I follow quite a few dermatologist and plastic surgeons on social media. I’m sure you do too. Ever heard of Dr. Pimple Popper on youtube, Dr. Miami on Snapchat or Dr. Simon Ourian on instagram (a derm with 1.3 million followers)? They are some of my favorite accounts and I’m sure yours as well. Anyway, this weekend someone (I can’t remember which account, sorry) posted a photo of a birthday cake with the caption “Put candles on your cake, not wrinkles on your face”. Think about that for a second. It’s saying prevent yourself from getting wrinkles this year. Often times we search for treatments after we have a problem. For example, instead of eating healthy and staying active to prevent high blood pressure we make an appointment to get a pill once we already have high blood pressure. It’s no different with skin, we look for creams to erase brown spots and wrinkles not necessarily to prevent them from occuring. I always say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and it’s so true in so many aspects of life. It is a lot easier to not go to jail then to get out of jail. It’s easy to get a flu shot but miserable to get the flu. It’s easy to use birth control, it’s hard work to raise a kid. Prevention in most cases of life is just the easy way out and your skin is no different. Truth be told, we actually prevent wrinkles more effectively than we treat wrinkles. Every single day a patient tells me “back in my day no one knew to wear sunscreen, we burned all the time”. Every. Single. Day. Therefore this post is for all my readers to be able to say “someone told me to do that and I didn’t listen” or “Nina told me to start doing this years ago and I’m 29 forever”. Here are my prevention tips to keep your skin feeling fresh forever.
- Wear compression stockings. I promise preventing varicose veins is so easy. Once you start wearing compression stockings you won’t want to go without them because your feet feel so much better after long days standing. I wear the tubes that go from ankle to knee available at most drug stores and Academy sports.
- Wear sunscreen. Such an easy step to prevent premature photoaging. The texture and color of your skin will be so much more even if you apply sunscreen to your face regularly.
- Use Retinol. Retinol reverses any damage you get during the day. Your skin will look dewy, refreshed and new like you were 20 again. If you are 20 and want your skin to stay the way it is start using retinol now. The difference in you and your friends skin in 10 years will be remarkable. I like SkinMedica Retinol.
- Start Botox. Botox is for lines in motion which develop into lines at rest. People often tell me I am too young for Botox but the truth is Botox is preventing me from making wrinkles. Starting Botox at the first sign of a line will prevent you from making a deep line at rest that actually will be much harder for us to treat in the future likely requiring laser, filler and topicals.
- Don’t smoke. Haven’t you heard? It increases your risk for heart disease, lung cancer, high blood pressure and WRINKLES. Plus it stinks. PLUS it’s not even cool anymore.
Now is the time to start caring for your skin. Now is the time to prevent further premature aging. Aging is a beautiful thing, I’m a different person now than I was 10 or even 5 years ago(a better person in my opinion). My kids get better and better with age. We don’t want to stop putting candles on our cakes but you can slow down the brown spots, uneven texture and uneven tone on your face! Come to Johnson Dermatology and let us educate and teach you how. Free consults with Dani and Bridgett now until Gratitude week(and you get a prize). What’s Gratitude week? Oh no big deal, just our ONLY sale of the entire year where ALL our cosmetic products and procedures are 20% off. It’s a great time to try something new so make a consult with the girls and find out what you should start!
“If you don’t change direction you may end up where you are heading” -Lao Tzu
Grateful for all my blog readers, stay skintastic, make a skin change, Nina
