Expensive Skincare That's ACTUALLY Worth It | Doctorly Dermatology

what's up everyone we're back dr maxfield and dr shaw and today we're dressed up looking a little ridiculous um for this video and it actually pains me a little bit to have to make this video this one like hurts my soul a little bit but today we're going to be talking about expensive skincare products that are actually worth it and the reason why it pains me is because they are almost cost prohibitive how expensive they are and i hate that because i don't think there should really be any gatekeeping to having good skin but unfortunately these are sort of the best products that are out there and we're gonna highlight some of those i don't know if there's like really a huge reason we're dressed up except we had the opportunity to say these are some fancy expensive ingredients and these are our fancy expensive clothes so we were like well you know we always wear scrubs we figured we'd switch it up a little bit um i actually wore this uh suit it's actually it's a full suit but i don't want to wear a three-piece suit inside right now it's a little bit hot but basically i wore this for a um for a wedding actually a few weeks ago i actually officiated the wedding of our our youtube editor and one of our medical assistants they got married and i actually they trusted me enough to actually officiate this wedding which is a little bit insane and i was actually pretty nervous for it but it ended up working out fine but i wore this suit so anyway congratulations to pat and mackenzie and today we're going to be talking about expensive skincare products that are actually worth it yup expensive skincare products here we go here we go so in my mind to be worth the money you have to have at least two criteria met one of which is you have to be highly efficacious you have to it has to work really well to be worth the money and then the other you can't have a very suitable dupe for it and that's where it gets a little tricky that's tough because a lot of the really good skincare products out there do have dupes for them that are just nearly as effective but i agree it needs to be it needs to really be hard to replace it let's just put it that way uh so let's talk about the first product here so the first product is actually a little bit controversial we've gone back and forth behind the scenes on this and this is skinceuticals vitamin c yeah so okay so there's been a couple studies all right so let's talk about this this is a hundred and sixty dollar vitamin c product now does it justify the price it's hard to really know because how this all started was that vitamin c is a very unstable ingredient l ascorbic acid right it oxidizes really easily and also can be broken down pretty pretty easily by just the sunlight right so back in the day skinceuticals basically pioneered this formulation where they took vitamin c ferulic acid and vitamin e and that basically stabilized vitamin c and actually made it more effective and we talked about this in another video i brought this point up is should you be putting your money into the companies that have been doing the research and there's something to be said for that i think they have like opened the door to what a lot of other companies have taken advantage of and are piggybacking on the research they did and so i trust skinceuticals brand because they've put out the knowledge and data that shows that what they're doing works yeah this was actually founded by a dermatologist skinceuticals as a brand it is now owned by the l'oreal and l'oreal owns the patent for the ce for rolex skincare product now it's tough to say because since then there's been a lot of dupes that have come out and actually l'oreal sued drunk elephant for their c firma which is very similar product right and it's still expensive i think c firm was like a hundred dollars versus the 160 dollar ce ferulic so they're very kind of similar price points maybe a little bit less but either way um you know that's they hold a patent they do and here's why vitamin c kind of like warrants so much attention it's so finicky is it absorbed is it broken down by the sun is it temperature stable can it be used with other ingredients and so they really had to go a long way to prove this is how you need to use it and this is what you need to use it with but it has such a big upside that people want to spend money on this thing so it's can grow collagen and vitamin c is essential for collagen synthesis it can help with this pigmentation it can help brighten the skin it does a lot right and sort of the gold standard of vitamin c is the skin's pseudocool c ferulic because of all the research that went behind it to prove that it's stable and effective helps with hyperpigmentation helps to boost collagen and it does have that research that backs it it's actually i'm going to be honest it's actually not a product that i tolerate well on my skin so i have the steve frolic and it's actually something that my wife uses every morning so she's seen a lot of progress with that with hyperpigmentation and just evening out her skin tone skin texture she's done really really well with the seed for real like i actually don't tolerate it well yeah and i think that's kind of actually been a recurring theme i think he has a little bit more sensitive skin than i do so i mean i tolerate it fine um but again this is going to be tailored towards your skin if this is something your skin tolerates it'll benefit you in that way if you can't tolerate it you're just either out of luck or you have to find ways to work around that actually they have a new product that came out it's called like the siloamerin cf or is one of their silomeren products i actually tolerate that one okay and it does have that um that 15 vitamin c in it that being said i think we have to offer some dupes to this one because there's been quite a few that have come out that i think are pretty good and one of which is the may love glow maker and so also like similar vitamin c makeup similar stabilization profile actually similar feel to when you're putting it on the skin it doesn't have the amount of clinical data behind it then that the ce ferulic has but has a very similar ingredient list another one that is from a brand that is a very reliable skincare brand that i use that i love that i recommend and have recommended for a long period of time is paul's choice and paula's choice has their c15 booster which is also ferulic acid and vitamin e and it's from paul's choice which is a brand that i do trust a lot so i trust that to be very similar to this eve rulic and then even another is vibrant called dermatology and this one you just take out the vowels so that's d r m t l g y and similarly vitamin c e and ferulic right so a lot of options and of course you can go for the drunk elephant one which must be similar enough that l'oreal sued them over it so it's it's pretty similar i think they settled maybe got some money from it but ultimately they own the patent if you want to support the brand that actually created the product and does have the clinical research behind it than the one to get and i would say would be worth it and a reasonable expense would be the ce fruilick if you are on a tighter budget i would go for one of the more affordable options knowing that they're going to perform pretty similarly in my opinion all right i'm gonna drop a bomb here i actually question whether vitamin c is worth the money at all though [Music] and the reason i say that is because it has a profile that's similar to vitamin a when you're looking for anti-aging benefits or retinoids and given the choice if i had a dollar here and i could only spend it one way i would pick the retinoid every time i agree i think that retinoids are more effective they have more reproducible results they have more research behind them they're not as finicky as ingredients um but the thing is that you could sort of use both that's the thing right so if you're already using a retinoid at night and then you want to compound the benefits of it by using a vitamin c in the morning i think that that would be reasonable 100 agree i do use both actually that's probably the most consistent combination i use actually irritation just the limiting factor if you get too irritated or if you're too sensitive skin you're going to have to drop one of them probably so let's use that though and dig into retinoids because for me that's actually where i would spend my money and i think a lot of dermatologists and physicians use a lot of their money towards a very potent or strong retinoid and there's a little bit of controversy to this too definitely some controversy there there's actually one of our subscribers which we always encourage you to do is always you know send out new information to us we did our video on retinol a few months ago and he actually sent us the results of a randomized control title that was done in 2020 this was nick that sent this email to us basically showing us a new study that showed that retinol had a similar efficacy maybe even more effective than tretinoin at reducing fine lines and wrinkles and building collagen and having those benefits and actually better tolerate it so they compared retinol to tretinoin and then they actually did a study head to head with this with increasing concentrations of these and they actually found that rel the retinol was just as effective so that's an interesting study and we'll link it here as well so there's so much so much caveat to this like i wish there were more of these studies there are so few head-to-head studies between the strengths and types of retinoids like if i had unlimited money in time i would dedicate a lot of my energy to this now there's there are older studies that show that tretinoin is more effective than like a dapolin in the setting of acne and also the study was like a 0.025 strength of tretinoin which is the starter strength of tretinoin as far as it goes so that we go up to 1 strength when we're using it as a prescription so with that being said i still think retinoids are worth your money and investment into a topical ingredient that's going to change your skin absolutely actually when we talk about all of these sort of expensive skincare products you're talking about 160 for vitamin c product seeing a dermatologist is probably less expensive than that to be honest and if you have insurance way less expensive than that and you could get a prescription tretinoin or something similarly that would have even additional benefits or you could get a procedure done and we'll talk a little bit about that near the end of the video but tretinoin or any prescription retinoid or even over-the-counter retinoid i think is worth the splurge there is a skin care product that i think is actually worthwhile you can't really technically buy it like from sephora but you can get it from stores like durham store or skin store it's from skin better science it's called the alpharette now this is a proprietary blend of actually they take a retinol and they take a lactic acid and they combine these together and they're actually broken down by the skin to release both of these ingredients both the exfoliant and the retinoid together and they actually did compare it head-to-head in a double-blinded study it was funded by skin better science of course there's some bias there but it was a double-blinded study it's probably the best that you're going to get from any study that's funded by industry but they found that basically that it was well tolerated actually better tolerated than tretinoin and just as effective if not more effective and so alpha rhett from skin better science which is also an expensive product i think is actually worth it you have to either get it from your dermatologist or your esthetician or you can buy it from one of these reputable stores like durham store but this is why i love that because it's pushing a lot of these prescription companies to make sure they're coming out with excellent products so some of the more recent ones are el trino which is a tretinoin but this has a novel vehicle it's got like this honeycomb matrix with hyaluronic acid some also collagen in it to offset irritation and so this one seems to be better tolerated than the older ones and it goes on super smooth this is one of my favorites and then there's also a raslo which is another newer one with another nice vehicle but even newer still is triferitine which is this retinoic acid receptor gamma specific medication and that's important because it selectively targets one receptor that's not targeting like the one of the ones that's specific for irritation and so it tends to be like a little better tolerated than some of the older retinoids now a lot of the studies in these were done with acne and we just extrapolate and off label say that it's probably gonna be helpful for dispigmentation and aging as well but i just love the competitive innovation it's just forcing these companies to come up with excellent things a lot of products out there i still think the one that has the most time tested was the first one that came out which is retin-a which actually owned by the same company that owns eldrino and also owns a raslow but retin-a which is developed by albert kligman at u pen was the first development into anti-acne anti-aging and is a very very very very very well researched ingredient so tretinoin i still think has the most research for anti-aging has the most research for acne i think there are a lot of products that come out since that are competitive maybe even in studies show better efficacy but i still think my go-to for a lot of people is tretinoin i do like altrino because of that's the one that i use because it offsets a lot of the irritancy that i get with retin-a but over-the-counter wise a splurge that i think is worth your money that you'll see a lot of efficacy is the alpha rat from skin better science but um i still think it's worth the money to go see a dermatologist actually get that prescription retinoid that's going to be best for you absolutely so next up we're going to talk about hyperpigmentation and this gold standard treatment for this which is now off the market was hydroquinone and i actually was going to say it's worth your time to invest your money in this but be deliberate about using it so out of all the fear-mongering i think about hydroquinone one of the things that was a concern was actually something called exogenous occurrences and this was a paper actually that i published really early on in my career but it's just these dark spots that really may not go away if you use it for too long a period of time so if you use this product you have to use it for a short period of time lower strengths with a dermatologist and then you come alongside it with this like buffet your amazing myriad of other ingredients right so the gold standard really for the treatment of hyperpigmentation is prescription combination of hydroquinone a steroid and a retinoid and that combination together is found to be very effective for hyperpigmentation unfortunately it does require a prescription the trade name of this ingredient is called triluma triluma it basically illuminates and has three ingredients that are active in fighting hyperpigmentation but you can even get these three ingredients combined together from compounding pharmacies and a dermatologist can send this off for you skin skin medicinals is a company that does this where they put a combination of these ingredients together and they send it off and they ship it to patients and so there are other options out there other than getting it specifically prescription triluma but that is the gold standard but when we talk about over-the-counter products right and i think it's worth it to see a dermatologist for hyperpigmentation i think you're probably get the biggest bang for your buck but short of that you're not you're not treating hyperpigmentation at the dermatologist you're over the counter what are you going to look for what's a product you think is worth the money skin suitable discoloration defense is a great option yeah now so this one has kojic acid it has tranexamic acid has niacinamide these are all three ingredients that are wonderful for treating hyperpigmentation but you know it's 98 i think it's worth it and actually from clinical experience from people i know that have used this who've had melasma or they've had freckles and they've used this they've actually seen quite a bit of benefit with this so i can tell you that it does work the only thing is now you have products like faded topicals right this is incorrect i have to always read the ingredient list on this thing it's bananas this is like the buffet of hyperpigmentation so it's called faded brightening and clearing serum and it contains this cocktail of ingredients that fight hyperpigmentation niacinamide tranexamic acid alpha butane azolic acid glutathione kojic acid licorice root turmeric i mean this combination is lethal for hyperpigmentation now it can be a little bit irritating at first because it does have a lot of powerful ingredients but extremely effective combination of ingredients and it's like 36 dollars so it's about a third the price of the discoloration defense another option that you have over the counter now it's over it's not a prescription but you do need to see like a healthcare provider to get it or you need to contact an online you can't buy it sephora again basically is cysteamine or sispera where cystiamine is very very effective for melasma yeah so steaming is a great option for this melasma is just super nuanced and actually we'll have to dedicate a whole video to that but another perfect option to counterset some of this hyperpigmentation right and it doesn't have the same problems that hydroquinone does where you're not going to face the issues of exogenous okonosis with cysteamine but it's extremely extremely effective for melasma and so it's an over-the-counter product that's expensive but i think it's actually worth it and there's not really a dupe for saspara no not yet and then anytime we say hyper pigmentation we have to say sunscreen so every make sure with all these money you're investing into treating hyperpigmentation you're just loading on the sunscreen right protect your investment always so if you're if you're buying one of these products it's really expensive we're saying it's worth it make sure you protect that investment with your sunscreen all right that being said now we're talking about products they're all over a hundred dollars or around a hundred dollars plus right getting up to 200 now you start to get into the category where that's how much a lot of procedures cost right so botox is going to cost you anywhere from 200 to 500 for a treatment filler is going to cost you anywhere from 600 to 2 000. a co2 laser is going to cost you anywhere from six hundred dollars to you know four thousand dollars whatever you know basically what category do these fall into so these are 100 worth your money because you're getting what you pay for like i said at the beginning of the video if you can quantify effectiveness this is where these perfectly land so botox is going to prevent your muscles and wrinkles from occurring help soften them filler is going to fill up space and a lot of people don't really actually know the difference between the two they're completely different products co2 laser in my mind is like one of the most effective and best treatments for overall texture very good at dys pigmentation unfortunately my skin tone is too dark for it which is a hard stop for a lot of people i can't get co2 laser right so there's some rate limiting factors you would have to discuss with your dermatologist but these procedures which are expensive are worth it and you know a lot of times you see people with really great skin you wonder why they have such great skin or they're a celebrity or something like that a lot of times they're doing procedures like this they're not just getting this done with skin care products so i i do think any time we talk about these things it would be disingenuous to say that the procedures that are done in a dermatologist's office or done in a plastic surgeon's office are not going to have more efficacy than these skin care products right and that's something we just want to make sure we like add and caveat in because it's i think it's important for you all to know where one thing stops like the over-the-counter world and where other things begin because you may not even know what's available at a dermatologist office or even plastic surgeon or whoever just because what you see is over the counter and that's what people are talking about it doesn't mean it's actually the most effective or the best thing for you right so we're not trying to drum up business for our office or anything like that really just trying to let you know what the limits of skin care are because i think that that's a common misconception and there's a lot of marketing out there will have you believe that these other products are going to be just as effective when truthfully it's going to be your procedures that are really really going to do a lot of heavy lifting too so and they're also good in combination right using retinoid but also getting your botox done are really going to have additive benefits together so just keep in mind that procedures do have a lot of efficacy but i do think that some of these skin care products like the c ferulic like the alpharette likes to spare are gonna be expensive but worth it yeah these you'll get some bang for your buck you'll see return from your investment which is super super important to me when people are buying and putting in their effort and energy into something yeah and there's a lot more to come on the expensive products that are worth it we actually had to get cut short here i wanted to talk a little bit about expensive eye creams that have some benefits and some studies behind them but we do encourage people to continue doing studies on their skincare products to prove that they're worth the dollar price tag that's attached to them so thank you guys so much for tuning in please like comment subscribe share with a friend we appreciate all of your support please leave some comments below and we'll do our best to answer them thank you guys all so much we appreciate it [Music]

Channel: Doctorly

Views: 1,462,750

Keywords: dermdoctor, dr muneeb shah, dr shah, doctorly, dermatologist, tiktok doctor, dr lj maxfield, skincare, dermatology, skincare routine, expensive skincare, ce ferulic, skinceuticals, cyspera, tri-luma, tri luma, triluma, retin-a, tretinoin, skin better science, alpharet, paula's choice, drunk elephant c firma, c15 booster, skinbetter

Id: WA54nBadavY

Length: 20min 15sec (1215 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 25 2021