I’m 45. My skin is really tired and dry. I have tried some home remedies without success. The products that skin doctors recommend are usually too expensive. I have a lot of blemishes, from pregnancies and from acne outbreaks. The skin under my eyes is thin and also brown. I appear “angry” because of thin skin under eyes. I have deep lines on my forehead… I really want to look my age and pretty again. What can I do?
Dr Maureen Allem from Skin, Body & Health Renewal responds:
“Thank you so much for your question. What you have to keep in mind is that you have listed a few concerns here, and to be perfectly honest, despite what many product houses and clever marketing will have you believe, there is no miracle “wonder cream” that quickly fixes everything in “just 2 weeks.” From what you are describing here, you have a couple of things that need “repairing,” and my suggestion is that you tackle them one at a time.
You have (from what I can gather), 1) an impaired barrier, resulting in dry, dehydrated and “tired” skin, as your skin is not able to hold on to its moisture. 2) It would appear you have some post inflammatory hyper pigmentation (the dark spots and blemishes left behind after having acne breakouts. 3) Post pregnancy hormonal pigmentation. 4) Lines and wrinkles (which is obviously looking worse due to having the discolouration of the pigmentation and will also appear worse due to the dehydration).
So here are my suggestions: 1) You can always cover the uneven skin tone and blemishes with a good treatment foundation. So I would do that, while actively working on restoring the skin’s barrier. This can be achieved by going on to a barrier restoration cream, like Serra Restore by Lamelle. It is really very affordable, but you need to persevere and stay on it for a good three months. Once you have this under control, and we can get the moisture to be retained properly in your skin again, then we can start looking at the pigmentation and the lines that are bothering you (you will find that simply fixing the barrier will already start to help those other conditions slowly, anyway).
You can get these products at any of our Skin Renewal branches (locate us on www.skinrenewal.co.za). That’s where I would suggest you start. Then please contact me again so that we can tackle the next issue.”
Do you have a skin-related question for Dr Maureen? You can ask her here.
Other articles you may be interested in:
Pregnancy and pigmentation
Hormonal pigmentation
How can one treat acne scars?
Acne 101
The top anti-ageing procedures
