How to Use a Retinoid like a Dermatologist

what's up everyone we're back dr maxfield dr shaw and we got a new set up here today we got the blue key light in the back over here we got new camera new microphone new lighting um new host luke is leaving i'm just kidding so uh we're getting into it we uh we're trying to really invest in the youtube channel and try to give you guys the best content with the most watchability so uh let's talk about a really important topic today yeah this is probably long overdue uh today is the day we're going to talk about retinoids retinoids huh what are those exactly right so retinoids are basically the landmark hallmark whatever you want to call it of my skincare routine yeah foundation probably a good word foundation cornerstone cornerstone it's the building block upon which you're pretty much stacking everything else on top of right of course sunscreen you know but when we're talking about active ingredients retinoids are basically the hallmark what do we say yeah you said landmark we i don't know foundation foundation of my skincare routine so what are they um so vitamin a derivatives um include adapylene tretinoin retinol retinaldehyde so these are all essentially the same thing with varying degrees of efficacy but what we're going to be talking about is essentially how to start one of these ingredients how to incorporate them into your routine so that you can see the benefits that everyone always talks about with these ingredients so why should you be using a retinoid there are so many benefits to it has anti-acne properties it has anti-aging properties it improves hyperpigmentation it improves skin texture it minimizes the appearance of pores and so there are so many benefits to a retinoid the question is how do you incorporate it into your routine so that you can actually use it and see those benefits that everyone always talks about so we're gonna be talking about those tips here we go here we go so retinoid very confusing term uh you know we hear it all the time what does it actually mean so retinoid think of it like the word fruit so there's apples there's oranges but they're all fruits and so retinoid is essentially the fruit it's the umbrella term and then your retinol is like your orange and your tretinoin is like your apple and so they all kind of fall under this umbrella and they have varying degrees of efficacy because they need to be converted along the way and so retinol is converted to retinal the height of retinal and then retinal is converted into retinoic acid and so if you have to go through two conversions obviously it's going to be a little bit less strong and also less irritating and so that's kind of how it works so the umbrella term is retinoid and then retinol retinaldehyde retinoic acid tretinoin desaratine adaptolene all fall underneath this umbrella so now we're going to talk about them just as a class so whatever you've got at home retinoid from here on out exactly so when you started using it kind of what was your experience then so basically when i started my dermatology residency it was the first thing when i walked in the door you remember you were there uh what did i say uh you said i want to look young no i didn't you said you want perfect skin no i didn't what did i say you said you want perfect skin what'd you say i said i want to look dewy remember oh that's stupid yeah so whatever that means right so i see all these people all the time right and you know i don't know maybe it's superficial however you want to look at it but you see certain people and uh light basically like reflects off of their skin in a certain way and to me that's that like dewy or glowy type of appearance and i just didn't know how to achieve that and the response from dr saleh who who is now you know out in florida practicing if you guys want to find her but she said you need to start a retinoid in your routine and that's going to be the thing that's going to completely change your skin it's going to even out your texture it's going to even out your tone it's going to have anti-aging benefits and that's the first thing that i would recommend in your skincare routine and so that's when i started aratinoid when i started my dermatology residency and then once you started it like how did you do yeah so initially i kind of went like full force with it kind of like i do sort of with anything like i get back in the gym and then i go to the gym every day and then i kind of like burn out so i was like i'm just going to use this thing every day and i'm going to get all these benefits that she mentioned i'm going to have dewy skin in like a month and that was my mentality i was like this thing's going to work immediately and i'm going to just go full force with it and so i started to use a the retinoid every single night initially and i immediately experienced retinoid dermatitis or redness and irritation and flaking from using my retinoid and they all made fun of me i don't know if we made fun of him because of that or just because of how much he complained about it i did complain the whole time about the process number one i was like why is my skin not immediately better uh you know like i'm not dewy yet and it was like one month in and you know i realized from that that it is sort of a waiting game and you have to be patient with it to see improvement with your skin uh and then essentially i backed down a little bit because i was getting that retinoid dermatitis and so instead of doing it every night i moved to every other night and so i'm going to give you guys uh an outline of tips to help you guys incorporate retinoid into your routine so you don't make the same mistakes that i made and that you can immediately start seeing benefits but also not having that irritation that comes with retinoids all alright so here's our tip number one tip number one uh is picking the right retinoid set yourself up pick the right one and it's gonna be based off of strength here right and so you have your retinols like i said they need to be converted twice and they tend to be a little bit better for sensitive skin i find the cerave resurfacing retinol is a really good starter retinol the ordinary has the grand active retinoid at two percent that tends to be a really good starter retinoid as well and um your retinal and then your tretinoin which is a prescription now the tretinoin is going to be actually a lot more effective than your over-the-counter products and you won't necessarily get more irritation with that because a lot of times the vehicle and when we say vehicle it means not just the tretinoin that's in the active ingredient form but what else it's compounded with it may give you some relief and less irritation so for us you know one of the products that we do like is altrina which is a prescription but it is very effective and doesn't seem to cause much irritation and a lot of that is due to the vehicle that they formulated with yeah i mean when people try to offset some of this irritation i mean you're going around and you're looking for different moisturizers uh probably just a myriad of different kinds of people are trying to use and so that these complementary things within that active ingredient they're just i don't know for me they've actually made a world difference when i think about how i'm using them in the frequency in which i'm using them now right and i've also had a lot of luck with the skin medicinals uh tretinoin as well which is compounded with turmeric and you guys know how i feel about tumeric so you just kind of have to find the one that works for you and doesn't cause a lot of irritation but general rule of thumb your retinol is going to be less irritating your retinal is going to be a little bit more irritating your adaptation falls somewhere in between that and then your tretinoin tends to be the most irritating well actually tazer is gonna say we haven't talked about serenity zeratine is at this moment the mack daddy and it is just extremely extremely effective i know i think the first time i went in to get a prescription to see a doctor about this it's like okay i want the strongest i went to their teen nine million percent and i want the biggest tube you have and that's absolutely the wrong way to go about this it's very strong to zeratine and so i would say tretinoin and then to zero towards your strength so pick one um that is going to be a strength that's not going to irritate your skin so that's how i would start it off start low and then go high so a tube is going to last you about three months and so start low and then by three months your skin should be adapted to it and you should be able to increase the concentration and therefore increase the effect of it okay so our tip number two so you've chosen the right retinoid for you you start to incorporate it into your routine how do you do it uh first thing you're going to take a very small amount right we always tell people a little p size amount into your fingertip and then you dab it evenly over the skin and then you spread it over the skin surface and that's really all you need it's going to be immediately after cleansing your skin that you're going to apply the retinoid and then you're going to moisturize immediately afterwards all right so tip number three tip number three tip number three is using it every other day starting it every other day yeah i made the mistake of using it every day big mistake your skin definitely needs to adapt to it it's gonna be increasing those cell turnover it's gonna cause a lot of flaking and irritation i think it's important to say at least somewhere in here that the flaking irritation it's actually kind of expected because of what these retinoids do one of the things they do is just help increase that skin turnover they're kind of reprogramming your skin and because of that this is like an expected result it's just a part of it working and that p of this irritation is like two to three weeks after that even if you keep using it it's going to calm down on its own your skin gets used to it and it functions better and it in and of itself will be less irritating and so when you start off using this every other day you know you can work yourself up again kind of over a period of two to three weeks a month increase it to every day or every night and just see how you do once you've kind of mastered that step the every night thing so i'm i just i still want to get the most out of what i've got so i use it twice a day um maybe i'll throw a little in the lunch time three times a day that's 100 personal me it's not science-based but i'm just saying studies should not do that um so i highly not recommend you using a retinoid three times a day so what i would do is uh so i kind of have a rule of threes and i actually just made it up in the middle of this conversation right now so if you have sensitive skin uh start with every third night for one month then start with every other night for the second month and then start with every night for the third month and then by then you'll be out of the tube and you'll be able to increase the concentration with your every night routine and it should fall in perfectly into a retinoid routine so start low go high tip number four and this is the most important tip to me but i'll let you tell about it why oh i know what it took me a second to figure out why this is so important to him uh okay so this one is protect those sensitive areas of your face i complained about this like literally every day i actually i don't know our camera's better now so we might be able to pick this up but i have a little bit of dermatitis under this eye right now that's there from i went again i went hard again with the exfoliants and the retinoid and i ended up with irritation around my eyes i have very very sensitive eyelid skin which is why i'm a huge proponent of eye creams so a lot of people will tell you you don't need an eye cream i am obsessed with eye creams and i stand by that and for very good reason i have very sensitive eyelid skin and it's the thinnest skin on the body it really really is and it's the most sensitive it's the most common location to form allergy on the face and so for me it's really important to apply an eye cream or an occlusive that is going to protect my eyes before i apply some of these irritating ingredients so my recommendation and this is from my experience is that if you apply vaseline or aquaphor or cerave healing ointment around the eyes prior to applying your retinoid on the rest of the face then if you have sensitive eyelids it will protect that area so there's a little caveat here though this caveat is probably two fold in my mind the first part is that these retinoids can benefit the skin around the eyes we talked about this a little bit in our dark circles video one of the many causes of dark circles is the thinness of the skin and one of the things that retinoids have been shown to do is thicken up collagen thicken up that skins that could help that among some other causes right so retinoids can have a lot of benefit underneath the eyes for anti-aging for hyperpigmentation or dark circles and so if you can tolerate it which i wish i really could though because my dream in life was to be able to apply retinoid underneath the eye because i know there's so many benefits underneath the eye to applying a retinoid but i really i personally just cannot tolerate it and so i always use that occlusive barrier in order to prevent my eyelid skin from getting irritated which is just worse for me than anything else so all right so tip number five all right tip number five last tip so this one is the retinoid sandwich and it rolls just right from what he was talking about this is you use moisturizer retinoid moisturizer that comes together and makes a sandwich and that really helps to prevent irritation by having that a little bit of that barrier and moisturization of the skin and then falling with the retinoid and then moisturizing again for someone who has sensitive skin that moisturizer sandwich or that retinoid sandwich tends to help a lot so if you're somebody that gets that that will help you a lot so these tips are the tips i wish i knew when i started a retinoid you know i made so many mistakes and i was red and irritated i could probably find some old pictures of me um from driving where i was really irritated from it as well so don't make the mistakes that we made when we started our retinoid and uh you will see a lot of benefit with it yeah we both made the same mistakes and from the patients we see the people we see i feel like 90 of the people all make the same foundational mistakes when starting a retinoid and they're missing out on like this this cornerstone treatment for your face one thing i would also tell you all is don't be afraid of purging right a lot of people will tell you your acne will get worse when you start a retinoid it is completely worth it to stick it out through that and and get to the benefits of retinoid what ends up happening is it increases those cell turnovers so what happens is your acne that's supposed to come out over two months basically comes out over two weeks and then you're like wow my skin is getting so much worse you stop the retinoid and then you never really see the benefits of it so stick it out for at least two months if you're starting to use a retinoid and i would say if you want to see anti-aging benefits you're going to stick this out for three to six months and if you want to see improvement in hyperpigmentation i would say three months as well but it's going to do all of those things if you stick with it it is really really the hallmark of a skincare routine and after sunscreen it's the first thing that i recommend for people for anti-aging for acne for hyperpigmentation for improved texture for everything everything except for pregnancy and there we go so uh when do you not use a retinoid pregnancy or breastfeeding pregnancy breastfeeding hard stops rosacea you need to think twice leave some comments below about how we can improve our videos or whether or not you like our new setup our goal here is we don't have any ego if you want to comment about our audio not being good or we're talking too fast or we're not making a lot of sense when we talk or get to the point or make the video shorter things like that it really is helpful for us you know we're not here to become famous and you know be on billboards or anything like that we really just want to reach as many people as we can in order to improve your skin and kind of make a lasting impact on the skincare community and so there's any way that we can improve our watchability or improve our videos or make them more helpful to you guys that's our only goal here so please leave comments below and let us know what you think yeah we always appreciate the feedback we always try to get back to you as much as we possibly can we're always so thankful for your uh your input so we appreciate it and we're not dating it's official we're not dating each other okay all right thank you guys so much for tuning in please like comment and subscribe and we'll be back every week with new videos [Music] all right tip number one so the most important man sometimes i just can't like say this most simple words it is so frustrating all right anyway all the time all the time it's pretty much all the time

Channel: Doctorly

Views: 1,271,578

Rating: 4.9626489 out of 5

Keywords: retinol, retinoid, cerave resurfacing retinol, ordinary granactive, differin, acne, skincare, dermatologist, tretinoin

Id: grxmyM7EuDk

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 10 2021

Reddit Comments

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[u/pollytrotter]

For impatient people like me - tips start at 5:20!

[u/babychupacabra]

Coulda done without all the excessive giggling and joking but was informative if you can get through it.

[u/Trevoroni91]

I'm glad they mentioned the "Retinoid sandwich".. or putting on moisturizer then your retinoid followed by moisturizer again.

I always cringe when skincare influencers talk about mixing instead of layering.

[u/shyBlkGrl]

Omg this is so great. I just started tret and was looking for more tips on how to properly use it. r/tretinoin is also a very useful community for retinoids if anyone wants to join.

[u/MedusaKali]

This was really helpful I just recently started prescription retinoids

[u/casseroleEnthusiast]

This is super helpful! I’ve been using differin but with increased dryness from the winter I’m thinking of stepping it back to every 3rd night after watching this, in the hopes it’ll reduce irritation and discomfort. Thanks!

[u/bearallen81]

I follow the guy on the right on TikTok. He's really great. I'll definitely have to watch this. Thanks!