So, you are stuck at home. How do you keep your skin looking its best?

Healthy skin begins with overall health, skin protection from the sun, healthy eating, exercise, and taking care of your skin with a medical-grade skincare regimen.   There are many great skincare systems out there, but I’ve narrowed that down for you and found one that is developed by a physician and professor of dermatology and cutaneous surgery to address the issues many of us face with a high concentration of active ingredients, low pH for acid products (this is desired), paraben free, and never tested on animals.  We carry this skincare line—Advanced Aesthetics—in our office, so close to home. 

For those of you who have beautiful young skin without any problems, then you need to keep it that way through twice daily cleansing, exfoliation to remove dulling-dead skin cells, moisturizing and hydrating the skin, and use sunscreen daily even in the winter to protect the skin from damage and pre-mature aging. 

The rest of us unfortunate 99.99% of folks that have some issue with the skin, like pimples, blackheads, enlarged pores, wrinkles, irregular pigment or age spots, redness, sagging skin…   Well, we just need some other products or treatments that can help out.  We can’t just rely on those four products to do it all.  I hear from so many that you just want to keep it simple, and I absolutely understand that.  But, if you want to address multiple issues, you often need several steps to do it.  This may take more than a minute to do.  Remember, you are worth the time and the money.  You’ve earned it, you deserve it, and you want to feel good about yourself, so it’s ok to spend 2 minutes in the morning and 2 minutes at night on just you.

Morning and night, you need to cleanse your skin with an appropriate cleanser.  Our three cleansers are sulfate free and fragrance free.  This is important to minimize redness, dryness, peeling, and breakouts.   I always recommend you purchase two cleansers, one to keep on your sink, one for the shower.  We all like convenience and will use what is easy to reach. 

Next, all skin types may use some type of exfoliator, although which one may need to be adjusted based on skin type and skin conditions or disorders.  These fall into a couple of categories:  Mechanical vs. acid-based.  Our Advanced Aesthetics Skincare provides you with ResurFace Crème for the face, a botanical buffing cream.  This physical exfoliator acts like an at-home microdermabrasion treatment.  Three steps of acid-based exfoliators work by daily exfoliation.  An excellent daily Papaya Mint Body Scrub will keep your body’s rough skin and dead cells exfoliated.

Let’s not forget about masks.  Since many of you are at home where no one can see you, you can spare 15 minutes of mask time.  So, let’s pick one that can benefit your skin.  Or perhaps two, because, you may very likely have a combination skin.  So it’s ok to treat your skin that way.  You can apply one mask to part of your face and another mask to the rest of your face.   Three masks are available:  O2 Lift mask will hydrate the skin imparting a brighter, firmer more youthful appearance.   Pumpkin Clarifying Mask is a deliciously scented exfoliating pore-detoxifying 5% pumpkin enzyme mask with papain and salicylic acid.  Sulfur Mask is an excellent mask that detoxifies and heals acne-prone skin, reducing excessive oil without over-drying the skin.  Masks are most effective when used 2-3 times weekly. 

To treat the many issues you may have with the skin, we then can turn to treatment serums. Best used twice daily, these serums are extremely concentrated so a small amount will do.  These treat issues like aging skin, lines and wrinkles, age spots, acne, redness and rosacea, flaky dry skin, poor skin tone, loss of skin volume, and many other problems in the skin.  Retinol is a highly recommended non-prescription retinoid for almost every skin type except very sensitive and rosacea-prone skin.  At Advanced Aesthetics, we have two retinol products that are fantastic:  Advanced Retinol and Retinol-A Serum.   Two additional favorite serums for aging skin are HA+Firming Boost which has hyaluronic acid and snow mushroom extract to super-hydrate and plump the skin, and C-Stem—a concentrated anti-aging serum with lilac-stem cells, vitamin C, and marine extracts that dramatically improves deeper lines, brightness, reduces redness, plumps skin, improves adult acnes, improves texture and pores.  It will even lessen Progerin, the skin aging protein. I never leave home without these (if I can leave home).  I use these faithfully.

The eye and lip area are separate areas altogether and need to be treated as such.  The eye area is very delicate, with thinner tissue, often has fine lines and wrinkles early on, dark pigment under the eyes, and some may have swelling in the area.  Two separate products can be used to improve the area around the eye:  Ultra Benefits Eye Gel for younger eyes and Ultra Firming Eye—generally for those over 40.    The lips can be enhanced with Lip Benefits, an anti-aging lip plumper.  This cranberry-flavored protective and rejuvenating balm provides immediate and long-term lip plumping and has no caustic causing ingredients and protects the lips against environmental damage.

Additional specialized products are also available, such as additional acne products, recovery products (such as after treatments), eyelash activating serums, and others.

Everyone, even the oiliest patients, need moisturizers.  There are many types of moisturizers to choose from Clarifying Moisturizer, an oil-free treatment moisturizer with salicylic acid to reduce acne, to Ultra Firming Marine—a wrinkle-reversing rich cream with botanical vitamin C with concentrated glycolic acid at a low pH with peptides.  These moisturizers are designed to treat various skin conditions as well. 

Now don’t forget every morning you must use a broad spectrum sunscreen for protection.  These can be used alone as your moisturizer or overtop of your treatment moisturizer.  However, I do recommend if you are working on treating specific skin conditions, you go ahead and use your moisturizer, then apply sunscreen over this.  The sunscreen come in three different formulation and are chemical-free, therefore considered mineral-based.  They are tinted as well, so serve as a great makeup primer or lightweight foundation.  SPF levels are 30+, 36, and 40. 

Once you get your regimen down, this is quite easy.  Remember, your skin can change throughout the year or over the years and your skincare regimen may need to adjust during this time, so allow some flexibility. 

If you need help deciding what may be best for you, call and we can assist you.  We are currently doing curbside pickup for products and mailing products during this time. 

Take care and stay safe. 

Shari J. Twigg, MD

Advanced Aesthetics

406-742-5256

304 South Ellery Ave, Suite 2

Fairview, MT 59221