Maximizing Moisture in Your Skin

Getting the most out of your skin care products is tricky and we want to help you get the most cost effective products. As a general rule you will want to balance aesthetics and goals and we utilize an ingredient approach: each ingredient we recommend for our patients has a role. We want to also discuss options and determine if you as patients have to like it and have it feel good, and finally does it really meet the need we are trying to accomplish for your skin. The first step is sunscreen, after that we want to talk about moisturizing your skin., and we use the science behind the study of skin to determine what we are going to recommend. We have a progressive dehydration of skin cells as they progress from lower to upper layers, which is why just exfoliating improves the overall moisture content of your skin. Our skin has a substance filligrin is part of the skin cells and it forms a natural moisturizing factor. Naturally moist skin is about is 30% water, and water is held in to the skin by that gorgeous plump lipids (fat laden!) upper layer. When we want to improve your skin, we make an assessment of whether we recommend trying to supplement or replace the architecture. Dry skin has a number of components we are trying to combat:: it may contain malnourished cells, odd excreted proteins, the layers may loose their natural organization, lipid layers may be missing altogether and these are just some of the things we can improve with proper skin care. The body can moisturize itself, and when we recommend products we want to aid that process. Did you know you lose a lot of water, medically about through the skin we lose about 12-14 g/cm2 of water per minute! Effective products to stop this rapid rate of loss from our skin might include petrolatum products for instance: reduces water loss by 99% (and you need at least 1% water loss for skin to repair). Many products do have various mineral, seed or herbal oil components, including, sesame seed oil, jojoba, flaxseed, hemp, soybean, borage oil, etc and these products do retard evaporation. Meaning that these ingredients don’t directly hydrate skin, they an environment for self repair to your skin. Other ways to add water to your skin would include the use of what is called a medical humectant, or a natural moisturizing substance. Some products act like sponges that hold water, so hyaluronic acid or “HA”, is a sponge that soaks up water, and it’s the water that allows it to fill not the HA itself, but it does this so effectively it is often recommended over other moisturizing agents.

Lip Enhancement Treatment Gets FDA Panel Approval

On April 27th, the  US Food and Drug Administration's General and Plastic Surgery Devices Panel of the Medical Devices Advisory Committee recommended the injectable wrinkle-filler Restylane (Medicis Aesthetics Inc) for use as a lip enhancer. Restylane, one of the top three commonly used injectable gel composed of hyaluronic acid, is currently  indicated for mid- to deep-dermal implantation to correct moderate to severe facial wrinkles and folds, such as nasolabial folds. The company is seeking to amend the product's indication to include submucosal implantation for lip augmentation.
The panel voted 6 to 0 (1 abstaining) that Restylane for lip augmentation is generally safe and effective for this purpose and that the benefits outweigh the risks, but the FDA still has to make a final decision on Restylane injectable gel for lip augmentation, but the agency usually follows the advice of its advisory panels, which consist of outside experts. The side effects of the lip injection treatments in the study were mild and resolved quickly. Depending upon the area treated, and the effects wanted, there is variation in the amount of volume injected and that has to be decided with your individual provider who is doing your injections. So the FDA panel is not going to set a maximum dose. Men and women of color have been under represented in these studies, but it is felt that the injection of filler in these patients would be safe. In the recent study only a very few patients were in the 18-22 age range, but it has been tested safely in these few patients. Restylane is commonly used off-label to augment and contour the lips, so the ruling really just enhances current practices.