Common Myths About AHA
Does AHA/BHA make my skin thinner over time?
Fact number 1: AHA and BHA are calibrated to loosen the bond of dead skin cells in the stratum corneum, allowing the normal shedding process to occur at a more optimum rate. Normal cell regeneration slows down as we age. It results in increasing build-up of dead cells at the stratum corneum, and the skin ends up looking dull and the pores get blocked. Photo-damaged skin also suffers from a thickening of the stratum corneum. Therefore, if AHA stands accused of thinning, then it is this dead skin cell layer that it is thinning away. Fact number 2: the use of AHA actually promotes collagen production over the long term. In that sense, it actually increases the skin thickness, giving it more volume and firmness. Our PeterThomasRoth products with AHA and/or BHA are designed to exfoliate the dead skin and unblock the pores, while delivering antioxidants and collagen boosters to the cells, making it healthier, more radiant and supple.
I have heard of AHA 40% or more. Are they better than those 30% and below?
The percentage referred to sometimes does not serve any useful purpose at best, and downright misleading at worst. First of all, the figure often quoted is only an indication of the proportion of acidic constituents within a given solution, but does not give any clue on what other constituents are inside. Neither is it a direct indication of acidity. Industry experts say that whatever the advertised percentage, there is enough base in the solution to limit the effective concentration level to about 15%. So the more accurate indication of the acidity of the solution is the pH value. Most peels authorized for over-the-counter sales are formulated at around pH 3 to 3.5. Anything lower requires much more caution and is normally reserved for the highly qualified and proficient professionals. But you’ve got to ask yourself whether you need very strong treatment or not. Our advice is to treat you face like a diamond: If your skin is acne scarred with visible blemishes, then like a raw diamond, it needs to be treated with a “coarser” tool, or in this case, a stronger AHA treatment. If, on the other hand, your skin requires more of a refinement, then, like a cut but unpolished diamond, a “finer” tool, or in this case, weaker AHA, is best suited for the job. Again, always seek professional advice from your PTR trained aestheticians as to the most suitable treatment.
Will an AHA peel burn my skin?
A qualified beautician will make sure of a few things before and during a peel. Firstly, she needs to find out whether you’ve had a peel done fairly recently, or whether you’ve been using Retin-A product just a day or two ago. These may sensitise your skin increasing the risk of adverse reaction during a peel. Next she needs to take a good look at your face, to check for signs of eczema or any other skin condition that makes it unsuitable for a peel to be performed. Even on the same face, there are different areas that need to be treated differently, in that some parts can be treated more aggressively than the others. During the peeling process, she should also be checking to see if there are any signs of intolerance, and in the unlikely case that there is intolerance, she can immediately terminate it before any damage occurs. If your beautician is trained in all these and is conversant with the use of the various PeterThomasRoth treatment products available, you don’t need to worry about being “burnt”. However, a peel being a peel, varying degrees of flaking and sloughing-off dead skin is not unusual post-treatment. In fact, you would expect it, so that your complexion will emerge clearer and fresher after that. That is NOT a “burn”. During this phase, remember to keep you skin hydrated. The use of Environmental Repair Hydrating Gel is highly recommended.
Why bother with AHA when there are other ways of getting rid of dead skin, like physical, abrasive type of peels?
There are many ways of doing things to achieve seemingly similar results. But in reality, the results are not quite the same. Let’s use the stamp analogy to explain: Suppose your face is an envelope, and the dead skin cells at the stratum corneum are stamps, held in place by glue. Physical peel is like using sandpapers to remove the stamp. But AHA is like a solvent that goes beneath the stamps and loosen the glue, allowing the stamps to fall off. At the end of both treatments, if you examine the treated skin microscopically, you would expect to see quite a bit of difference. Of course, AHA also has the added advantage of helping anti-oxidants and collagen boosters to penetrate further into the skin, resulting in longer term benefits. However, in the rare cases where allergy is a problem that prevents one from using AHA peel, our recommended alternative is the Herbal Enzyme Peel.
Peptides – The Next Generation In Skin Care
What are Peptides and how does it help my skin?
Peptides are amino acid molecules fairly similar to proteins. It has found many uses in modern medical science, including cancer research. Where our skin is concerned, some peptides are known to boost collagen and elastin, and provide antioxidant to fight off free-radicals. It also promotes the production of Hyaluronic Acid, which is essential for retaining moisture in our skin. As we all know, collagen, ealstin and Hyaluronic Acid in our skin decreases as we age, making our skin thinner and less supple. Peptides are therefore essential in our fight against aging skin. With that in mind, PeterThomasRoth has formulated a series of peptide products, including the Firma-CELL-4TM series, and the recently launched Un-wrinkle and Wrinkle Preventer.
How does Un-Wrinkle help me to look younger?
Un-Wrinkle uses a patent-pending blend of peptides that relaxes the facial muscles that are responsible for causing all the expression lines on your face. Its working principle is a little like botox, except there’s no injection, but it also does more than just relaxing facial muscles. It is packed with other collagen boosting peptides that help to build up your natural collagen and elastin, while promoting the production of Hyaluronic Acid, all of which are very important in keeping your skin healthy, radiant and supple, thus slowing down the aging of your skin. Clinical tests have proven that with consistent use over 28 days, it can reduce wrinkle-size by up to 52%.
What are the peptides found in PTR products and what are they good for?
SYN-AKE: This is a synthetic neuropeptide that mimics the wrinkle-relaxing property of an enzyme found in the venom of a Brazilian temple viper. Unlike botox, it is NON-TOXIC and, of course, not painful to administer. This cutting-edge peptide has won the coveted 2006 Swiss Technology Award. When applied, it effectively reduces the contraction of targeted facial muscles, thereby reducing the severity of wrinkles.
Argireline: Argilerine also works like Botox in targeting the wrinkle causing mechanism, ie, repetitive contractions of facial expression muscles. It works by reducing the release of neuro-transmitter to the targeted muscles. By so doing, it reduces the frequency and strength of muscle contractions.
SNAP-8: This is the younger cousin of Argireline, with a more elongated molecular structure, and greater efficacy.
Matrixyl-3000: This is a dual Messenger Peptide, with 2 major functions. Messenger Peptides means that they send out messages to our body system to do something. The first Messenger tells the body to carry out restructuring work, especially in terms of increasing the synthesis of collagen, plumping up the skin and giving it more volume. The second messenger tells the body to reduce its inflammation response, resulting in increased skin firmness, elasticity and moisturization.
SYN-COLL: This peptide helps increase collagen level by activating a vital ingredient in our body, known as Tissue Growth Factor, which is the key element in the synthesis of collagen. As collagen increases, our skin becomes fuller and firmer.
Vitamins: The Vital Ingredients in Skin Care
What does Vitamin C do for the skin?
Vitamin C is very essential in stimulating our skin’s collagen production, giving it more density and volume, in other word, a more youthful look. It is also a very potent antioxidant, which means that it can counter the damaging effect of free-radicals.
Is it more effective to “swallow” vitamin C than to apply it topically?
In this day and age, I have to say it is not true. In the past, critical nutrients like vitamin C were less effective because the molecule size was a bit big. But advances in nutrient delivery technology have created vitamin C molecules that can penetrate into the skin, protecting the cells with an abundance of antioxidants and collagen boosters. The protection it provides our skin is more direct, immediate and focused at the right areas. Having said that, taking enough Vitamin C orally is still essential for our overall health.
I like Power C20, but is there something stronger and better?
Power C20 is about the maximum concentration you can have for topical Vitamin C serum, because the skin can only absorb about 17% to 18% concentration, so anything above that is not very useful, even though there seems to be no harm done.
Why is Vitamin K such a sought-after ingredient in eye cream?
Vitamin K is very important in taking care of those dark eye rings we occasionally have. Dark eye rings are mainly caused by lifestyle stresses, like late nights, lack of sleep, certain allergies, and so on. Sometimes, over-vigorous rubbing of eyes can also cause dark eye rings. In all these cases, the blood vessels around the eyes become “leaky” and blood plasma and red blood cells leak out from the blood vessels and become visible because the skin around the eyes is very thin. Vitamin K has the ability to heal these blood vessels and stop the leaking of blood around the eye area, thereby alleviating the dark eye rings. A bit of trivia for you: in 1943, 2 scientists by the names of Henrik Dam and Edward Doisy won the Nobel Prize for medicines for their work on Vitamin K. Shows you how cool this vitamin is.
Sun Protection
My beautician keeps emphasizing sun protection. I don’t really stay under the sun much, do I really need it?
I say you should thank your beautician for giving you the right advice. She has done her job well, because the importance of sun protection cannot be over-emphasized. Experts tell us that sun damage and photo-aging are by far the most important factors in aggravating the aging of our skin, and 90% of skin cancer can be attributed to the sun. Average skin takes about 15 minutes to be burned, and you don’t even have to be directly under the sun to get burned. It will take even shorter for sunburn to occur if your skin is sensitized by the use of Retin-A products, or you are on medications that increases you sun-sensitivity. Therefore, it is so very important that you wear sunblock or sunscreen to protect yourself during the day. It has been said that if you can only put one thing on your skin, then make it a sunblock. There is a great deal of wisdom in that saying. Besides sunblock, you should also wear a pair of sun glasses (that filters off UV rays, of course) to give you delicate eye area some added protection, because the skin around your eyes is thinner and more susceptible to sun damage.
There is a long list of culprits. But it is important to know that not everyone reacts in the same way. In general, pregnancy, some oral anti-biotics, blood pressure medications, hormone replacements, oral contraceptives, Retin-A and other Vitamin A derivatives, antihistamines, ibuprofen pain killers, chemical peeling and laser re-surfacing, can cause sun-sensitivity to varying degrees. We can never avoid all these 100%. The important thing is that we know we are vulnerable and so protect ourselves accordingly with full spectrum sunblock.
What are the different categories of Sun Protection products?
There are 2 main types of sun protection products: Chemical Sunblocks and Physical Sunblocks. Chemical sunblock works by absorbing the high energy from UV rays and release it at much lower energy level. This category of sunblock needs to be applied about 30 minutes before sun exposure to be effective. Examples of this category of sunblocks are PTR Ultra-lite Oil-Free sunblock and Beach and Pool Sunblock. On the other hand, physical sunblock contains Titanium Dioxide or Zinc Oxide that physically blocks the UV ray, and therefore can be effective immediately upon application. The all new Instant Mineral SPF30 is an excellent example, combining instant protection and convenience in an innovative package. Of course, some bright sparks have thought about combining these 2 categories, and the result is PTR’s Oil-Free Sunblock SPF30, which contains both Oxybenzone and Titanium Dioxide, providing full spectrum protection against the sun.
I saw some products claiming to be SPF40, is it better than SPF 30?
First of all, SPF stands for Sun Protection Factor and is measured such: If a normal average skin would burn after 15 minutes in the sun, then in theory, an SPF10 product will protect the skin such that it would burn after 150 minutes. But sunburn is caused by UVB, so the SPF number does not tell you anything about UVA, which cause more serious long term skin damage, including skin cancer. In general, sunblocks containing Parsol-1789, Oxybenzone, Titanium Dioxide and Zinc Oxide are known to provide full spectrum protection, that is, able to protect against both UVA and UVB. All PTR sunblocks provide full-spectrum protection. More about the SPF numbers: under new labeling regulations published by US FDA, all products that offer more than SPF30 must be labeled as SPF30+, to prevent companies from making unrealistic claims (such as all-day protection), and because SPF above 30 does not offer any significantly better protection. Worse still, a 2003 survey found that an SPF of 30+ may translate into lower UVA protection. Anyway, be smart and don’t let all the claims lull you into complacency. The important thing about using sun protection is to make sure that it is full- spectrum, applied before sun exposure, and reapplied often (within 1 hour, or less in case of heavy sweating or wiping) during exposure.
Basic Home Care
Is it better for me to have just 1 type of cleanser, or the more the merrier?
If you are not sure what the most suitable cleanser is for you, it is recommended that you should have at least 2 to play with. One of these should be a gentle and “safe” cleanser like PTR Chamomile Cleansing Lotion, or PTR Sensitive Cleansing Lotion. The other one can have more “oomph” in handling oiliness or exfoliation such as PTR’s BHA 2% Acne Wash, or the best-selling Anti-aging Cleansing Gel. You can use them alternately to achieve a pretty well balanced result. For example, after using Acne Wash continuously for a while to mediate over-oily condition, you may want to use Sensitive Cleansing Gel on alternate days so as to prevent the skin from getting dry. Another example: After you have achieved a more radiant complexion and skin tone with Anti-Aging Cleansing Lotion, you may want to use Chamomile Cleansing Lotion on alternate days to balance it out. The combination is quite flexible, and the best result is always through selective and intelligent use of the products, rather than one-size-fits-all. Let your trained PTR beauticians take a look at you skin conditions, and she will always be able to help you with good recommendations to get the desired result that is sustainable.
There are so many different products for different types of skin. How do I know what skin type I have and what products suit me?
You can consult your beautician or dermatologist what kind of skin you have and ask for the right recommendation on products ranging from cleanser, toner, moisturizer, sunblock and other rejuvenating products. But if you want to find out for yourself what kind of skin you have, try this simple test: Wash your face, skip the moisturizer, wait an hour and then take four pieces of transparent tape and place each one in a different area of the face: chin, forehead, cheeks and across the nose. Gently pull off the tape and observe the sticky side. If it holds flakes of skin, you have dry skin in that area. If it has a greasy print, you have oily skin. Then take a closer look at your face. Do you see a few pimples and perhaps a dark mark or two? You may have an allergic reaction going on or minor acne. Do you frequently have a rash, redness or irritation? Your skin is probably sensitive. Though this can give you a rough idea about your skin types, it is always advisable that you consult a qualified professional. A qualified PTR beautician is trained to give you an accurate skin analysis and to recommend a combination of products tailored to your individual needs. With a comprehensive range of products, you can always find a PTR product that will suit you well.
