🐌 Fantastic Skincare: Jump through flaming hoops, repeat, 'Beauty is Pain', and acces to this thread will be unlocked

[botemp]

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For those who are taking a peek and wondering what this all about, we mostly discuss a bit of advanced skincare here with a perspective of seeking out the right ingredients (rather than the latest new shiny product and all its empty promises) for our particular skin needs. Distinguishing the acid toners from the actives whilst avoiding the truly unimpressive and harmful ingredients with a hope to achieve a bit of anti-ageing, alleviate irritation and sensitivities with some idle chat in between. Newcomers are always welcome but please note the following:

Questions and asking for help on this thread is encouraged, however, we can’t give you a specific routine to follow and hope it works out for the best. There are no overnight miracles in skincare whether it be in the form of products or techniques. It’s about perseverance, understanding your skin, assessing its needs and responding to that in a diligent manner.

These threads were created to help those who want to learn for themselves. We’re a group of interested and invested skincare nuts happy to offer tea and sympathy and dole out advice. Everyone’s journey with skincare is different, what is universal and binds us is that through actually learning about the different active ingredients it helps us get to know our skin and help us adapt as it will change many times throughout our lives - with seasons, hormonal changes, ageing, genetics etc. It's in everyone's best interests to get to know their skin and to keep reviewing those changes with the confidence that comes from the gathered knowledge here. We really encourage you to spend the time reading through previous threads and linked info sheets that the many contributors have taken the trouble to share.

By no means are we experts, we're only a bunch of amateurs that can only respond by suggesting what we would do in your place, for any severe conditions please seek out professional help.

Ahem, and finally a little note on spending. I'm well aware these threads cause many to reach for their wallets and spend with wild abandon. There can sometimes be a bit of a frenzy surrounding the excitement around a newly discovered product or on the back of great improvements when someone reports back. This is all great, it doesn't however, mean everything that's a sudden miracle for one will be it for you. Usually, it's a light bulb moment for connecting the right skincare ingredient with an individual experiencing a specific problem. Take your time to mull over decisions and question whether it's right for you too. Skincare is highly individual, it's a slow game that should cost mostly in patience, input, education, and perseverance. Please don't make it cost you financially needlessly.

I am very slowly working on consolidating the gathered information from previous threads into easier to read formats but it’s slow going. I would suggest reading thread 1 and at the very least the following info sheets (provided they apply to you):

Where to Start

Basics of an Actives Routine

Skin Types vs. Skin Conditions Info Sheet

Anti-Ageing Info sheet

Adult Acne Info Sheet

Understanding Which Sunscreen(s) to Buy

Do I Really Need to Wear Sunscreen Every Single Day of the Year?

A Damaged Skin Barrier - Now What?

NEW SERIES:

So You Want To Buy A Retinoid - A Guide

@botemp - Fair point, and guess the marketing is working on me

Just added up all the whiskey DH has managed to accumulate over the holiday period, so looks as if Skineuticals C would be justified

Can a skin-ignorant-but-trying-to-change-that person ask a question on this thread?
I'm using Dermatica's Tret for aging. Also use a standard urea cream (10%) on my feet.
One day, without thinking, I wiped my fingers under my eyes with the urea cream. That area looked far more hydrated.
Just trying to think this through - the urea breaks down hard skin on my feet. So would it be helpful under my eyes (I had no reaction whatsoever)? Or would it actually undo the good work of the Tret (retinol), in rebuilding collagen and skin thickness?
I cannot be the only person who's thought about this?

No, urea is a great highly underrated ingredient. It lightly exfoliates (removes dead skin cells) but it's also a great humectant (delivers/water moisture to skin) where Treat often makes skin drier with lots of flaky dead skin cells so it's a good combination as it hydrates and gets rid of that dusty look to skin.

I'd not use the feet stuff though, but just get a urea facial cream, Eucerin does a good one, it's also a lower percentage (5% iirc) which is better for facial skin.

Thanks, @botemp, that's really interesting.
Out of interest, would the feet stuff be dangerous? Or molecules too big for face (forgive my ignorance)

Does this vitamin c look any good? On the pricier side
https://swedishface.co.uk/vitamin-c-e-serum

Dangerous, no, that's a bit extreme but probably just ill advised. The size of molecules is the same, there's no difference there when it comes to the active ingredient, just concentration is different and I don't know the safety concentrations for urea but body skin usually tolerates larger concentrations as it's less easily irritated. Urea is generally quite benign at lower concentrations (under 10%) but when it comes to your face it's probably best to take a better safe than sorry approach.

The other aspect is that it's specifically formulated for feet so they'll often add things that feel nice (cooling for example) or a stronger fragrance which are a risk as they're potentially irritating. Feet products are often of a very thick nature and generally wouldn't be pleasant on your face too, so dependant on skin type that could end in spot city.

Those risks combined with a weakened skin barrier (or at least one that has a difficult balance to manage) that usually comes along with Tret use just make it not the best of ideas.

Alternatively, if you've just been using the foot cream for a while now and embarrassed to say, so long as you're not having issues, carry on at your own risk but stop at any sign of irritation and be especially carefully around eyes. I'd avoid it altogether, face products have at least some safety consideration for that area, a foot cream won't.

I dunno Queen, there's no INCI and it advises twice daily use, with a properly formulated vitamin c you'd turn orange with twice daily use

The brand looks familiar though, I may have seen it elsewhere.

Found it Queen, for less money too here, I've had it earmarked but I'm suspicious about it. The marketing blurb just feels a bit off and annoyingly this shop used to be the Timeless EU storefront and then they switched it out for this new storefront and they used my review for Timeless and stuck it (and I assume many others) under this product so it all feels very dodgy.

Hmm that is odd
I've noticed my sebaceous filaments are shifting, skin and me is the only thing I can put it down to. Spotted the difference this morning

wondering about this one

The only thing that puts me off slightly is that it contains fragrance...

That's a SAP based one, not my favourite derivative unless you have (young-ish) acne prone skin, strangely enough it works a bit like Benzoyl Peroxide. The Mad Hippie serum is a better choice in that derivative category.

I will let you know how I get on with the Q&A products. I'm interested to use a different niacinamide product, I think I had good results from the Revolution tonic (although I have changed a lot of my skincare in the last year).
I've realised that I have quite a supply of night moisturiser now so it might take me a while to get onto the collagen cream. I am quite intrigued about it, Bo I think you did say that there was no evidence to support topical collagen but I'll see if it shows any benefits. I'll use the peptide serum instead of argireline when I finish that. The caffeine eye cream isn't really of interest to me but I'll give it go, I don't use any eye creams at the moment and I wasn't planning on using them as my eyes aren't my area of concern right now.

Collagen is a nice enough humectant, it just doesn't do anything for the collagen in your skin- which is what a lot of marketeers cleverly try to insinuate.

So pretty much not something to pay over the odds for, otherwise fine. I don't know if you have the weird scam skincare shops in the UK too, they're usually staffed with Spanish staff here, very aggressively trying to lure you in with free samples and over the top compliments, then insult you doing that tut tut thing that you're not using an eye product, or not a good one as your crow's feet are clearly showing and then try to convince you to buy something of theirs. I've always given them a wide birth as the thing they try to push most is a 24k gold and collagen cream in a hideous jar, that's scammy enough to me without the insulting hard sell. I only found out recently from a poor victim that the cream is €275 , but today it's 2 for 1 or some bullshit like that. I was horrified, the ingredients wouldn't even cost €2.75.

Anyhow Q&A seems very reasonably priced, thankfully.

Kinda seeing what people mean by glass skin now. It's not oily, just really smooth

Yeah for the price I thought it was worth a try and it's Vegan collagen (or maybe veggie).

Great glassy skin Queen.

That's not glass skin, that's signature Tret skin I don't really know what glass skin is, but what I've seen of it, it doesn't look natural to me and I assume some product is involved. There's something weirdly wet and slightly metallic about it. Tret skin can look a little hyperreal on camera as it grabs the light in all the right places but isn't shiny elsewhere (ie. No full on grease face) but in RL looks very natural and just very healthy.

Oh that's a head scratcher, Purple, as I don't think there is such a thing as vegan/veggie collagen. Maybe it's lab grown or something.

I will keep slathering on skin and me!
The difference is ridiculous compared to dermatica. Very little flaking now, just the odd bit on my chin. I think I like tret skin

It says that it's collagen from seaweed, so I'm not sure how it's going to smell!

We don't have the scam skincare shops here that, not that I've experienced anyway. I don't go into shopping centres etc very much though (even before this year) I would never pay €275 for skin care, well not without spending months researching it.

@botemp, sorry for the late pick up - went to bed embarrassingly early last night - but thanks for the foot cream/urea advice.

@botemp or anyone- sorry, can I ask another question?
Is it common for hyperpigmentation to appear to get worse before it gets worse on tret? I have asked Dermatica, but I'm not getting a clear answer. I'm on Tret and the Hydro stuff that's meant to lighten/reduce pigmentation. TIA.

still, I'm not that knowledgeable on prescription and Dermatica should be the one whose advice you should follow. Saying that, what I know of tret+hydroquinone is that it can cause some post inflammatory hyperpigmentation from the irritation caused by introducing it but I don't think it should exacerbate existing pigmentation.

I'm assuming you are slathering yourself daily with a standalone (mineral) SPF 50+ daily, not a moistuiser or makeup with a bit of SPF or none at all as that would be the obvious culprit. Hormonal birth control is often also an underlying cause.

@bo, thank you. Definitely slathering. Even on darkest days. But thanks, I'll go back to Dermatica.

Bo why have you emphasised mineral SPF please?

Ninny that tends to be standard advice from Derms when treating hyperpigmentation. It has to do with all minerals having a good UVA protection regardless of formulation which is just down to the filters, as there's only two of them. You can get a better protection for UVA with chemical (the newer generation filters we have available here and in Asia) but you have to be knowledgeable about filters and chemical sunscreens are more likely to irritate (I couldn't tolerate them when introducing Tret) so it's the most idiot proof recommendation least likely to cause issues.

Ah ok. Thanks. I don't really have any hyperpigmentation.