December 12th, 2011 by CynthiaBaileyMD in Health Tips
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The vertical lines around the mouth are challenging to fix but now there are things you can do to improve them.
Most people call these lines ‘smoker’s lines’ but they aren’t necessarily from smoking. Everybody will eventually get them as they age, smokers just get them earlier, and so do women.
I want to give you a quick overview of how I treat them in my dermatology practice. To reduce the appearance of vertical lines around your mouth consider one or more of the following treatments (click on any of the blue links to see more about the options).
The Best Treatments For ‘Smoker’s Lines’
Using skin care products to brighten the skin.
These will lessening the dark, wrinkled textural appearance of this area and it’s something you can do with your at-home skin care regimen. The best product options include prescription tretinion, retinol (helpful, but not as effective as prescription tretinoin), and AHA products (the best contain glycolic acid with a concentration over 10% and pH around 4). The tretinoin and AHA products may also stimulate a little collagen formation under your skin to actually build up the area to help permanently diminish the wrinkles too.
Doing a series of superficial professional skin treatments that peel, abrade and brighten the skin. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Bailey's Skin Care Blog*
October 15th, 2011 by CynthiaBaileyMD in Health Tips, Research
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Medical science is getting closer to understanding one of the most common causes of chronically itchy arms called brachioradial pruritus.
This means we’re also getting closer to helping people who suffer from this extremely frustrating condition!
A new study exploring the cause of brachioradial pruritus was just reported in the October issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. The authors used MRI imaging to look at the cervical spine of 41 patients suffering from chronic itching of what was otherwise normal appearing skin on the outer surface of their forearms arms (called brachioradial pruritus). MRI imaging showed a very strong correlation between the itch and nerve compression in the patient’s neck. In fact, the exact site of the itch on the skin correlated precisely with the spinal location in the neck where the nerve resides that supplies that part of the arm skin (we call this a dermatome*).
What’s so interesting is that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Bailey's Skin Care Blog*
September 17th, 2011 by CynthiaBaileyMD in Health Tips
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It could be a common dry skin rash called pityriasis alba.
With pityriasis alba, the white patches of fine dry scale are usually located on the sides of the cheeks and the outer side of the upper arm. They’re more likely to occur when activities or weather conditions dry out the skin such as swimming in chlorinated pools or with the temperature extremes of a cold and dry winter. They also show up more when skin is tanned because the scaly patches stay white and contrast against the tanned skin. That means that towards the end of summer, they may well be in full bloom if you live in a dry climate.
What is pityriasis alba?
It’s a subtle form of eczema (also called dermatitis). It’s an unusual rash though because there really isn’t much, if any, inflammation. This means the involved skin doesn’t itch, it just looks funny. Most people mistake it for a fungus, which it isn’t. It’s just a form of dry skin eczema.
What treatments will help get rid of the white spots from pityriasis alba? Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Bailey's Skin Care Blog*
