You’ve made the decision to have a cosmetic procedure. You’ve found the surgeon and set a date. Maybe you have already had a procedure. Now the question is: What are you going to do to prolong and maintain the youthful look of your skin? How will you care for your skin on a daily basis?
Skincare is often overlooked after an expensive cosmetic procedure. People will spend thousands of dollars having a facelift yet they resist spending more than a few dollars on skincare products. Today’s medical grade or cosmeceutical skincare products will do wonders to actually improve the quality and tone of your skin and extend the youthful look you went to great lengths to achieve.
What Makes Cosmeceutical Skincare Products Different?
How do you identify a true cosmeceutical? For starters, they contain active ingredients that are clinically proven to work on correcting the skin and are often endorsed by or created by cosmetic physicians. For instance, an over-the-counter skin care product touted as a Vitamin C product usually has about 1% Vitamin C, whereas a true cosmeceutical product will typically have upwards of 14%.
In addition, medical grade skincare products will do several things: 1) they correct the errors of the past, 2) they bring your skin back to a state of normality and then, once that has been achieved, 3) they get your skin working as nature intended, efficiently and effortlessly.
Besides committing to using quality products on your skin post-procedure, you must also apply skincare properly. This means in the right sequence when using a regimen and at the right time, using daytime products only during the day and nighttime products only at night. We educate our patients in the proper application of the cosmeceutical skincare products we recommend.
If you’ve never used this quality of skincare with high percentages of active ingredients, you may experience a tingling sensation and perhaps even some redness in the skin. This is normal and part of the restorative powers of these medical grade products.
Comingling Diverse Products Can be More Damaging than Helpful
Medical grade skincare regimens are designed to work most effectively together. Using a combination of different products can be more damaging to your skin than helpful. So once you find a product line that works for you stick with it. If you’ve invested in over the counter skincare, do not use them in combination with your medical grade products. Just take a deep breath and get rid of them. You can even bring them in to our office and we’ll toss them out for you. Every few months we have a promotion where we help our patients make a clean sweep of their old and over the counter products. We offer a free gift or a “buy-one-get-one-half-off” special.
Remember too that a little bit of medical grade skincare products will go a long way, so while you may be paying more for your skincare products, they will typically last six months when used as directed. It’s also important to realize that cosmeceuticals have a shorter shelf life than over the counter products. Typically the active ingredients have a one-year shelf life.
Now that you know the difference, you might want to explore medical grade skin care with your surgeon’s office prior to your procedure and make the cost part of your budget.
