Skin Rejuvenating Creams

Summary

The creams that you can buy over the counter and are advertised on the TV and in magazines as classed in the UK as cosmetics and probably do little more than paper over the cracks.
However, there are prescription-strength creams that have been proven in rigorous clinical trials to be safe and improve the structure and function of the skin.
The Obaji range has been shown to enhance the effect of these prescription-strength creams to that they work two to four times better.
Clinic-only ranges do not have the same depth of research proving that they both work and are safe long term.

Why Does Skin Age?

The short answer is the skin that has not been exposed to ultraviolet light, sunlight, ages very slowly. You can easily see this by comparing the quality of the skin on your face, neck, chest or hands to that on the inside of your arm or buttocks. Therefore, if the sun damage can be treated, there is potential to let your exposed skin reflect your true chronological age rather than act as an indicator of sun exposure.

Which cream to choose?

It is very tempting to go with the advertised products that promise so much. However, that is exactly the wrong thing to do. Instead you should choose the products you have hardly heard of because they are the ones that have been proven to work and be safe long term.

This is because, in the UK at least, if a cream really reverses the effects of sun damage in the skin it has to be classified as a drug, becomes prescription-only, and can not be advertised to the public.

The cell stimulating creams to choose are tretinoin, the most intensively investigated cell-stimulating medicine, or isotretinoin or tazarotene. Hydroquinone, another prescription only medicine, is needed to clear the pigment.

You can devise your own regime around these medicines but you will always wonder if you have chosen products that help or hinder their action. It costs little more to choose a regime like the Obaji Nu-Derm regime that that been developed by Dr Obaji over several years and shown to be two to four times more effective than home grown regimes.

The Obaji Nu Derm regime takes about ten minutes to apply each morning and evening and will produce slight redness and scaling over the first few weeks as new healthier skin grows through to replace your old sun damaged skin.

For people with less time to devote to skin care, less sun damaged skin, sensitive skin or a life that is not compatible with having a few weeks skin that looks a little red and dry, the Obaji-C RX range combines a

high strength Vitamin C serum with hydroquinone.

People who buy these products from the Wessex Skin Clinic will have their progress monitored and their products adjusted as needed, free of charge.

After eighteen or so weeks on the full program, most people will be able to move onto a less intensive program of creams to maintain the improvement.

Those wishing for further improvement can undergo a series of Fraxel laser treatments which are currently the very best treatment for obtaining younger, less sun damaged, looking skin that reflects your true age.

Creams containing low concentrations of retinol or pro-retinol and creams containing poly-glycolic acids can be the best option for people with very sensitive skin. Glycolic acid, which was very popular in the 1990s, has been superseded by poly-glycolic acid because it is less drying.