without diet or exercise), the hope of erasing dimpled skin keeps people lining up at cosmetic counters, spas, and specialists nationwide.
“The creams and pills are just hope in a bottle,” says New York plastic surgeon Dr. Sherrell Aston. “They don’t work.” Continue reading »
There are some people who want to get a more darker skin and there are some people who want to whiten their skin face. For those who try to find ways to 
whiten their skin face, let me tell you that ther are a lot of options you could try and you have to try in order to be sure you do the right thing for you. As I know, from my grandmother, lemon is good for a skin whitening thing, but you can’t use it alone for a couple of days and expect for miracles – you have to try some recipes (I’ll keep you in touch in below) and you may also see a dermatologist in order to be sure you check the best thing for your face and don’t do things from your mind, things that could have some negative effects on your skin. There are also people that say that this is risky and if you put to much lemon on your face and have sunburn problems, then you could have more problems that you could imagine. It’s better to make the best decision about all this stuff and don’t just get the first thing like lemon or brown sugar on your face if you think it does not work.
Lemon juice skin whitening
The thing about lemon juice is that it can have one of the effects that you do not want to – it does not only whiten your skin, it can brighten your skin to, you can have problems from the sun and so on. But, before you go to a dermatologist (or you see one – it’s better to have a specialized advice before getting something on your face, thinking that you could have acne or other nasty stuff you do not want to mess with), you should see/check that there are more things you could try in order to whiten your skin. You could try lemon juice, but besides lemon juice there are a lot of combinations you could do or ask the doctor, in order to have the best thing for you. Continue reading »
Sunspots: Sensitive skin is more susceptible to sun exposure and the result might often be painful red spots. Try fading these with products that contain bleaching agents, retinol, AHAs and Vitamin C.
Red back-of-arm bumps: This is actually a skin condition called keratosis and must be treated with a prescription salicylic acid cream or gel. Nothing permanent can eradicate keratosis — it’s a genetic characteristic.
Less-than-stellar decolletage: If your shoulders and chest get rough and dry, slough off the top layer of skin with Avita, Retin-A or exfoliating products. Try light peels or lasers for severe wrinkling. Skin is extremely thin in this area, so heavy peels aren’t an option.
Ashy elbows: Exfoliate with a lactic acid scrub or by using a loofah. Continue reading »
They call it the mini-peel, and it’s luring thousands of women to dermatologists’ offices and skincare salons with promises of younger-looking skin at affordable prices. This “lite” version of a chemical facial peel uses alpha hydroxy acids (AHAs), which remove dead surface cells to leave skin visibly smoother. Unlike deep chemical peels, which use stronger acids that penetrate far deeper into skin, mini-peels generally cause no scabbing, oozing, or pain and require no recuperation period. Women can, and do get peeled on their lunch hour and go right back to work. But now that some hair salons are offering “buy five, get one free” mini-peel deals, questions are being raised: Are these peels safe? And do they work? Continue reading »
Wish you could erase all those years of sunbathing and get back your teenage skin? You can – almost – thanks to this new high-tech procedure. Technique involves a laser, is done right in the derm’s office, requires minimal recovery time. Here’s the scoop…. Continue reading »
Nowadays, it doesn’t take much to get rid of those horrible squiggles running down your legs. Here’s how it’s done.
This is the before (top photo) and after (bottom) from the Asclera website. Results at 26 weeks after treatment
Prognosis: Varicose veins are inherited, so if Mom had them, you probably will too. They usually pop up in midtwenties, worsen during pregnancy. Old cure, called ligation, was pretty much a nightmare-literally involved making incisions and stripping out problematic veins. Hospital stay was required; major scars resulted. Thankfully, a new procedure, called sclero- therapy, makes vein removal relatively effortless and painless-happens right at the doctor’s office, and you can walk around, even exercise, same day. But before we get to that, let’s talk…
PREVENTION
You’ve probably heard most of this before: Don’t cross legs, sit or stand for long periods of time (blood pools up); try raising foot of bed with a phone book or sleep with feet propped up on a pillow (or a man…): get plenty of exercise; stay at ideal weight; wear supportive Lycra hose and sunscreen (sun damage exacerbates problem). If you take birth-control pills, switch to low-estrogen version (hormonal changes put pressure on vein walls, hence the pregnancy connection).
THAT FIRST VEIN
Once you’ve spotted the culprit, New York City dermatologist/vein specialist Howard Sobel recommends having it fixed right away. The idea is to keep ahead of the problem not wait for it to get more serious. Exception: Pregnant women shouldn’t start sclerotherapy until after giving birth, though it’s a good idea to have it done between babies to prevent a buildup. Continue reading »
Sophisticated skin treatments work together for the best results
“People come into the office and want Botox,” says
Dr. John Goldhar, cosmetic dermatologist at Toronto’s Cosmedix MD Inc. “What I tell them is to give me
the problem, not the solution.”
After all, Botox may improve forehead and
glabellar lines, but what about sun damage, marionette lines and nasolabial folds? Often, achieving the appearance the client desires involves a combination
of treatments. The answer: building a program for patients. Dr. Sheetal Sapra, cosmetic dermatologist at
the Institute of Cosmetic and Laser Surgery in Oakville, informs patients that, “over the space of a year, I will take four to five years off [their] appearance.”
Some call this “skin care packaging.” Sapra prefers to call it a treatment plan. Goldhar agrees: “I like calling things projects, especially because the procedure is step-like and we’re dealing with an individual, overall picture.”
Although both doctors customize treatments on a client- Continue reading »
Can a real tan come from a bottle? Boston dermatologists say yes.Self-tanning products have come a long way in a short time, and soon there will be even more changes on the horizon as research continues probing ways to tan without the sun.
A study led by Barbara Gilchrest, head of Boston University’s department of dermatology, has discovered a way to create a tan without the use of ultra-violet radiation. Current self-tanning products dye the skin, or cause an oxidation process which results in tan-looking skin.
Gilchrest’s study, published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology and reprinted in Nature, topically applied synthetic elements of DNA (diacylglycerols or DAGs) to guinea pig skin to create a real tan. Increased pigmentation in the animal’s skin occurred within 24 hours of application, and lasted up to 60 days.
“Our data demonstrates that topically applied DAGs can produce a long-lasting increase of epidermal pigmentation, presumably through protein kinase C activation, which clinically and histologically closely resembles ultraviolet-induced tanning,” the study states.
Continue reading »
Estheticians and dermatologists combine forces to give you the best possible skincare treatments.
The esthetics industry and the medical community are slowly but surely becoming friends. The two fields have largely kept to themselves over the years, but lately many estheticians and dermatologists are combining their services to become one-stop dermatology and skincare clinics to best fulfill your skincare needs. Continue reading »
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