More products to help cling to precious youth - fending off Old Man Face Part 2

In part 1 I stuck to the 2 non-controversial, well researched, and proven effective methods to help your skin. Great. But, when I went to my dermatologist she recommended a third treatment… which I ignored. In this post I’m going to discuss a few more treatments that I have been using. I’ll start with why I didn’t buy the exact product recommended by my dermatologist.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C is another well re se ar ch ed skin care treatment that has been proven in reasonable studies to promote collagen synthesis, protect from UV, lighten pigmentation, and reduce inflammation. It also has been shown to produce visible improvements to peoples faces. Sounds great, right? Well it is. The main reason that I didn’t include it in part 1 as another simple and obvious recommendation is that vitamin C is kind of hard to work with. Vitamin C is relatively unstable[1] and can be irritating. If you want vitamin C you have to pick a delivery method: water based (aka aqueous) or not (aka anhydrous). Options make things more complicated.

The particular delivery method recommended by my dermatologist is pretty famous in the skin care world: SkincCeuticals C E Ferulic. It costs $165 for 1 ounce. Let’s all take a second to just look at that number and just wow that is a big number. Ok, I looked again and it is still big. Like it hasn’t changed at all. Wow. We have to move on, but… wow. Anyway, kooking at the research, I agree with my dermatologist: if you just don’t care about money at all, then this is a great product to use. If you are going to with any vitamin C product that is water based this is the only one I would feel comfortable recommending.

I don’t think you need to pay that much money though.

No surprised really, but C E Ferulic is based on a patented formula. My best guess based on their marketing is that that formula is heavily influenced by these two studies. I’m sure there are more studies supporting it, but lets start with these.

The first study shows a synergistic effect between vitamins C and E. SkinCeuticals seems very proud of the fact that their formulation has a synergistic effect and I’m pretty sure their patent keeps other companies from selling a similar C and E combination. Face it, synergies are cool. Instead of just slapping C and E together because they are both good, they do it because the two actually work together to be more powerful than if you used both alone.

However, they don’t really ever say in their marketing what the synergistic effect is. I think that is because the KE Burke paper describes it as follows in the abstract “Because vitamin C regenerates oxidized vitamin E, the combination in a cosmeceutical formulation is synergistic - particularly in UV protection”. So does the synergistic effect actually make the vitamin C delivery better [2]? It sounds like it is just helping the vitamin E. Do I care about getting the most potent vitamin E? No. Not enough to spend $165.

The second study found the pH and vitamin C percentage that delivers the most vitamin C to skin. C E Ferulic uses a pH and vitamin C percentage in line with that paper so they must have been convinced. In fact, I’m reasonably convinced[3]. If you are going to go with the water based delivery method then you will probably be happy with C E Ferulic. I’m sure there is a large confirmation bias from everyone who buys it wanting to justify the price, but people seem happy with it and it is well supported. So, sure, why not. But I didn’t buy it. Although C E Ferulic is probably the best out there, I think the only reason it is so expensive is because they have a patent on the best formulation for water based delivery of vitamin C.

Another delivery option is anhydrous. There are fewer studies on anhydrous delivery methods, but the ones that do exist are encouraging. Take this one for example. They found that 20 - 23% anhydrous vitamin C increased production of collagen. That seems nice. You probably want a formulation of anhydrous 20 - 23% vitamin C, right? Oh, but we have to talk about price again. How much does this magic formula cost? $5.80. Wow. I’m enjoying looking at this number much more than the last one. Here it is: The Ordinary’s Vitamin C Suspension 23% + HA Spheres 2%. Maybe take a look for yourself.

I previewed this in the last article, but I’ll say it again: I love the approach taken by The Ordinary. They offer extremely simple products inspired by successful studies at ridiculously low prices. Again, I’m not arguing that I wouldn’t get better results with C E Ferulic [4], I’m just arguing that research shows that you can still get very good results for for less than 1/25th the price[5].

Summary version: Vitamin C has been proven effective and you can get it for under $6. The only excuse you have for not using it is now laziness.

Niacinamide

How about Niacinamide, that sounds impressive? In this study “niacinamide significantly decreased hyperpigmentation and increased skin lightness compared with vehicle alone after 4 weeks of use”. That is cool! This one agrees that Niacinamide helps with spots but it also finds “reductions in fine lines and wrinkles, hyperpigmented spots, red blotchiness, and skin sallowness (yellowing). In addition, elasticity (as measured via cutometry) was improved”. Wow that is like everything! There are a lot of studies backing up Niacinamide to the point where I’m no longer sure why I didn’t include it in part 1. I’ll give you just one more though because I love these types of studies: let’s talk about split-face comparative studies. Basically, they get a group of people (52 Taiwanese people in this case), give them two creams and tell them to put one on the left half of their face and the other on the right half. One cream contains Niacinamide [6]. The other is placebo. The amazing thing to me is that in many of these studies the researches find significant results which means that these people spend months walking around with half awesome face. How? How do they do it? I have no idea. But I am forever grateful and love that instead of measuring some absorption factor or other metric that maybe could lead to results they are actually measuring the impact on actual appearance.

Anyway. There is so much evidence that Niacinamide is simple and effective that it should really be a part of your daily routine. For the reason’s described above, I love the offering from The Ordinary: Niacinamide 10% + Zinc 1%. It again costs under $6 and it also includes zinc which has anti-inflammatory properties so sure I’ll take some zinc.

Caveat: vitamin C and Niacinimide do not react well together. I stick with Niacinamide in the morning and the above vitamin C at night.

More More More More More

So maybe I left out a few details about The Ordinary’s business strategy. In honesty, I don’t think they are in business just so that you can buy their super cheap research supported products. Those are just there to get you in the door and to become loyal to the brand. They work, they are cheap, and if you have the will power to just stop there then hey, look what an amazing person you are.

But that isn’t how everyone works and it certainly isn’t what happened to me. No. Once again, you only get one face and there are only so many skin care products that have been studied for decades. So once you start using Tretinoin, Sunblock, Vitamin C, and Niacinimide and seeing results it can be easy to think “what else is out there that might help?”

So here are some things that are out there that might help:

Vitamin C Derivatives

If you aren’t using Niacinamide, then you can double up on your vitamin C game (morning and night!). The Ordinary offers plenty of other vitamin C options and I’m personally a fan of Ascorbyl Tetraisopalmitate Solution 20% in Vitamin F. Ascorbyl Tetraisopalmitate is a vitamin C derivative that is best known for penetrating extremely quickly. My skin is not particularly sensitive so I’m happy to have the fast delivery and the “vitamin F” solution [7] gives my skin that dewy fresh glow that I didn’t realize it never had before and I guess is good[8]. Buuuuut, as mentioned previously, Niacinamide and vitamin C should not be mixed. Ascorbyl Tetraisopalmitate converts to L-ascorbic acid in your skin [9], so I’ve seen it suggested that you could put this on and then wait 30 minutes to put on your Niacinamide. Honestly you probably aren’t going to do that so maybe I should offer you something else.

Hyaluronic acid

What else? Hyaluronic acid is kind of neat. It is a humectant and everyone on the internet wants you to know that it has the capacity to hold water up to 1000x its weight. Wow, what a cool fact you just learned[10]. In short, it does a great job of drawing extra water into your skin. On the flip side, if you live somewhere with super dry air, Hyaluronic acid can pull water out of your skin unless it has somewhere else to get water from. All of this just means that HA is best used with moisturizer. It super charges the effectiveness of your current moisturizer and since you are combining it with moisturizer it will always have some water to work with. Again, very nice. If you want it on its own then of course The Ordinary has you covered with Hyaluronic Acid 2% + B5, but the point is to apply it with moisturizer so why not just get Natural Moisturizing Factors + HA at the usual super low delightful price The Ordinary is known for (by which I mean under $6). So, overall pretty nice and it should plumpen up [11] and moisturize you skin with daily use. The only downside is that the molecules are too large to really penetrate so Hyaluronic Acid won’t provide long term benefits.

Alpha Hydroxyl Acids

I don’t know, should I recommend AHAs? They work. That seems like a good reason to recommend something. But they also are the highest risk treatment that I’m mentioning here. That is basically what this study says: they work but there are risks. Oh this study? Same thing. Effective with risks. And so many other studies agree.

AHAs come in the form of a chemical peal. Did that scare you away? If you have sensitive skin AHAs are not going to treat you well. Still here? AHAs can also increase risk of skin damage from the sun. Not gone yet? Well ,fine, let’s talk about The Ordinary’s AHA product: hi. If you have strong skin and have tried peels before it may have excellent results for you when use sparingly. Basically, I’m using it but I can’t say if you should. I’m sorry. I feel like I have let you down. You are just going to have to decide for yourself on this one.

Peptides

Finally, I want to offer you one more option and a bit more insight into The Ordinary’s business model [12]. Peptides have some evidence which may or may not be convincing. I’m not going to link to journal articles in this case though because, apparently, much of the research that has been done was paid for by companies that held patents on these peptides. So… that makes it harder to interpret the results. Instead I’ll point you to another site where a dermatologist does nice analysis of the research on the different peptides that are out there and seems to find that they are still promising. Click here and here. The results seem strong enough that I’m willing to give peptides a shot and it looks like I’m not alone because Buffet is one of The Ordinary’s most popular products. Buffet is a combination of many of the peptide treatments in the links above so that you don’t have to pick and choose. However, you pay top dollar for this combination (in this case top dollar means $14.80). Honestly, it is a reasonable product [13] and a reasonable price. Hooray. Aren’t we all happy.

The Upsell

But if you look at the side of the page for this product you will see an “other products you may be interested in” and suddenly The Ordinary’s ridiculously low prices make more sense. One click away from buffet is Hylamide SubQ Anti-Age which sounds super impressive. This product has even more fancy peptides like Copper Lysinate/Prolinate (and Copper peptides sound very cool) plus hyaluronic acids and other things that I completely don’t understand but sound fancy. Don’t I need to get this one fancier one? It is going on my face!

Welcome to the upsell. Full disclosure: it has already totally worked on me. I’ve been so happy with the results I’ve seen from products that I got cheaply on The Ordinary that I’ve definitely snuck a few more expensive options from their other brands. These product generally still have all the well tested base ingredients that make The Ordinary an easy recommendation, but come with fancy sounding and questionably supported add ons at a higher price. There is nothing wrong with these products, maybe they could be better, but it becomes very easy to spend more money for questionable gain.

My guess is that this is exactly how The Ordinary can sell great cheap products at insanely low prices. My advice: buy those cheap products and delight in the cost-effectiveness. That is as far as my recommendations will go though. Yes, the other fancier products are out there. Yes, they look pretty and have a lot of fancy words. Yes, they could even work better??? But, I’m not here recommending maybes. If you want to upgrade beyond The Ordinary then: cool! But you at least owe it to yourself to make sure you are using all the tried and true recommendations above and in part 1 before you do.

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1. it oxidizes when exposed to air  ↩

2. right now in this section vitamin C delivery is what I care most about  ↩

3. I mean, I would be happier if they measured efficacy by improvement to human skin instead of by vitamin C delivered to pig skin. I also don’t like that they left the skin treating for 24 hours and then made measurements. I don’t think that is realistic.  ↩

4. Although I’m yet to find a paper comparing anhydrous delivery results to aqueous delivery results, I could be wrong here  ↩

5. yes, I would love to see a study comparing the efficacy of C E Ferulic vs The Ordinary but I didn’t find that  ↩

6. or whatever else they are testing  ↩

7. that means it is dissolved in fat  ↩

8. dewy looks great on girls… should guys be dewy? I have no idea  ↩

9. L-ascorbic acid is specifically what you don’t want to mix with Niacinimide  ↩

10. you don’t actually care. I realize this. It is ok  ↩

11. in a good way I hope?  ↩

12. or at least what I suspect it to be  ↩

13. I’ve already been through one bottle  ↩

My approach to fending off Old Man Face - Part 1

Listen, the future holds nothing good for my face. A white guy like me? I know exactly where this train is headed because I’ve got a one-way ticket to jowls-ville, with stops at wrinkle-city and whatever the eff those lines around your mouth are called town. Wait, this train thing was a bad idea to start with, what I meant to say is that I didn’t win the genetic lottery[1] so my face is going to age fast and hard. In case it isn’t obvious, I am desperately clinging to the shattered remains of my youth so that means a new found interest in skin care. Which… I guess I’m going to share? Or I mean, yes, the fact that there are a bunch of words below this means that I’m going to share.

This is new ground for me. Normally I love forcing my views on the poor few who take the time to skim this site. But skin care is a hard field. I wasn’t convinced that I should even try to write about it, but I’ve had some explicit requests for a post and I’ve actually seen visible results so here we are. The reason skin care is hard is that there are two really well established things that dermatologists agrees you should do. I could write a few sentences on those things and be done. Instead I’ll write a lot of sentences about them and call that part 1. It is more complicated than that though. You only get one face so there is a lot of additional interest in going beyond the tried and true to experiment with the less established. Ooooo those less established options get much murkier so it is harder to share them with the same confidence, but, yeah, whatever, I’ll share my strategy there in part 2 and let you decide.

Skincare Musts - Sunblock and Retinoids

If you already use some form of both of these then you are already doing good things for your skin. If you aren’t, then these are the low hanging fruit and if you care even remotely about your skin, you should start using both.

When I started researching skin care sunblock and some form of Retinoids were the two things that kept popping up as research proven effective treatments. When I went to see a Dermatologist to get an expert opinion, she said sunblock and Retinoids where the first two steps I needed to take for skin care. When there is so much agreement in a field that these two things actually work, you should just be grateful that something good exists and start using it ASAP.

Sunblock

The damaging effects of sun on skin are so well documented and non-controversial that I’m just going to state it as a given: You need to wear sunblock if you want to reduce aging. If you really want a source on this then how about this World Health Organization publication Sun Protection: A Primary Teaching Resource.

If you don’t already have a facial sunblock that you like then just use the one that I like: Missha Sun Milk. Here is the post I wrote or here is the direct amazon link[2]. I thought it would be cute to do a super short post on this sunblock and well that was probably not as smart as I thought because now I have to actually explain why it is good. When it comes to sunblock there are three factors to consider: ease of application, SPF, and chemical vs physical. They are all interrelated which is fun.

Ease of application/wearability is super important until it isn’t. Basically you need to wear this sunblock every single day and you need to wear it on your face. If you are hardcore about skin care you then maybe you aren’t afraid to put weird things on your face and just deal with how it feels. But if you aren’t even wearing a daily facial sunblock yet then it is going to be super important that it goes on quickly, easily, and feels like nothing. This is where the Missha Sun Milk excels. It is ridiculously light and you forget you are wearing it immediately. Previously I have spent twice as much for sunblocks that felt half as good. Sun Milk felt instantly better.

Next is SPF. There is plenty of debate about whether very high SPF sunblocks actually provide that much extra protection and I just honestly don’t care. SPF 50 is a nice high number. Often higher SPF means lower wearability, but in the case of sun milk that isn’t a problem so, why not go with 50? Will it actually reduce 50 minutes of sun exposure to the impact of 1 minute of unprotected sun exposure? Chill out bro [3].

Finally comes chemical vs physical sunblocks. Some people have very strong opinions about this. Chemical sunblocks work by changing UV rays into heat which is released in the skin. The benefit of chemical sunblocks is that they are lighter and easier to wear. This is the biggest reason I recommend the Missha Sun Milk first. If you are actually reading this section then it may mean that you aren’t using any sunblock and I would argue that the most important thing is to get you putting on daily sunblock. Prevention is so much easier than correction. Hence wearability is super important and a chemical sunblock is a good idea. The other benefits of chemical sunblocks is that they don’t rub off.

Oh but of course there are downsides. When chemical sunblocks turn UV into heat, that heat can make brown spots more apparent. Some people with sensitive skin are more sensitive to chemical sunblocks. Also chemical sunblocks can get “used up” when in direct sunlight requiring you to reapply.

So if you aren’t sold on chemical sunblocks of course I have a physical sunblock that I like: Neogen Day Light Protection Sunscreen. Physical sunblocks just sit on your skin and deflect UV light. The downsides are that they feel thicker so they are harder to rub in and you can feel them more on your skin. They are also easier to sweat off, need to be applied more generously so that you get full protection, and are more likely to compete with whatever else you put on your skin. My opinion is that physical sunblocks are for people who are already all in on skin care. I really like the Neogen, but the Missha is just so easy to slap on that I still count it as my go to. It is really up to you. If you are having a lot of fun learning about chemical vs physical sunblocks and want to learn more [4] then I like this page for learning more.

Retinoids

Retinoids have been important in modern medicine since the early 1900s. Research on the efficacy of Retinoids, specifically Tretinoin, in treatment of photoaging has been going on since the 1980s and, just like with sunblock, the results are well established. So I’m not going to spend time on them. Retinoids work. If you want to dig into evidence then this review article is quite good.

As far as how you get your Retinoids, that is more of an open question. The main two options are Retinols and Tretinoin. I (and my dermatologist) recommend Tretinoin.

Both Retinols and Tretinoin work by providing retinoic acid to the skin which increases skin cell turnover, encourages collagen formation, reduce pigmentation, and shrinks pores. The benefit of Tretinoin, besides being widely studied and shown to be effective, is that it is essentially pure retinoic acid so it works quickly. It is available generically, so it is super cheap as well. The downsides are that Tretinoin requires a prescription. Yes, you will have to go to your general practitioner or dermatologist to get awesome. It also can be hard on sensitive skin. My leather face hasn’t had any trouble with the relatively strong 0.1% cream, but I have heard plenty of stories of a ramp up period involving redness and pealing from people using even the weaker 0.05% gel.

Retinols are the alternative. Retinols are stored in the skin where they are converted to retinoic acid. They are less likely to cause irritation and are available without a prescription. If your skin hasn’t been able to tolerate even the weakest doses of Tretinoin (even after a ramp up period) then that seems like a great reason to use Retinols. If you are just not going to be convinced to see a doctor to get a Tretinoin prescription then you should probably feel bad about your life decisions, but that would be another reason to use Retinols.

Honestly, the only downsides to Retinols is that they are less well studied, likely less effective, and not available as generics. If you want to buy Retinols then that means you need to pick a brand to buy and there are plenty of brands out there willing to prey on you and take far more of your money than you should really be paying.

If you want to know my recommendation for a good Retinol you are just going to have to wait for part 2.

…

No. I can’t do it. Cliff hangers are the worst. I can’t just leave things like that. If you want a preview of the next post I’ll tell you right now that it is going to be a lot of products from The Ordinary. They are fantastic. Specifically if you are looking for a Retinol you want the Advanced Retinoid 2%. God just look at the beautiful low price on that. I love The Ordinary.

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1. think Pharell. That guy definitely won the genetic lottery  ↩

2. whoah, wait, that isn’t how this site works. What I meant to say was use what I like and don’t even think about being different form me  ↩

3. do you think there are skin care bros out there? Oh god. Wait. Am I a skin care bro? I do not like this idea. Am I encouraging the creation of skin care bros? The only good response I can come up with to that is instant vomiting  ↩

4. I don’t know you. I’m not judging what you do with your time. I’m just happy you are here  ↩

This sunblock goes on your face and is very good at being on your face

Dis good.

Two caps! You can take off one of the caps and still have a cap on because WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW

You should definitely get this and then put it on your face everyday because youth is fleeting enough already without sun damage.

Uh oh. Very asymmetrical with cap number two removed. Don't worry, it is still the best sunblock for your face!

Amazing[1]! [2]

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1. Wait. What the hell is going on here?  ↩

2. If you really must know, its a new approach to appeal to the Instagram crowd and their hatred for the written word. No joke, this sunblock is absolutely amazing compared to whatever garbage you are putting on your face… oh I’m sorry, I meant whatever FANCY garbage you are putting on your face. I originally got it on soko glam which is a Korean cosmetic site that is super serious. The big new is that you can buy it on Amazon. Prime it up!  ↩