Skin Archives - 15 Minute Beauty Fanatic

The Best Vitamin C Skincare Products

Christine — Tue, 16 Jul 2019 00:54:14 +0000

One of my favorite multi-purpose skincare ingredients is Vitamin C (learn more about how Vitamin C works in skincare here). In a nut shell, while you likely think of Vitamin C whenever you drink a glass of orange juice, you should also be including it in your skincare routine. Vitamin C does it all, from encouraging your skin to create more collagen and elastin (and therefore helping to reverse signs of aging), evening out skin tone by improving hyperpigmentation and even preventing skin damage by inactivating free radicals (aka, it’s a pretty great antioxidant). As an added bonus, Vitamin C is pregnancy safe, so if you are pregnant, thinking of becoming pregnant, or nursing you can safely include Vitamin C products in your skincare routine. Vitamin C products used to have a lot of problems such as causing irritation to being easily inactivated, they were also expensive. Over the last few years skincare brands have fixed many of those issues. Vitamin C serums no longer irritate the skin, you’re likely to find Vitamin C as an active ingredient in gentle moisturizers. Stabilizers have also come a long way, and your expensive skin care product is much less likely to inactivate…

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Over the Counter Retinoids: Why Your Best Retinol Might Not Be A Prescription

Christine — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 14:00:23 +0000

If you’ve read about anti-aging skincare, then you’ll know that retinoids in general but specifically retinol are the gold standard for addressing problems such as fine lines and wrinkles. “Cell turnover decreases abruptly around age 30, leading to fine lines and wrinkles, skin texture and color changes, as well as precancerous sun damage,” says Sarah Stierman MD, a dermatologist in Toledo, Ohio (and yes, a friend of mine, she practices very close to me). “Topical retinoids increase cell turnover to treat and even prevent these issues, when used as part of a healthy skin regimen.” “With all the growth factors, peptides, stem cells, and other amazing ingredients out there, Retinoids are still the gold standard for cell turnover on photo-aged wrinkled skin, and acne,” adds Celebrity Medical Esthetician Holly Cutler, known as The Skin Saint™, of FACE Skincare~Medical~Wellness in Bingham Farms, Michigan. Not All Retinoids are the Same Retinoids are a class of vitamin A derivatives found in skin care, you can learn more about how retinol and retinoids work in skin care. “The strongest retinoid is Tretinoin which is a prescription strength product that is the highest percentage at 0.1%,” according to Cutler. “It is a clinically proven topical solution…

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Acne 101: Treating Pimples

Christine — Wed, 07 Mar 2018 00:45:00 +0000

We all want clear skin, especially if you have been suffering from acne. Pimples, blemishes, zits… no matter what you call them, you don’t want to have them on your face. But do you feel like you’re piling pimple cream on to your face and the only result is dry, flaky skin that happens to have even more zits? If you want clear skin, you need to take a systematic approach to treating pimples. First, make sure you have read the basics of how pimples form, because it will make the treatment approach much easier to understand! How to Treat Acne When choosing products to treat your acne, it is best to target acne via different routes. Most dermatologists think of including these product types in an entire regimen: 1. Exfoliant The cells within the hair follicles aren’t sloughing properly and they’re clogging the pore. Exfoliating the surface will help to clear some of them out. 2. Antimicrobial P. acnes is the main bacteria involved in the development of acne. We don’t fully understand the role this bacteria plays in acne, but it much more likely to be found on the skin of those with acne and in higher numbers.…

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The Epidermis

Christine — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:55:00 +0000

The epidermis is our outermost layer of skin, and can vary in thickness from 0.05 mm (eyelids) to over 1.5 mm (soles of the feet). There are no blood vessels within the epidermis, and the openings to hair follicles, sweat and oil glands are in the epidermis (the rest of these specialized units are within the dermis). The Layers of the Epidermis The epidermis is separated from the dermis by a basement membrane, but this does keep the two firmly attached. Since we lose so many skin cells each day, our body must constantly create new cells as replacements. Cells start at the bottom layer and work their way up to the surface as they mature. 1. Basal Layer (stratum basale)- the bottom layer, these are the cells that are dividing to replace the cells that are lost every day. 2. Spiny Layer (stratum spinosum)-These cells begin to create fats known as Sphingolipids and proteins known as keratins (for strength). They are called spiny because while all of the cells in the epidermis are connected to each other very tightly with little bridges called desmosomes, the desmosomes are really easy to see in this layer, and under the microscope all…

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The Subcutaneous Tissue

Christine — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 15:45:00 +0000

The subcutaneous tissue is the last of our skin layers to review. This layer contains a lot of blood vessels and nerves, and provides a lot of support to the skin above. This layer is made up primarily of fat lobules, held together with Collagen bundles. The subcutaneous tissue layer is where you get a lot of your shots, and although technically this is a layer of fat underneath the skin itself, this layer is extremely important to the look of your skin. Too little (think of an aging face) and things start to appear sunken and the skin is loose. There really isn’t too much else to say about the subcutaneous tissue. Check out more anti-aging skincare information and reviews in my guide!

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How Soap and Cleansers Work

Christine — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 14:10:00 +0000

If you use nothing else on your skin, I know you do use a cleanser! There is a huge array of products out on the market, with many different price points, different additives and different formulations. Here I’ll be reviewing how soap and cleansers work to clean your skin. Pretty much all how soap and cleansers work this way, whether it is Dawn Dish Soap or a super expensive facial cleanser from Chanel. Quick, read the epidermis post if you haven’t yet (or re-read it if you have, I added a few things) before we start! How Soap Works All soap and cleansers work the same way, whether a $1 bar of soap or a $100 bottle of La Mer cleanser. Really! In order to both get rid of oils, sweat and dirt on the skin while making the whole thing water soluble, surfactants are used. Basically, look at the left side of the picture above. This is the basic soap molecule. There is a long chain of non-polar (neutral) atoms (that part that looks like a tail) and this part is attracted to the dirt, oil, etc. The other end (the polar, or charged end) is attracted to water.…

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Vitamin C in Skin Care: How Does it Work?

Christine — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 18:13:00 +0000

Vitamin C…. doesn’t it kind of sound like someone just decided to take their grandmother’s advice for the common cold and extrapolate that to anti-aging skin care? Or maybe it was just an ingredient laying around that was easy to incorporate into more items? Actually, it really does work. So, what does it do? First, go back to my how anti-oxidants work in skin care post to review oxygen free radicals and how anti-oxidants scavenge up those extra electrons. Remember that while those free radicals may have been taken care of, the damage that they’ve already done is still there. So, Vitamin C, aka ascorbic acid, is one of those anti-oxidants that go around mopping up free radicals. But it also does so much more! Read on to learn about all the different things that Vitamin C does, a little more about how it does them (I promised I’ve translated as much as possible into “regular” language, though this post is definitely of a higher level than most), and what to look for in a Vitamin C preparation. Vitamin C as Anti-Oxidant aka…. Problem: Vitamin C is Easily Inactivated Yup, unfortunately this is true. It has to do with the…

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Antioxidants in Skincare: How Do they Work? Are They Worth It?

Christine — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 13:05:00 +0000

Much has been made in the lay press (meaning, ABC News and such), beauty mags, on-line, pretty much everywhere you look about antioxidants. They are reported to not only fix your skin, but will make it so that you never get cancer and live 20 years longer. Now, while I don’t know for sure about any of those three (I’m pretty sure no one knows, actually), but dermatologists are pretty sure that antioxidants do help with aging, and there are plenty of studies on going right now. (Note that the only topical product shown to improve wrinkles is Retin-A.) Well, what exactly is an antioxidant? It’s something that fights free radicals. I think that it was explained best by Alton Brown of all people, who is a chef on the Food Network that my brother is obsessed with! (Really, he has severe food allergies so he does all of his own cooking. He has hundreds of Alton’s episodes on tape and my little brother frequently cooks things like duck! Who knew a guy who can’t match his clothes could do that? Amazing!) Basically, the free radicals are created when they give up or lose an electron. That lose leaves a…

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How Peptides Work in Skincare

Christine — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 13:02:00 +0000

Go back and read through the Dermis Post. Just go glance at it quickly, I won’t get too terribly technical with you, I promise! If you want more info, check out the reference paper below. It’s a great overview of Peptides and what they have been found to do. Ok, well, remember those cells I said were present in the dermis? The fibroblasts? Their job is to create collagen, a major component of the matrix of extracellular things in the skin. (My husband, an expert in the Extracellular Matrix is going to kill me for simplifying everything so much. His grad students would laugh at me. But, this isn’t a PhD Disseration, it’s a beauty blog!) One of the major problems with aging (both from age and from sun exposure) is that the skin’s collagen is made is smaller amounts, what is there is broken down more quickly and the fibroblasts themselves replicate more slowly as they die off. This happens more quickly in photoaged skin than just aged skin, so the results of decreased collagen are even more pronounced. Where do peptides come in? There is a lot of evidence that peptides can do a lot of things to…

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The Skin, Dermis

Christine — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 09:32:00 +0000

Directly beneath the epidermis is the dermis, and it functions primarily to support the epidermis. As well, the dermis supplies the epidermis with things that are important, such as, oh, blood! The dermis does vary in thickness depending upon the area of the body just like the epidermis. Overall, there are fewer cells within the dermis, this layer is composed of many more structural components such as collagen. Technically, there are layers, however this is less of structured tissue than the epidermis: 1. Papillary Layer- This layer is thinner and more superficial. It has all 3 tissue types, but is loosely packed. This layer also contains capillaries, which are small blood vessels and they are primarily supplying the epidermis and dermis. 2. Reticular Layer- A deeper layer, this is more densely packed, the blood vessels here are larger, and the tissues are just larger in general. Both of these layers are made up of several tissue types and other components: 1. Collagen- Think of collagen as a rigid structural component of the dermis, really helping to support the skin. The dermis is about 85% Collagen, and these long proteins will link together to provide even more support. There are several…

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