Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[music] Hello, I’m Dr. Neal Schultz
[pause]
and welcome to DermTV.
Ladies, don’t let your décolletage let you down by giving away your real
age. Especially given all of the time and effort you put into making your
facial skin look younger, more beautiful and better. And even if you do
take care of your décolletage, in reality, it needs more effort than your
face does because, the décolletage has four problems that the facial skin
doesn’t have. First, it doesn’t have nearly as many oil glands, and the oil
glands are so important in repairing the skin after it’s been damaged by
the sun or anything else. Second, it doesn’t have as much elastic tissue to
help maintain a nice tone. Third, the skin of the décolletage is just
thinner to start with and, lastly, the reality is, you don’t put as much
effort into sun protection with the décolletage, as you do your face.
That’s just the way it is.
The three main signs of aging in the décolletage are brown spots, red,
broken capillaries and texture, which is like cigarette paper or crepey.
The brown spots are age spots, liver spots or sun spots. The red
discolorations are large broken capillaries where you can actually see what
looks like a spider vein on your face, or else it’s just diffuse pink
blotches, and pink blotches are just lots and lots of tiny broken spider
veins. And lastly is the texture issue where the skin becomes almost the
texture or consistency of cigarette paper, what we call crepeiness where
the skin becomes dull and matte and perhaps even a little bit scaly. So
what can you do to help repair and prevent further damage in the
décolletage. For prevention, of course, use a sunscreen every day with an
SPF between 15 and 30 with UVA protection but, in addition, every evening
use a topical antioxidant with vitamin C. In terms of repair, it’s easy to
repair the damage that has happened to the décolletage. The brown spots can
be treated at home with topical bleaches and antioxidants in addition to
exfoliants. It may not work as quickly and may take several months but the
topical treatment can be effective. In the office, these brown spots can be
zapped with a laser which makes them go away much more quickly. For
treatment of broken capillaries, unfortunately, there’s no home treatment
that will make them go away but, on the other hand, painless and quick
laser treatments in your doctor’s office will repair the red
discolorations. And lastly, for the texture and cigarette paper quality of
the skin, at home, exfoliants and moisturizers will help improve that
texture. And certainly, in your doctors’ office lunchtime peels with either
glycolic or salicylic acid helps the texture and certain lasers can really
improve that texture and make it almost look normal. So ladies, there’s
really no reason to let your décolletage let you down.