Six months after starting tretinoin through the skincare site Dermatica, I’m sharing what I think are some pretty dramatic skin improvements – including those all-important before and after pictures!
Hi and welcome to the honors channel if you’re new here i offer impartial product reviews advice from experts and opinion from me a journalist with a particular interest in all things anti-aging but i also just love a great beauty or household cleaning device too but today we’re talking tretinoin and i’ve been using this prescription retinoid for six months now
Ordering it from the skin care site dermatica which operates in multiple countries and i promised an update to let you see how i’m getting on and show any changes in my skin and i’ve also just come back from a two week holiday in the sun so i was a bit worried about what would happen because tretinoin makes your skin more sensitive to the sun so i’ll be talking a
Little bit about how i manage that in this short video and i’ll also be sharing those all important before and after pictures so first off if you’ve not heard of dramatica before and how it works then i shared this three-month dramatica review with my early tretinoin results back in may and it details how the service works how i use the dermatic atretinoin my side
Effects and how i overcame them as a very quick recap dermatica offers an online prescription skin care service where you pay and at the time of filming it was it’s 20 pounds plus postage per prescription taking it to just under 23 pounds per delivery of these little 15 milliliter tubes of tretinoin in the us i believe it’s priced around 24.99 a month plus postage
And links are in the description back then at the three-month stage i was just stepping up in strength because i started on 0.015 then the next month stepped up to 0.025 and i’ve now settled on 0.05 which is where i’m likely to stay for the foreseeable future this strength is powerful enough to make a big difference to my skin but also crucially i’m tolerating
It well and i would say it’s probably taken six to eight weeks for my skin to totally settle with the 0.05 strength in particular i had a lot of dryness not irritation but just dryness on either side of my chin and that has been a weak area for me with tretinoin i had a couple of days where my chin was flaking really quite noticeably so what i did was i just mixed
One pump of the tretinoin with a pea-sized amount of aveeno daily moisturizer which is so lovely and gentle but also highly moisturizing and that seemed to counter any side effects perfectly what tretinoin is doing is it’s speeding up the turnover cycle of our skin cells so newer healthier cells take their place and that’s going to exfoliate and clear your skin and
Visibly improve its texture over time smoothing it out but it’s also going to put your skin through its paces and to begin with it can struggle to keep up and so you get that sensitivity and peeling in just a minute i’m going to compare a few photos over the last few months just so you can see how my skin is progressing but i did want to talk a little bit about what
Happens when you are in the sun or you expose this on a lot when you’re using tretinoin guessing most of you will be aware that with any retinoid but most certainly tretinoin it will make your skin more sensitive to the sun and therefore you need to wear a factor 50 broad spectrum sunscreen which we really should do to protect our skin from skin cancer and combat
Uh the signs of aging regardless of whether we’re using a tretinoin or not so i was already wearing factor 50 on my face and even then i did notice extra sensitivity just from the sun here in scotland in those early days of summer and that was early into my tretinoin use as well i’ve got to say i was a bit worried about what was going to happen when i was in the
Full glare and heat of the sun on holiday for two weeks studies have shown that retinoids increased your risk of sun burn particularly in the first six months of using them so by the time we went on holiday i was just about hitting that six-month point and what was interesting is that in the first few days even with fatter 50 i did notice more sensitivity around
My chin and it got a little bit sunburned nothing terrible but it was a bit red and i was every day either wearing a hat or a visor but the sun was obviously catching my lower face on certain angles so i just had to be careful to reapply the factor 50 particularly on my lower face later into the day just to keep up the protection and as it turned out after that
Initial sensitivity i didn’t have any more problems in the sun or any peeling or dryness so i just tried to shave my face as much as possible with a hat and using the sunscreen i was fine so i just wanted to share that with you in case you were wondering what would happen if you were exposed to the sun a lot well on holiday and using tretinoin now for the results
I felt there was a big difference between my pre-tretinoin shot so before i started using it and my three-month picture now when you add in my picture at six months and i have to say i do really try and take the same angle and the same lighting in my bathroom because i’ve always got people who come on and say you know you’ve tilted your head this way or that way
Deliberately i’m not trying to be clever with the angle it’s just almost impossible with some like some kind of head brace or scaffolding to get exactly the same angle each time so i do my best and here we are uh at the six month point just got back from holiday and my skin is still looking pretty smooth and line free definitely at the very least keeping up with
These early results but i think that um that smoothing effect particularly around the eye area which is lifted plumper and smoother i think that that is continuing i can actually see the changes in my skin when i look in the mirror and usually i can only spot differences with products i’m testing out if i compare before and after pictures and that’s why it’s always
Really important to take before and after pictures when you’re trying out any kind of anti-aging device or product generally my face is free now from fine lines and i turned 50 in february i’ve got some heavier lines on my forehead but the fine lines have smoothed out i think that tretinoin gives you that kind of glowing clearer skin and i although i do still have
Some pores around my nose they’re way less of them and they’re much smaller and i’m left also with a couple of annoying white heads on my forehead due to my oily skin but if you look at my skin a couple of years back and in particular that sagging around the eyelids and the dullness you can really see how far i’ve come tretinoin plays a huge part in that i’ve no
Doubt and in this video i talk about good options for different stages in your life that helps explain um the most i think powerful mix now the reason i’m a particular fan of the dermatic tretinoin is that i know a few people including my sister who tried up regular tretinoin and had to stop using it because it was just too hard going on their skin now they were
Likely starting on too high a strength but using a service like this where they start you low and where um they have put a formula together that contains niacinamide which is a form of b3 to help reduce irritation and dryness it does make a difference it makes it a lot easier and i got my sister into using it and she’s loving it because she’s a few years older
Than me and she really wanted to start using tret she’s a nurse she was a aware of all the benefits but she just couldn’t make it work for her until she tried the dramatica so i have a link to the site with a small discount code if you’re interested in taking a look and that’s in the video description so you do pay uh per delivery and you can adapt the frequency
Of that delivery and delay it by a few weeks if you’re not getting through each tube um in a month and i actually just use one pump at a time which i start spreading over my forehead and around my face and chin and then i do a very gentle sweep across my upper eyelids and i when i apply a little bit of oil afterwards of rubbing it down over my neck too it’s not
Recommended that you use tretinoin around your eye area because it is so sensitive and also if retinoids get into your eyes it can cause problems like dryness but i keep it high and i haven’t had any issues but this is a particular area of concern for me so um i like to get the benefit of the tretinoin up here now i know a lot of you watching this are either using
Dermatica or another prescribed tretinoin so do let me know how you’re getting on what you’re using how long you’ve been using it for and whether you’ve continued to see improvements over the long term and i’ll list the countries that dermatica is sold in in the description i’ve had at least one very disappointed person from ireland on saying they can’t source it
There and i think regulation around tretinoin varies from country to country so it’s not always easily available everywhere you go it does depend on where you live in most countries so a doctor or dermatologist would be able to prescribe it after a consultation with them so i hope you found this review helpful don’t forget to subscribe to watch more from me and i’ll see you next time
Transcribed from video
Dermatica tretinoin 6-month results update – plus how to manage sun sensitivity By The Honest Channel
