It’s at the top of everyone’s wishlist. A healthy complexion—smooth, lustrous, and glowing. The wish may be simple. The steps to get there, not so much. Sorry, Santa, it looks like you’ve got a difficult task this year!
Wish all you might. But there’s no magic bullet for perfect skin, no one-regime-fits-all when it comes to glowing skin. Each woman is so unique that the hurdles we must cross to reach perfect skin are drastically different.
But, hark! What’s this? Personalized Skincare Guides for every skin type pulled together by the experts at BodyLase. No need for Santa to pull overtime this year. BodyLase has saved the season. Here’s a guide to flawless velvet complexion just for you.
Acne-Prone Skincare Guide
The trick to managing acne-prone skin is balancing cleanliness with moisture. Acne often occurs because of bacteria and oil production. To ensure your skin is free of all acne-causing bacteria, your must cleanse. And to ensure your skin doesn’t produce too much oil, you must not forget to moisturize.
Morning Routine
Wash your face with a gentle cleanser that contains bacteria-fighting and sebum-managing ingredients. Salicylic acid is a favorite among acne-prone women. After cleansing, pat skin dry and immediately apply a light moisture-locking face lotion (with SPF, of course!).
Evening Routine
After you’ve spent so much time and effort putting on your makeup, to simply wash it away in 5 minutes seems like hassle. But off it must come if you want to maintain a healthy complexion. Clarisonic skincare brushes are an easy, fun way to clean skin gently and thoroughly. As a bonus, the light exfoliating action helps scrub away any excess skin cells, another common acne-causing villain.
Lifestyle Tip
Perfect for teens struggling with less-than-perfect skin is the Glytone Acne Kit, which offers a formidable acne-fighting trio. Glytone Exfoliating Gel Wash features a 4.7% concentration of glycolic acid that effectively clears away dead skin cells and balances oil production. Glytone Acne Cleansing Toner includes 2% salicylic acid, which delivers a deep cleanse to congested skin. Glytone Acne Gel, with 10% benzoyl peroxide, is the perfect spot treatment. Alternatively, Glytone Acne Gel can be applied as a very thin layer all over to manage breakout-crazed skin.
Special Treatment
Fulfilling your dreams of wanting to simply zap the acne out of your life is DUSA Blu-U. This blue light treatment delivers a unique fluorescent light that kills bacteria-causing acne. Painless and effective, this treatment clears acne with 17-minute sessions twice a week. Smooth breakout-free skin is usually achieved around 5 weeks.
To fulfill your glowing wishes with a Clarisonic brush or Glytone Acne Kit, come by our BodyLase spas or give us a call.
Combination Skincare Guide
Dry patches and a grease slick, oily skin and flakes. Oh, the woes of managing combination skin! These problems often plague women in their twenties, still battling acne as the onslaught of dryness and wrinkles only just commence. The trick with combination skin is figuring out your different zones and treating them accordingly.
Morning Routine
After cleansing apply a light face lotion all over. You should select a lotion that’s so light that it won’t clog your oily areas. Then focusing on your dry areas, pat a more substantial moisturizer like a serum or moisturizing gel. The extra moisture will help keep these areas flake-free.
Evening Routine
Though it’s tempting to ignore your oily regions, don’t forget to apply your moisturizing lotion once again. Skipping the moisturizer altogether could make your oily regions more oily as they try to overcompensate for the dryness. But keeping it light on the oily regions will stop these regions from clogging. Now for the fun part: carefully smooth a rich night cream into your dry regions only for extra comfort.
Lifestyle Tip
Unfortunately, combination skin gals need a double-time skincare routine since combination skin needs a little from both ends of the skincare spectrum. So be sure to have some eye creams and acne-fighting cleansers at hand. The eye cream will help you fend off dry, wrinkly skin around your eyes, while acne-fighting washes will help you decongest your oily regions when a breakout threatens.
Special Treatment
A great balancing treatment for combination skin is the VI Peel. This treatment reduces fine wrinkles and sun damage while simultaneously clearing up breakouts and acne scarring. For the holiday season, the VI Peel is a great way to get fresh faced before your string of parties. And lucky for you, this peel is especially loved because it delivers in just one session! Just be sure to schedule your VI Peel a few weeks before you want to unveil you new smooth complexion.
Want to smooth and even out your complexion with a VI Peel? Contact us to schedule your consultation.
Aging Skincare Guide
Though it’s now recommended that anti-aging precautions be taken earlier than ever, it’s never too late to start fending off wrinkles. Even at the first signs of aging—faint wrinkles, a decrease in collagen, and some sightings of photodamage—the right routine can give you the perfect glow. In the beginning phases of aging, your skin is still naturally resilient. As a result, it will respond well to a cocktail of resurfacing and renewing products.
Morning Routine
Let your skincare routine work for you throughout the day. After cleansing, apply an alpha hydroxy acid cream and then slather on a moisturizer with UVA/UVB protection. Alpha hydroxy acid cream will help reduce fine wrinkles by prompting collagen formation.
Evening Routine
Don’t lose an opportunity to regenerate new skin at night! Integrating a retinoid cream into your nightly routine can help reduce photodamage. As an essential antioxidant, retinoids not only counteracts sun damage, they also prompts your skin to regenerate skin cells faster. This gives your skin a youthful, healthy glow while also reducing wrinkles. Just be careful to restrict retinoids for evening use only, as they increase sun sensitivity.
Lifestyle Tip
The bronzed lure of tanning is probably not so strong now the realities of sun damage have started to appear. So though you probably don’t need reminding, we’ll say it anyway: be sure to use sunscreen daily and avoid prolonged, direct sun exposure. For those who can’t avoid the warm glow, we think it’s high time to invest in some cute cover ups.
Special Treatment
As the first signs of aging set in there are slew of problems to juggle. Luckily, microdermabrasion is an excellent exfoliating renewal treatment that will tackle all these skin problems. A series of microdermabrasion sessions can smooth and improve dull, aging and hyperpigmented skin. With gentle, yet effective exfoliating crystals, this treatment reduces fine lines and poor texture, while stimulating the production of collagen.
To find out more about our favorite AHA creams and retinoid creams, get in touch with our skincare specialists.
Mature Skincare Guide
Fending off wrinkles becomes quite the feat once menopause commences. Deeper grooves settle in and a natural drop in estrogen prompts a dry skin phase, making wrinkle-management a tricky task. The constant use of acids won’t be enough to rejuvenate your glow. So while an amped up dosage of retinoids and topical vitamin C is recommended, deeper moisturizers are a must. Look to rich creams and serums—they’ll be your very best friends!
Morning Routine
After cleansing, use a rich moisturizer and topical vitamin C. As a rich moisturizer, we recommend SkinSelect MD Honey Soy Crème. This rich formula is designed to add moisture to dry, dehydrated skin, making it particularly beneficial for those experiencing hormonal fluctuations during menopause. Soy isoflavones, honey and bee pollen extracts work to balance skin while Siberian ginseng extract revitalizes. Vitamin C, on the other hand, is an effective antioxidant that will tighten your skin, stimulate collagen production, and brighten and balance skin pigmentation.
Evening Routine
Amp up the use of retinoids and the results will be visible. Retinoids, which prompt your skin to produce new skin cells, will help your skin regenerate faster. Prolonged use of retinoids decreases fine wrinkles and smoothes your skin texture.
Lifestyle Tip
An active lifestyle isn’t only beneficial for your health and your body. Integrating running or cycling into your weekly schedule can actually help your skin glow brighter. Aerobic exercise prompts blood flow to the skin and boosts the rate of new cell growth. As a result, wrinkle formation can be prevented with good exercise habits. And in the meantime, you can enjoy the healthy, vigorous glow that each workout gives you.
Special Treatment
Age and gravity have one thing in common: with time they make things falls. Mature skin often sees that the areas around our eyes, cheeks and jaws begin to drop, wrinkle, and hang. Though topical creams may not be much use to these regions, Thermage is a perfect option. A single Thermage session delivers a non-invasive skin-contouring laser to those lackluster regions and tightens, firms and smoothes them. Alternatively Fraxel is a great treatment for rejuvenating lackluster skin that’s plagued with bad texture, hyperpigmentation, and wrinkles.
Deeply hydrate your skin with SkinSelect MD Honey Soy Crème and our choice of vitamin C serums, by stopping by our BodyLase spas.
HOLIDAY SPECIALS
FRAXEL FACE
To help you get that wonderful holiday glow, this season BodyLase is offering a special on one of our most popular treatments: the Fraxel Face. Regularly offered at $850, our best-loved Fraxel Face session is available through the end of November at only $499. (Hurry! Offer expires 11/30/11).
MICRODERMABRASION
For those looking to resurface and rejuvenate their skin, you can grab 6 Microdermabrasion sessions for $499 (regularly $600). Alternatively, for the peel lovers out there, you can grab 6 peels for $499 (a savings of up to $400). And for those who love to mix and match, you can customize your resurfacing session by snagging 3 Microdermabrasion sessions and 3 peels for $499. (Hurry! Offers expire 11/30/11)
