hey guys Devin Lim board certified
dermatologist today we'll be talking
about simple acne scar treatments that
you can do at home so the first thing
acne scars what are they how do they
form and how do we grade them Acme scars
if you think about it logically can be
one of two types firstly you can have
pigment changes so with the pigment
changes you can have darker skin it's
called post-inflammatory
hyperpigmentation you have acne scars
which are red it's called
post-inflammatory erythema or pie or
macular erythema now these types of acne
scars can be managed quite well at home
right because they are flat to begin
with so what we want to do is we want to
normalize the skin texture and the skin
tone in other words your pigment to
decrease your redness to decrease to
match that of your underlying skin tone
and how do we do this so firstly
post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation what
we need to do is to protect your skin
from further stimulation of pigment and
what you could do is to use a high
factor SPF sunscreen you use that twice
a day That's essential and that's the
first step so secondly you can use
simple ingredients and it can be as
simple as something like a salicylic
acid wash geology makes some good
products but you can buy salicylic acid
from for example La Roche per se and
other brands so what salicylic acid does
is that it helps exfoliate skin so if
you have too much pigment buildup on the
surface of the skin by reducing the
actual amount of buildup you can improve
skin and hence decreased pigmentation
and have brighter skin thereafter you
can use specific products for example
like isalic acid kojic acid you can also
use skin lightening products for example
like arbutin in other pigment reduction
creams now when we talk about pie or
person inflammatory erythema those are
red acne scars these are a little bit
more challenging to treat however using
something like a vitamin B in other
words B3 which is niacinamide can reduce
skin inflammation certainly with
sunscreens that can reduce the incidence
of pie so remember guys keep it really
simple use sunscreens for both
post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation
brown spots post-inflammatory erythema
reduces red spots and then use specific
ingredients based upon what you want to
achieve both for pie and PIH in other
words Brown and red retinol can
sometimes help what I like doing is
starting patients very low so something
like the 0.1 percent retinol and once
again geology makes some good products
you can increase that from 0.1 percent
to 0.2 and then 0.3
many different brands out there start
slow escalate as tolerated so guys this
video is sponsored by geology geology
makes awesome products because they've
been formulated and invented by
dermatologists so guys you can find a
lot of these products in the description
down below so now we talked about flat
acne scars we talked about Brown we
talked about red what about scars which
are depressed so these are called
atrophic acne scars and you have many
different types including your boxcar
scarring which is kind of shallow your
rolling acne scars but also your ice
pick scars which are deeper in your deep
atrophic scars which are basically fat
loss now depending on the scar type you
can use specific treatments for example
with deep ice pick scars you can use
something as simple as a skin care acid
or simple skin based acid to treat the
Deep scar so that's called TCA now you
can use laces and energy devices or you
can use even simple things like micro
needling that can help now from a
home-based treatment
the use of retinol simple vitamin A
applied to the scar especially in early
scar can help remodel the scar itself
and decrease the amount of depression
and improve your collagen production
so once again I like trading most acne
scars with retinol of some sort to help
remodel collagen and you can use
something as simple as a 0.1 percent
retinol based serum thereafter
increasing as tolerated your Healthcare
professional might prescribe you
something called a retinoid in retinoids
they do work a little bit better than
retinols however the downside is that
number one they're prescription based in
number two most of them will have some
kind of side effects for example redness
drying stinging or a little bit of skin
irritation so you need to modulate your
use according to how sensitive your skin
type is what I like to tell patients is
that even though we do office space
procedures for example the fractional
laser resurfacing or your subcision or
your deep chemical peels using a simple
adjunctive
skin care routine at home can also
amplify your results hence that's why we
always say start on the vitamin A
whether it be a office-based retinoid or
an at-home retinal the idea of vitamin C
vitamin E in folic acid is to help
protect your skin it's a very powerful
antioxidant it can also help with photo
aging because it can help build up
collagen and importantly it can treat
pigmentation especially with the
ascorbic acid or the vitamin C side of
things so guys what about lasers in the
context of acne scars well the different
types of lasers you can use vascular
lasers in other words lasers which
Target pigment right for example redness
you can have picker laces or Nano lasers
they target Brown hyperpigmentation and
then you can have lasers including
fractional laser resurfacing that
targets at traffic scars now in the
context of treating red scars vascular
lasers don't break your skin the they
have a cooling system which protects
your skin and targets the hemoglobin
that targets the blood vessels
underneath your skin now when we talk
about fractional laser resurfacing these
lasers basically go into the deeper
areas of skin called the dermis and
depending on the depth of the scar we
may use different types of fractional
lasers CO2 lasers in erbium lasers can
penetrate deep into the skin and cause
marked and profound remodeling of
collagen the downside about erbium and
CO2 lasers is that they are painful they
are associated with a longer recovery
time anywhere between four days all the
way up to two weeks the last thing I'll
tell you and it's the most important
thing is get on the routine if you do
have active acne make sure you mitigate
scarring to begin with so start on the
precise home implemented acne skin care
range that can reduce your acne and
hence mammitigate more scars in the
future guys that's a really simple video
I hope you can take something out of
this and at the end of the day have
accurate treatments for your acne scars