today i'm talking about the five things
you can do when you've overdone it with
your retinoid
hi i'm dr sam here to help coach you to
bright clear skin like i've done for
thousands of patients at my harley
street clinic
now on today's topic let me start off by
saying that if you haven't experienced
retinoid uglies or irritation
don't worry you will because i think
it's almost a rite of passage
for retinoid users especially in the
first six weeks
and it almost goes far to say it's
necessary
to probe the boundaries of what your
skin can tolerate because essentially
you want to find where that threshold is
and pull back because that will be the
most optimal strengths
for your skin and of course that's going
to change over time so i think it's
something we all experience that sort of
4 p.m
the chin gets a bit peely the skin
starts to feel a bit tight
it is just one of those things now in
terms of what causes it i think there
are really three mechanisms at play now
the first
is that we are naturally speeding up our
cell turnovers the cells are coming to
the surface
more quickly the next thing is that
retinoids themselves can trigger the
release of inflammatory proteins called
cytokines
leading to inflammation and the third
thing is
they may well have a direct impact on
the
adhesions between the surface skin cells
causing them to come apart and that's
what manifests in
what we see clinically so we see redness
we see dryness and we see
scaling now you try and put makeup on
a retinoid irritated chin um it's just
not happening but
as i said i think there are definitely
things we can do to manage it
and to prevent it so let's go through
those so the first thing
to do when you experience retinoid
irritation
is to stop a bit like sunburn there is
no point in keeping on
going once that degree of barrier
disruption has taken place
so you must stop then you must
critically
evaluate your routine have you somehow
inadvertently caused this to happen
have you gone in with too strong
arrestinoid have you combined it with
other actives prematurely
or have you combined it with ingredients
that will in themselves
increase the risk of irritation um
without delivering any benefits so if
you put a routine together with a
retinol that also contains essential
oils
and fragrance stop and reboot
the next thing you want to do is to
strip back your routine
so if you have isolated offending items
you must remove them and i think the
ideal routine
to go alongside a retinoid includes a
unfragranced
non-foaming cleanser that supports
barrier function
a barrier boosting moisturizer and a
gentle sunscreen suitable for sensitive
skin so no fragrance or other irritants
ideally
mineral sunscreen if your skin is
sensitive
the next thing that you want to allow to
happen is to repair
your skin barrier and i have done a
whole video on this but essentially
stopping the retinoid and using those
simple basic supportive skincare steps
might well be enough but if it's not
think about adding in a barrier
repairing mask
or a heavier duty moisturizer a barrier
repair
product the likes of which come from la
roche posay with their cycloplast bam
and a ven with their sickle fate
occasionally things will have gone even
further and they'll be significant
redness inflammation you might need to
use a little bit of a mild
steroid cream so one percent
hydrocortisone cream can be used
twice a day for three to five days to
bring any active inflammation
under control now step four you're not
gonna like it but it's allowing
time to heal so your barrier is not
going to repair
overnight i think that is one of the
commonest mistakes i see with my
patients is that they
stop they reset but they don't allow
enough time for things to normalize
and it can take up to 10 to 14 days for
your barrier to completely settle down
if it's really been traumatized so
be patient allow skin really to settle
completely you don't want any hint of
the rumbling still going on your skin
before you restart your retinoid
step five we're ready to restart now
i think it's really important to look at
what level you were using your retinoid
at
when things started to go awry so
had you gone from doing it every other
day to daily
had you removed your buffering layer of
moisturizer either way i want you to
look critically at what you were doing
when things went wrong so i would start
off doing things
less frequently smaller amounts of
retinoid and i would
always recommend buffering with
moisturizer first i think this is
probably the most powerful step um if
you've been applying your retinoid to
cleanse skin
the simple act of moisturizing first
allowing it to
absorb um will really really help
improve
tolerability of your retinoid do check
out my recent video on how to apply a
retina to make sure that you're doing
these things correctly
that you're not overdoing the quantities
and you know the right way to apply it
to avoid
localized irritation in areas like
around the nose
the eyes and the lips if all of that
isn't working for you then you need to
look at your product
and decide are you actually using
something that's too strong for your
skin
so a simple hack in the first instance
is just to dilute it back with a bit of
moisturizer literally half
the amount of retinoid half the amount
of moisturizer or
shift gear and going with a lower
potency product
honestly this is a long race this is not
something you want to sprint hard at the
beginning it's not worth
incurring the bumps and bruises of using
something too strong in the early days
go gentler it's absolutely fine and over
time you require tolerance so
using something less strong for a period
of time will enable you
oftentimes to climb the retinoid ladder
so be patient
and let your skin direct you in what it
can handle
so i hope that gives you a game plan for
something that if it hasn't happened
already as i said is quite likely to
happen at some point in your retinoid
journey but i want you to have the
skills and the confidence to handle
whatever comes your way because you know
i'm a retinoid cheater guys i want you
to get the most out of this
amazing group of ingredients and
having those tools to hand whether it's
the simpler skincare routine in the
background
cutting out your actives using the right
hydrating mask
to repair your barrier heavier barrier
repair cream or even a little bit of
hydrocortisone
these are the tools that will enable you
to keep on going
with your retinoid and hopefully it will
be event free
so if this video on tackling the
retinoid uglies has been useful to you
please
share it with a friend who'll also
benefit i really do want you guys to
help me spread the word and how to
tackle skincare to get the most out of
it so you can get
the freedom and confidence that bright
clear skin can deliver
bye for now