5 Tips to look your best for your Important Event!

We are smack in the midst of the holiday season, and there are parties to attend, weddings to grace and pictures to take! This is the time of the year when we all want to look our best. Here are some tips on how:

1) Regular Maintenance

Beauty begins from inside you, hence it is important to continue exercising, a diet full of fruits and vegetables, and drink lots of water to give yourself that healthy glow!

Despite the partying, it is important to be disciplined and adhere to your regular skin care regime to make sure you do not compromise your skin, or worse, suffer from a sudden breakout!

2) Go Easy on the Alcohol and Late Nights

It may be the season to party, but it is also important o know your limits. Late nights and lack of sleep will wreck havoc for your under-eye area by making it look puffy and the eye rings darker than usual. Excessive alcohol dehydrates the skin, causing it to look dull. If you are acne prone or suffer from roseacea, alcohol can also aggravate your condition.

3) Avoid Using New Products, Especially Make-up

There is always a small but definite probability of being allergic to new products. Hence, it may be wise not to change your products near your important event. Make-up, especially, may clog your pores and cause pimples.

To be safe, test your new products in an inconspicuous area such as behind your ear first and make sure your skin does not reach badly if you have an event coming up.

4) Seek Aesthetic Treatment Early

All aesthetic treatments either come with some downtime (e.g. swelling with injections, redness with lasers) and also take some time to work (even super wrinkle buster Botox takes about 2 weeks for maximal effect!). Hence, visit your doctor early for any treatment you may require.

5) Have a Brightening Facial

Finally, you may decide to opt for a facial a few days before to prepare for your big day. At The Sloane Clinic, our Innovative Facial and Epicurean Facial are amongst the most popular. My patients report that their skin looks more radiant, skin texture is smoother, and skin is tighter after the facials!

Happy Holidays!

BB Cream Demystified

If you haven’t heard of BB cream by now, you must be living under a rock... on the moon. My readers asked that I give my 2 cents about this product and here’s what I think.

Big in Korea, then Asia

The ‘BB’ in BB cream stands for ‘Blemish Balm’. This product was first used by German dermatologists on their patients after lasers and peels, as a moisturizer and make-up base. Korean celebrities, however, were the ones who popularised it, and before long, BB cream fever had spread from Korea to Japan and China, and reached the shores of Singapore about 1 year ago.

What’s in BB cream which makes it so sought after?

BB cream is, simply put, the make-up equivalent to the 2, 3, 4-in-1 shampoos that were popular some years ago. It is a tinted make-up base infused with other active ingredients with for e.g. skin lightening or anti-aging properties. It also has moisturizing properties and often comes with some sun protection as well.

Choosing the Right BB cream

BB creams are popping up everywhere these days, hence, choosing the suitable one may be a chore. Popular brands include BRTC, Missha, Etude.

We must remember that BB creams are primarily a make-up product. It is a good skin primer to apply before your concealer. Choosing from the limited shades can be tricky. Here's a tip: use one which is of a lighter tone to impart radiance to your complexion.

Also look for for the secondary properties of the BB cream (e.g. anti-acne, whitening), and choose one which can help address your skin's problems.


Is BB cream the end of all other skin care products and make-up?

While BB creams have pushed the boundaries of make-up products by doing more for your skin than their conventional counterparts, those who wish to use BB cream to replace their current treatment serums, moisturizers, sunscreens, etc, will be disappointed.

The secondary (anti-aging/ lightening/ anti-acne) ingredients in BB cream are not of medical grade or of high enough concentration compared to regular skin care products. Hence it not sufficient enough as a stand-alone skin care product.

Your usual daytime skin care (treatment serums, sunblock, etc) is still very important; this is especially true for those with problematic skin. Needless to say, your night time skin care regime should also be unchanged.

As a make-up product, BB creams often cannot replace your foundation or concealer due to the limited selection of shades, unless you are lucky enough to find a suitable shade for your skin tone.

The product has become very popular with men (yes, a lot of men use BB creams these days!) as a thin layer does wonders to the colour and texture of their skin, yet allowing them to look natural!

Fillers Tip: Tear Trough Deformity and Dark Eye Circles

Tear Troughs: How do they come about?

As we age, we start to lose volume and tissue at the lower eye margin – giving rise to what is known as a 'tear trough' deformity.

Age is not the only cause of the tear trough deformity, it can be also the result of our inherent bone structure. Locally it is more prevalent in Indians, but it is certainly not exclusive to them. I, for one, suffer from such a woe. Young Indian ladies have beautiful big eyes, but they are often unhappy about the depression and dark eye circles under their eyes.

Anatomy of a tear trough

The tear trough wrecks havoc in a number of ways: the deformity marks a obvious demarcation between the under eyes and the cheek, making the eyes look sunken and tired.

The deformity also causes light to cast a shadow, making existing dark eye rings worse, and also making they difficult to conceal with make-up.


The solution: Fillers. Nothing else comes close

I always tell my patients not to waste time with products if they come to me with a tear trough deformity. Fillers are the best and only way to improve them. Once they see the results, they will never look back.

Wonders of volume replacement

This Picture of one of my patients demonstrates this fully: Her tear trough was immediately corrected, fine lines were reduced, and dark eye circles lightened. The procedure only took 10 minutes of her time, but changed her life forever. Occasionally some bruising can occur with the procedure, but for her, there was no down time, and she walked out of the clinic happily and returned to work immediately!

IS CLINICALS Super Serum Advance

Vitamin C is one of the few anti-oxidants proven to be effective against skin aging. Hence, a good vitamin C product is a must in your daily regime.

Super Serum Advance from IS CLINICALS is one of my favorite Vitamin C serums for a number of reasons.

Superior Active Ingredients

Super Serum Advance contains 15% stabilized L-ascorbic acid, or pure vitamin C. (As mentioned in a previous article, L-ascorbic acid is the only form of vitamin C proven to exert anti-aging effects).

The Advance series has a even more stabilized form of Vitamin C which promises to have better antioxidant effects.

Other active ingredients in the serum include:

Centella Asiatica Extract – a plant extract with antioxidant and wound healing properties¹

Vitamin B5 – a co-enzyme for cellular function, thought have anti-acne properties, and wound healing properties²

Arbutin – skin lightening agent

Kojic Acid – a proven skin lightening agent. Kojic acid is notoriously difficult to stablilize but the kojic acid in Super Serum Advance is a stablilized form derived from Polyporus Umbellatus, a mushroom.

Copper Tripeptide Growth Factor – a peptide, which the manufacturer claims to help encourage cell growth and maturation, promote healing, and encourage dermal restructuring and healing of wrinkles and stretch marks.

Scientific Backup

Innovative skincare worked with Dr Mostafa Omar, who was part of the research team at Duke University which first stabilized Vitamin C, to produce the IS CLINICALS line.

Dr Omar is no longer affiliated with IS CLINICALS, but the product line has since improved its formulations to offer even better results.

What impresses me is that the company conducts quite a number of clinical trials and scientific studies to validate the product’s effectiveness. I have seen at least 5 of these studies.

In particular, one study measured the in-vitro antioxidant capability (ORAC – Oxygen Radical Absorbtion Capacity) of Super Serum Advance against other formulations such as SkinCeutical’s C E & Ferrulic, Prevage by Elizabeth Arden, and Obagi C10, and found that Super Serum Advance has an ORAC of 4 times that of SkinCeutical’s C E & Ferrulic, which we would expect to have superior antioxidant effects. Now that is impressive.

Beauty in a bottle

Super Serum Advance comes in an attractive, professional looking vacuum packed little bottle that is immediately endearing to the eyes. It’s a light golden coloured serum which is easily absorbed with no sticky residue, so there is no worry of clogging pores. People with drier skin will need to use a moisturiser after though.

The product has been featured in countless magazines, and many celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Halle Berry and Jon Bon Jovi have been reported saying that they love it; but that’s just a fine print.. what’s more important is that it works!

A 30ml bottle of the product goes for $215, which some may find a little pricey, but it will last you about 3 months. And this is, in my opinion, the best Vitamin C serum that there is, therefore, comparing with all the other products there are out there, Super Serum Advance is definitely value for money.

References:
(1) International Journal of Lower Extremity Wounds, September 2006, pages 137–143; Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, May–June 2000, pages 227–234; Phytomedicine, May 2001, pages 230–235;
(2) American Journal of Clinical Dermatology, 2002, volume 3, number 6, pages 427–433).

IS CLINICALS SUPER SERUM ADVANCE is available at THE SLOANE CLINIC.