Vitamin A is the same vitamin that is used in highly concentrated, pharmaceutical form, in both Retin-A cream and the controversial but many times effective acne medication Accutane.

Dosing your daily diet with Vitamin A orally has been linked to lower incidents of skin cancers, and topical application of retinols and Retin-a has been linked to wrinkle and fine line softening and reduction, so using these vitamins is a great idea for your skin care routine. Only trick is you can only use them at night because they lose their effectiveness from sunlight. It destroys them, and renders them inert, so only apply retinol at night.

So, I bought the Good ‘n Natural retinol cream online. I started using it about a week ago, and here’s my review of it.

It’s a very thick, emollient based, which I don’t mind at all, except when I wash it off in the morning, it does feel like it didn’t properly sink in, because it is like a layer of slickness that washes off my face. I wonder if the ingredients are being properly delivered to my skin at night, because it does somewhat feel waxy, like it’s just sitting on the surface of my skin in the morning.

I tried to look up information on whether or not 100,000 IU’s per ounce was good in a skin cream, and came up with nothing. I will continue to use this for another few weeks, but will probably revert back to a more absorbable brand of retinol afterwards.

The before and after pics were pretty impressive on there, which is what made me take notice. The place that offered it out here in Ohio was in Avon called Stags Family Chiropractic/Wellness, and it was a chiropractic clinic, which it appears is the only offices that offer it so far, as the only other place I found was in Texas and it too was chiropractic practice.

They had one of a woman’s mouth before and after, it was less lined and her lips appeared a tad fuller, one of a woman’s neckline, which was more taught and smooth after, and one of a woman’s thigh with dimpled cellulite allover it before and very smooth “after first treatment”. The process is non surgical, non invasive, and there is no downtime at all, so I thought, wow, if I were rich, I’d be signing up for this! I couldn’t find the cost for the Lulum energy treatment anywhere online though. In fact, I could find very little on the treatment at all, it must be so new.

My guess is it might be kind of like microdermabrasion or most other cellulite treatments for body, maybe a hundred bucks a pop, although I don’t know how many treatments you need to maintain or even achieve results. If any practitioners read this, please leave comments with this information and your office info for interested people, that would be great.

I was able to find out how the Lulum energy treatment works though. It is a device that uses several different types of electrical currents, color therapy, and heating therapy, to deeply stimulate the tissues, which probably explains how it rejuvenates collagen production. This is probablyl also how it breaks up cellulite formation and is useful as a cellulite treatment as well. Oh, there was also a pretty amazing before and after picture of a woman with crows feet who looked very smoothed out after treatment.

This treatment, like most other rejuvenating aesthetic treatments for anti aging and body sculpting, probably requires ongoing maintenance to maintain any achieved results, but hey, if you get great results, it may be something you choose to use in your anti aging and wrinkled reduction arsenal, and also your body shaping and cellulite treatment regimen. Anyone who has experience or knowledge of the Lulum energy treatment, please comment and share. Thanks!

Because of this slower turnover, it’s helpful to either produce the same effect of accelerated cell turnover with either a home microdermabrasion type of system or a chemical peel, to literally mechanically force the skin cells to renew themselves, and to reveal fresher, clearer skin. Another huge benefit of chemical peels that I notice is a much improved smoothness.

One thing that I have noticed throughout the years is that my earlier battles with acne left my skin rough looking in certain areas, especially on my chin, where acne lesions were their worst. Since I used to have such bad acne, over the years, my skin’s texture in these areas is noticeably rougher, and when I am regularly doing these chemical peels at home, and my home microdermabrasion kits, I notice that these areas smooth out noticeably.

You see, one of the things that causes skin to look rough in certain areas is a build up of old skin cells that need to be sloughed off by force. This is why younger skin looks much smoother. When you are younger, your skin cells are basically programmed to turn over at a much faster pace, making for more youthful looking skin underneath, and part of the reason we notice our skin is not as smooth or supple when we grow older is because smooth skin is obscured by old, dead skin cells that not only hamper the texture of our skin, but also tend to make the skin look less “alive” and less colored, thereby making us look older than we are.

Chemical peels can also help to reduce the appearance of your pores, so that your pores appear much smaller. This is key to great skin, since large pores tend to make our skin appear less smoothed out. They also reduce the appearance of the fine lines and wrinkles that come with aging, which is a huge benefit .The only drawback to doing peels is that your skin really looks terrible after you do them, I’d say for about a day or two, it looks ruddy and more irritated, but if you’re patient and you perform these on your skin over six weeks, every week, once a week, with breaks in between these cycles, you will enjoy smoother, more wrinkle free skin for years to come.

The reason is that night time is the skin’s prime renewal time. It’s when your skin repairs and rejuvenates itself from all the wear and tear of the daytime. It repairs things like sun damage and integrity that have been damaged by the sun’s rays and other environmental factors, and oh, the fact that every day we age as well. Due to chemical (hormonal) changes in the body that occur during the night, our skin pushes more blood to the surface, and this allows serums and creams to penetrate more readily and work better. It also elevates the skin’s temperature, so that ingredients are more readily absorbed than they are during the day.

It important to not that your skin is not only more conducive to repair at night, but there are also some ingredients that work better at night because either the sunlight inactivates them, or they just happen to work better in concert with the other events going on in your skin during the night when you are sleeping. One ingredient that I know of which works only during the night because it is literally inactivated by UV rays is retinol, one of the best ingredients for wrinkles like crows feet out there.

Retinol also happens to be one of the most powerful anti aging and skin renewal ingredients on the market today, so it’s important to make sure you only use it at night – and oh yeah, most retinol products are not cheap, so you don’t want to be wasting it. Retin-A is a powerful retinol, the most powerful in fact, and that should only be used at night as well.

Another important factor for the night time is getting at least those eight hours of recommended sleep. Notice how much more vibrant your skin looks when you have gotten that full eight hours of sleep. When you are sleep deprived, your skin usually takes on a more sallow tone and tends to show wrinkles more readily. This is because when you do not get enough sleep, a hormone called cortisol runs rampant the next day, and basically cortisol is the ultimate skin enemy since it slows the production of collagen, which we all know is responsible for supple, healthy skin.

Getting your beauty sleep takes on a whole new meaning when you consider it’s true scientific impact on the beauty, firmness and vibrance of your skin. You should definitely look into a full anti aging and wrinkle regimen which includes a night time product for your skin. Companies formulate these night time products with the fact that your skin responds better during the night in mind, so it’s wise to take advantage of this window of opportunity to deliver ingredients that will slow aging.

The night time lotions are where I get a little pickier, since I know that night time is when my facial skin primarily gets to rest and repair itself, and for night time, I want to use a moisturizer that is most conducive to that crucial process and has the most repairing and healing ingredients in it. You also don’t have the sun interfering with the absorption or utilization of ingredients like retinols, which are inactivated by the sunlight, so it’s important to utilize the night time for these types of heavier, therapeutic ingredients.

Two daytime lotions that I’ve recently tried are the Clinique Dramatically Different daytime lotion and Body Shop’s Vitamin C daytime lotion with SPF in it. I liked both, but I have to say the Body Shop one wins out over the Clinique one, simply because I think it moisturized more effectively. I almost felt like I was putting water on my face with the Clinique lotion, because it was almost too thin and light. The Body shop lotion was a bit more emollient, and you didn’t have to put a bunch on. The other obvious reason I chose the Body Shop brand over Clinique was that the Body Shop one has SPF in it.

The Clinique Dramatically Different lotion however, I did feel helped to make my face look a bit more luminous and glowy than the Body Shop one, so maybe because it was such a light formula, it helped to reflect the light a bit better. They both had a great scent, the Clinique having a very light fragrance to it that was clean and fresh, and the Body Shop having a more heavily fragranced smell of citrus.

I’d have to say, one of the turnoffs about Body Shop skin products is how heavily they tend to be scented. I don’t like anything that is heavily scented, since there are often a lot of chemicals that go into the achievement of that level of scent that can be irritating to the skin.

The latest news of Britain is something called a ten minute facelift. It’s basically a nonsurgical, cheaper way to look like you’ve had a facelift without the surgery and the thousands of dollars, although it will still cost you per session, with one session costing about 450 pounds, which is close to 800 or 900 dollars now in US currency. That could get quite pricey, so let’s talk about what it aims to do.

The treatment starts with a blueberry scrub and a chemical peel. This enhances the results of the more intense therapy later on, but is not necessary for the treatment to work. Then comes the mesotherapy, which to my understanding is small shots, under the skin, of vitamins and other beneficial ingredients, in this case they should help to enhance collagen production and tone up the skin from underneath, otherwise I don’t see the point of them for this sort of treatment.

Mesotherapy, if you recall, is actually a controversial treatment that is administered by some practitioners to help break up fat cells and flush them from the body by injecting natural ingredients underneath the skin which essentially explode and destroy fat cells, in this case though, the ingredients injected are supposed to enhance the plumpness of the face.

The ingredients that are administered under the skin for the ten minute face lift are elastin, hyaluronic acid, which is a natural biodegradable acid that helps plump the skin up, and a variety of other vitamins beneficial to the skin. Now, comes the painful part. A local anesthetic is administered to the whole facial area. Then shots of special fillers are given throughout the face that help plump and fill the entire face for a younger and more lifted look. The effect can be especially helpful for “jowls” that women hate that come with aging for a lot of men and women, it lifts them up and helps to tighten them for a period of time.

Then, the practitioner, who is only one French practitioner at the moment who came up with the treatment, takes his hands and manually smooths out the injections so that they are all distributed evenly under the skin, and this part is supposed to be painful as well. The before and after pictures are amazing though, if you want to google “ten minute facelift” and see for yourself. It is temporary, but it last for several months and call forestall more serious measures.

As you well know by now, collagen is the building block that creates smooth, supple skin, and because we lose a lot of collagen as we age and it does not replenish like it used to, we are faced with worn looking, deflated skin which of course results in wrinkles and fine lines being visible. It’s your basic wear and tear of aging, and it’s all due to the loss of collagen which is a domino effect of several elements in our lives such as environmental toxins and pollutants, photo damage from the sun’s damaging photo UV rays, and a variety of other degradations of the structure of this precious compound.

The collagen microderm treatment is supposed to be exclusive to this one skin care treatment facility called the Skin Center in the Ohio and PA area, and what it does is combines the affects of microdermabrasion, which is a somewhat serious exfoliation of the skin’s outermost cells which reveals fresh cells that are more vibrant and bright looking, and also helps to rejuvenate collagen, and a collagen inducing treatment that is really different from anything I’ve read about before.

The collagen treatment is unique, as it massages a hyaluronic acid serum into the patient’s skin and then places a custom cut “collagen sheet” over the patient’s face, which is supposed to bind to the skin’s fibroblasts and help the skin to form it’s own natural collagen on it’s own. It is ideal for mature skin, and is supposed to be value priced as it is not an invasive procedure. Patients are said to have very little downtime, and it is ideal for getting before a major event since the complications are minimal and the downtime is minimal as well. ‘

If you’re interested, and you live in the Ohio or Pennsylvania area where the Skin Care Centers are located, you should give them a call, they seem to be reasonably priced and offer a wide array of the latest in skincare technology from what I’ve seen.

The difference in the fading of the age spots on the side of my face from sun exposure is, however, noticeable. I would say that for that alone I would continue to use this. I’ve also noticed an evening out of skin tone because of this retinol based product. Retinol, by the way, is one of those Vitamin A derived chemicals that helps us to rapidly slough off the top layers of the skin, greatly improving the clarity and texture of the skin and speeding up the turnover of the skin cells, which is important when you are trying to get rid of dull skin and expose the fresher, newer skin cells, which just happens naturally in your youth, part of the reason that our skin ages and starts to look weathered, the older we get.

For under twenty bucks on Amazon, I’d say it’s worth it as far as the anti aging aspect of the cream. By the way, it is only for night time because Vitamin A becomes inactive during daylight hours, you must use these retinol products at night to get maximum benefit, using them during the day renders them useless.

Retin-A was also actually used as an acne fighting remedy as well, with many dermatologists prescribing this often irritating topical medication to acne patients to help clear up their skin. I personally found it extremely irritating on my skin when I was prescribed this in my teens for my bad acne, but then again, I probably was applying it too often, as I usually did with most of my skin care back then, or using it improperly, plus I was overdrying my face by washing it to vigorously as well.

Retinoids are actually a potent derivative of vitamin A. They work best when they are applied at night, which is why you see many of the more intense night time formulas using retinoids, or retinol as it is also called. The reason they work best at night is that the vitamin A is deactivated by the sunlight, so sun actually renders these retinoids ineffective. Plus, night time is a great time for your skin to repair itself, so it’s a complementary time of day to apply your most intense reparative skin care products anyways.

Retinoids are great for helping to reduce the appearance, depth and length of wrinkles, but there are some drawbacks and some people may opt for different products that are based in a different technology because of these reasons. They can be drying. Especially the prescription versions of retinoid creams can be drying and irritating, and it’s not all that uncommon for people to complain about this side effect. That’s because it is an excellent skin exfoliator, and it speeds up the turnover of the skin cells more quickly, which results in what appears to be irritation, flaking and redness.

This can be remedied by scaling the application back to once every two days instead of every single night, and it can also be helped by applying an emollient skin cream to help counteract and soothe any irritation. When you use retinoids, especially if you’re using one that is powerful and prescription strength, you should notice an improvement in your skin that is tangible within eight weeks or less.

So when I found some RoC night time retinol and alpha hydroxy restoarative night cream for about five bucks less a tube than I can get it for at any other store, including Wal-mart and Target, I decided to buy two of them.  These are only one ounce, so I do fly through them fairly fast, but at $12 per tube, I had never seen them for a better price anywhere else.  The only thing you ever need to worry about with anti aging creams and other high quality products like this is if they are expired and may perhaps have inactive or less effective ingredients in them because of the time they’ve been on the shelf.  These were not old,  so I did buy them.

However, what you really have to watch is buying perfumes that are steeply discounted.  These you should actually probably buy at a store, because they are new and fresh, whereas high end perfumes usually don’t make their way to discount retailers for reduced prices unless they have expired or are close to expiring.

It really does make a difference with scent.  I have purchased them from discounters for great prices, only to find out that the perfume either doens’t smell as strong and takes twice as much to even smell, or that it has somehow turned rancid and smells like a different perfume all together.  Other than that, lotions, soaps and bath products are great to buy reduced because they really don’t “go bad” or expire.  It’s always worht a look at least when you’re in these discounted types of stores.