Ageing skin – The best treatment: Tretinoin

Ageing skin – The best treatment: Tretinoin

After cleansing, moisturising and protecting your skin, you must think about promoting skin health. Promoting skin health includes promoting collagen synthesis and epithelial turnover and removing dead epithelial cells. Tretinoin 0.05% or 0.025% can be used to stimulate deep collagen in the skin. Tretinoin will help with the turnover of the epithelial cells.
I call this going to the gym for your skin. Instead of piling on more creams and more foundations and layers, think about making your more skin active and vibrant. Healthy skin should be able to breathe and have a toned rapid turnover instead of a dull and lacklustre appearance.
By using tretinoin cautiously, your skin will appear more vibrant. Use tretinoin sparingly. Many people use it at night on skin that has been cleansed and dried without any other moisturising creams or night creams. I do not recommend night creams. If your skin is already healthy, you may not need any night cream. If you use night creams, you should only use it three or four times a week.
On the nights that you do not use the night cream you can use Tretinoin. Only use a small amount (about half a centimetre maximum from the tube) on spots. Place on spots on the forehead, the temples, over the crow’s feet, over the cheeks, and up a little bit onto the lower lids. Do not place nearer than 5 mm from the lash line to the bridge of the nose and the sides of the nose. Use sparingly onto the upper lip whilst avoiding the entrance of the nose and the mucosa of the lips and also onto the sides of the cheeks. Rub it in and it should immediately be absorbed into the dry skin. If it does not absorb, that means you have put too much on.
Then, you should wait. Do not put more Tretinoin on. Space it out to three times a week. Four to five days after initially putting it on you will notice a warm glow of the skin. You’ll have a more healthy looking appearance and even possibly experience a little bit of peeling.
If you get a little bit of peeling do not worry, just pop some moisturiser cream on it or gently rub it off by cleansing. It is only the Tretinoin taking off the very superficial epidermal layers. This helps the new healthy skin underneath to shine forward and outwards.
People will say to you that your skin looks beautiful and it will also feel wonderful.
Gradually over time Tretinoin will help control melasma and skin quality. Tretinoin will maintain healthy looking skin. It should be used under the direction of a doctor. At Clinica London, that will be the oculoplastics ophthalmologist. It should also be used in conjunction with sun protection, using brands such as La Roche-Posay, Anthelios XL, Heliocare or SunSense.