Retinol 101: Plastic Surgeon Shares How to Start Using Retinol for MAXIMUM Anti-Aging Benefits

Hi guys, I'm Dr. Amir Karim. I'm a board-certified facial plastic surgeon and I specialize in facial rejuvenation. One of my big passions is skin rejuvenation because what really makes a person look young is a young-looking facial shape in addition to young-looking skin. If you think about what a typical 20 or 30-year-old looks like, they have that combination. And even though I can take care of the facial shape issues in the operating room, and that's what I do on a daily basis for our patients with our techniques like vertical restore and fat transfer, et cetera, I'm restoring the shape of the face. But unless you have really young-looking skin, you're not gonna totally look as young as you potentially can. So over the years, my interest in skin rejuvenation has grown and at this point in time, I have some really direct thoughts on the subject that I think can help you as you navigate through what can otherwise be a very confusing and convoluted landscape with all these different choices, et cetera. And I'm gonna kinda simplify it. And today's talk is gonna be on the particular ingredient called retinol. And we're gonna talk a little bit about what retinol and Retin-A is. We're gonna talk a little bit about the things that it can be combined with, ideally, to give you the best skin rejuvenation. And then also how to kinda get started with it because it is a challenging product to get acquainted with and also how to get it going with your skin. And I'll talk to you all about that in these different segments. So what is retinol and what is Retin-A? These are both vitamin A derivatives. If they're formulated in the form of Retin-A, it is a prescription product. If it's formulated as a retinol, it is an over-the-counter product. And the cellular effect, the way it works is exactly the same between the two. You can make the argument that Retin-As are a little bit stronger, a little bit more potent, but sometimes that's not always a good thing if it is so strong and so potent that it has effects that keep you from being able to use it on a regular basis. But having said that, both Retin-A and retinols are an essential part, in my opinion, of any solid skincare regimen. And the reason for that is because at the cellular level, what Retin-A and retinol are doing is they are stimulating the fibroblasts, which are cells inside of the skin, to build more collagen. And let me explain why that's important. Because the foundation of skin aging is the thinning of the skin because of the loss and reduction of the production of collagen. So if you think about it, if you start off with skin this thick, eventually as you age, the skin gets thinner, it gets thinner, it gets thinner. That's why all of a sudden we have all these lines and wrinkles on our face and every time we move our foreheads or crease or smile, we see lines everywhere is because the skin has lost its elasticity, it's lost its thickness, and as a result of those changes happening, the skin has ultimately become aged-looking. So keeping the skin firm and keeping it thick is a foundational directive of any kind of skincare program. That's why I put the use of Retin-A and retinol high up there in terms of what you should be doing. The other things that it does is it helps with cell turnover, it helps reduce some of the production of melanin that creates discolorations to the skin, which ultimately creates a skin that looks a little bit more dull and discolored. Also, at the superficial level, what it's doing is it's creating a micro-peel environment which is causing the stratum corneum, which is the upper, upper layer of the epidermis, the top layer of the skin, which accumulates a bunch of dead layers, it causes it to basically flake off and peel off so you get a brighter, more radiant-looking skin. So peel effect, cell turnover, a genetic impact on creating more collagen are all the things that make retinols and Retin-As, or in a class it's called retinoids, so, so important in overall anti-aging. And this is stuff that's been around for 40-plus years. There's tons and tons of literature and research studies that shows efficacy. Now, why aren't people doing it left and right? Why is it so uncommon to meet a friend, to meet somebody who is actually using it the way it should be used? So here's how it should be used. And then from here on out, we're just gonna call it retinoids. Retinoids need to be used at a minimum of three times a week, ideally every single day. It should be basically an everyday type of a treatment. They're usually put on at nighttime and consistently, literally forever, decades you're using it, over and over again. You typically wanna start it anytime you hear about it or learn about it, but you wanna start it somewhere in your 30s and carry on for literally the rest of your life. Now, why is it that for 15 years of trying to get my patients to use it, have I found that very, very few patients are actually able to use it the way I just described? The reason is because when you start to use retinoids, the first thing that starts to happen to the skin is it starts to get red, inflamed, and flaky. You start to peel. Now, the second that starts happening and you're at work, you have a social life, you're going out and about, you're thinking to yourself, this is no good, I look terrible, I cannot, I can't do this. What you do is you just stop using the retinoid. Three, four, five days, stop it, your skin returns, it's back to normal. This cycle of starting and stopping, starting and stopping just goes on and on and on and eventually, you either completely quit using it or you use it like once or twice a week and then every time you do use it, you get a little bit of a peeling from it because your skin is just starting to adjust. Now, here's the thing with this. The way it's supposed to be used is you're supposed to use it every other day, we'll call it three days a week, for the first couple weeks. Then, you add on an extra day to the regimen. Now, whatever you end up doing, you will go through this purging phase where your skin is gonna be red, inflamed, and flaky. When that happens, this is where your staying power is important. You gotta stick with it, you gotta push through it, you gotta get yourself to a point where within a couple weeks, you're not doing that anymore, you're putting it on and nothing's happening. And that's when your skin has adjusted to it. That is what everyone who eventually gets to a point where they use it on a regular basis, that's where they get to. Now, the problem is if you stop for some reason, like you're gonna go have a laser treatment, you're gonna go have a peel, you're gonna stop for a week and then you're gonna get back on it, you're gonna have to go through this whole cycle again. So again, for a lot of people, this initial initiation phase is just too much for people to use it in a compliant way. And if you don't use it in a compliant way, you might as well not use it at all. And to be honest with you, that has been the number one reason that I kept it out of my skincare line and I wanted it to have a retinol in it, but I definitely didn't want it to have a full strength retinol because if I did that, like 90% of the people wouldn't be able to tolerate. So I put in a very light retinol dose, allowed people to use it twice a day, be able to use it on their eyes and their neck, et cetera, without all that peeling, et cetera, because I wanted it to be designed in a way that allowed people to get a small dose and still be able to get some benefit from it from the retinol perspective. Now, if you can do it, do it. I strongly advise it. The question then becomes, what else can you combine with it? It can't just be Retin-A or retinol that you're using. So the key pieces to any type of skincare regimen is you need to have some presence of a retinoid. You also need to have some vitamin C. Now, vitamin C is really a beautiful addition because it does a lot of the things that the retinol does. It stimulates collagen. It helps brighten the skin. It inhibits the melanocytes from building more melanin. Therefore, it decreases pigmentation. It creates an overall environment where the skin looks more supple and bright and youthful. So those two ingredients together work really well in tandem. Again, my skincare line, I made sure that we have retinol and vitamin C antioxidant component because that's the other thing I forgot to mention, that the vitamin C is a potent antioxidant. So all that sun damage that happens and creates all this free radicals, the vitamin C's help soak it up and decrease the damage to the skin. So vitamin C's a really beautiful and important part of it. The other aspect of it is, as we age, our skin becomes more dry. You need to have some moisture brought into the skin. A good moisturizer is really an important part of an overall skin regimen. You can be used as a solo procedure. It could be brought in as a part of the overall skin care. I happen to have included it in my Illuminate product where it brings it together. A lot of people, you will use things like Cetaphil or other types of bland, very simple moisturizers in addition because if you don't bring the moisture back into the skin, the dryness will keep you from being able to do either the vitamin C or the retinols. They tend to dry the skin a little bit. So that really is a foundational program. I think the use of moisturizer, retinols, and vitamin C, I think that's a solid start to a really good anti-aging program. Now, there's all sorts of bells and whistles that have a lot of benefit to the skin. And if you're open to having multiple steps, niacinamide is a really important part of it. Using things that are gonna bring structure and support to the skin barrier is really important for the long run. These are all different aspects. A good solid skin care program can combine around the foundation of retinol and vitamin C. And for those of you who don't like multiple steps, the trifecta that I brought together basically brings all these things together in one simple three-step process. But if you don't do it that way, getting these different aspects can really combine well and work synergistically around via retinol. And there's no problem in it. Now, a common myth that I hear is, number one, it thins the skin. It actually does the exact opposite. It actually thickens the dermis because of the collagen synthesis. The other myth that I hear is that, oh, I can't go out in the sun anymore. Well, you absolutely can go out in the sun. You put the retinol on at nighttime. And in the daytime, you put a sunscreen on. And once you're past that purging stage, there's no problem with going out in the sun. You just, you don't wanna go on without sunscreen because your skin will be a little bit more sun sensitive. And that's not obviously a great thing. So you wanna make sure you have a good broad-spectrum sunscreen on before you go out. But that is also a foundational part of skin anti-aging is you wanna make sure that you have a broad-spectrum zinc and titanium-based sunblock on anytime you go out. And if you do those things, sun protection, retinol, vitamin C, and some of these other treatments that I mentioned, you are forming a very, very good, solid, long-term anti-aging at-home skincare program. And I hope this video really, really shed some light on a otherwise confusing topic and gave you a path towards how you can get yourself started with the retinols and hopefully continue with them. And if you find yourself that it's just too much, it's okay, you can back off. You can use products like mine, for example, that have a moderated amount of it in, and you can get your collagen synthesis through your vitamin Cs, through in-office treatments like microneedling, et cetera, which can also stimulate collagen production, et cetera. So there's other ways around it, but if you can tolerate it and if you can get to the point, that's a great piece to add to any skincare regimen. So I hope this helped you guys. I know it's a topic that comes up a lot and a lot of questions around it. And again, my goal is to help you guys find ways to understand this in a much easier way, in a much more simple way. If you have any questions at all, drop them in the comments. I'm more than happy to answer them. Oh, before you ask me about which brands I suggest and recommend, honestly, almost any brand that has a retinol in it is probably gonna be pretty good as long as you're using it. So I would say any retinol that you're using is a good retinol. Generally speaking, as a category, it's like something you can find very easily in a lot of different products in a lot of different lines. So if you like this content, make sure you like it. And if you want more content like this, hit subscribe if you haven't already. Help out your friends and your family. Send this along as a share so they can benefit from this as well. We wanna get as much information out there as possible. I know this is a very, overall, this whole world of facial and skin rejuvenation is a complex and confusing topic, and it's my goal and mission to make it as easy to understand and digest and navigate through as possible. Again, Dr. Amir Karim, it's a pleasure sharing this information with you. Until next time, thanks so much.