Facebook Pixel

How To Care For All Skin Types

By
 
Rate This

More Videos from Howdini 30 videos in this series

How do you wash your face and how often? What do you use? Do you even know for sure what your skin type is? Advice for all types of skin from renowned dermatologist Dr. Nicholas Perricone.

I'm Lisa Birnbach for howdini.com. How do you wash your face? And how often? Do you know what products your skin needs, and which to avoid? Dermatologist, Dr. Nicholas Perricone, whose latest book is called, Ageless Face, Ageless Mind, is here to answer these and other questions that amount to skin care 101 for women. Thank you Dr. Perricone.

Thank you.

What's the best way to figure out what your skin type is?

Well, I'm not a traditional dermatologist in terms of skin type. Everybody has skin types. Well, there are skin types that categorized in different terms of amount of pigment. So skin type 1 is always burns, never tans. And you go through that. And then there are other skin types, you know. And people say, well, I'm oily, or a dry, or I'm sensitive. I look at skin types in terms of inflammation.

Now inflammation is an invisible process, most of the time, on the skin. But I found that the traditional view of skin is probably not correct. For example, you probably have the impression-- and many derms do too-- that people with more pigment in their skin, have Italian-Spanish background, are less sensitive than a lighter-skinned person.

You, yeah, I'm less sensitive to sun exposure, but actually more sensitive. And, for example, African-American skin, extremely sensitive to things that create inflammation. So if they have an acne lesion, they get a tremendous dark, we call it, post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation. They also tend to have lumpy scars, called hypertrophic or keloid scars, because of an exaggerated inflammatory response. So I break you down into skin type in terms of how you react to insult and then how much inflammation you produce.

Is washing your face with soap and water really the worst thing you can do for your skin, or not so bad?

Well, you should be using a non-irritating, almost like a non-detergent, type of soap because anything that's going to create inflammation is going to accelerate the aging process. So, when you cleanse your face, you want to use something that we would call, a so-called, mild non-detergent. And that can be something as simple as a bar soap that is non-detergent. There are many liquid soaps out there that are non-detergent and have that non-detergent activity.

What I do with my cleansers that I've created is to add anti-inflammatories to them, like alpha-lipoic acid, vitamin C ester, DMAE. So we're going to get a cleansing process and adding an anti-inflammatory to the skin at the same time.

What about a daily regimen for oily skin? What do you recommend for that?

Well, a good daily regimen for oily skin is the fact that you want to regulate your oil production. And I've found that, if you regulate and then you treat for inflammation, you can regulate the oil production very nicely. So what I recommend is cleansing twice a day with a soap that actually includes an anti-inflammatory. Then I recommend using something with alpha-lipoic acid on it topically.

Alpha-lipoic acid, by changing the levels of inflammation in the sebaceous gland, at the oil gland, regulates that very, very nicely. I see patients do very well. The big mistake is they're using drying agents and get a rebound reaction because it causes inflammation.

Well, so for dry skin or combo?

OK, dry skin is really not just dry skin. There's underlying inflammation in dry skin, so you want to treat the inflammation too. So I've worked on a topical we call Face Finishing Moisturizer that contains some incredible emollients that are natural to skin but DMAE and naturally anti-inflammatory. And so, if you treat the inflammation first, the dryness resolves much more quickly.

I actually did a study looking at extreme dry skin on old people in their lower legs in the winter, which happens quite often. We call it asteatotic dermatitis. And I used a traditional emollient, or a moisturizer, on one leg. And then added powerful anti-inflammatories so the same emollients. We had the same base. And the leg that was getting the anti-inflammatory emollient, the dry skin resolved in 50% of the time as the other leg being treated. So treat the inflammation first.

Sensitive skin, the same?

Sensitive skin's kind of a loose word that we use. You know, 80% of the women I talk to say they have sensitive skin. I don't know exactly what that means. But, certainly, you want to avoid anything that causes inflammation. And if you believe you're there, then stick with something that's simple, not a lot of ingredients, no fragrance. And then you have to find the right thing for you.

I think the last person who told us what our skin was, whether it's somebody at a department store or somebody, a friend, that's what we believe. Don't you? I think there's a lot of mis-information out there.

I think it's a lot of suggestion. Yeah, we carry that with us. But you've got to start using your own ability to observe. And you'll get to know yourself better than anybody.

Well, thank you, so much for being here.

My pleasure.

For howdini.com, Lisa Birnbach.

Howdini is life’s little instruction manual, in HD. We’re all about bringing together the top, most respected experts in their fields to help us be the best we can be at all of the little and not-so-little challenges of our complicated lives. Howdini is the place to be for the know-how you want, when you need it. Or maybe it’s the know-how you need, when you want it. Whatever. We’re here to help. So come in and look around, won’t you?

We think you’ll love finding everything you want to learn about in one convenient place, and as we grow and add more categories and more Howdinis, you’ll be doing less surfing and more learning right here. And unlike television, Howdinis aren’t limited by time—we don’t have to break for commercials, and we’re always on.

Who is Howdini?

People often ask us, is there an actual person who is Howdini? And the answer is, it’s kind of like Lassie. Just as there were many Lassies, there are many individuals who are called Howdini. In fact, each of our experts is a Howdini, and, like all those Lassies, they really know their tricks. (Although so far there is no ‘How to tell your master that Timmy is trapped in the old abandoned mine’ segment)

Our gurus are people you know and trust because you’ve been getting advice from them for years, at places like Good Morning America, The Today Show, Money, Prevention, and Food and Wine (to name just a few). Many are best-selling authors. Others, like our medical experts, are respected leaders in their fields.

Howdini History

The first Howdini was Joanna Breen, who left a comfortable career at ABC’s 20/20 to create a how to video website after one too many frustrating experiences with handymen who weren’t that handy. Joanna had traveled the world reporting with Barbara Walters and others on injustice, outrage, and tragedy, but now it was time to turn her talents to dealing with crises closer to home, like what do you do if you drop your diamond ring down the drain. Joanna is the quintessential can-do girl, so she didn’t find the prospect of launching a gigantic website the least bit daunting. (Ok, that last part isn’t entirely true.)

Joanna convinced an old ABC News buddy, Shelley Lewis, to join her. Shelley had supervised roughly 9.7 million helpful how to segments during a long career executive producing television shows like Good Morning America and CNN’s American Morning. A self-described “info-pig” who loves all kinds of information programming, she is never happier than when she’s learning an amazing new tip that she can annoy share with everyone she knows. Needless to say, Howdini was a dream gig for her. A career woman, a wife, a mother, and author of two books, Shelley considers herself equally challenged by all the facets of her life.

Joanna and Shelley were introduced to marketing executive Alison Provost by a mutual friend who knew that Alison had what they needed - entrepreneurial experience, patience, and a checkbook that still had checks in it. Joanna and Shelley could see right away that Alison should join Howdini. They figured that they would take care of the programming, and Alison would bring trustworthy sponsors to help pay the bills. It took Alison significantly longer to be convinced, maybe because she was crazy busy running a marketing firm called PowerPact, which she continues to oversee while serving as the biggest of big cheeses at Howdini. But whether it’s playing Suduko or launching a new business in a field she knows little about, Alison loves the challenge of a good puzzle, It wasn’t long before she began dropping obscure internet terms like “user-interface” and “googlebot” into casual conversation.

What’s Next for Howdini?

Our goals are modest. Complete and total domination of the internet, crushing Google, Microsoft, and any other punks who get in our way. (Hey, it’s a just a goal.) But until then, we will content ourselves making the best, most professional, most credible how to videos you can find anywhere. We want to help you solve your career issues, your parenting problems, your money troubles. We want you to be more glamorous, healthier, and less stressed out. We want you to check Howdini every day for fun, interesting, useful advice from experts you know and trust.

We want to make Howdini the community you love to be part of every day, To do that, we need to hear from you. Please share your suggestions, rate and comment on the Howdini videos, and the blog, (The Howdini blog). Tell us what you’d like us to create for you.

And then, when we’ve achieved that, it’s back to working on complete and total domination of the internet.

Add a CommentComments

There are no comments yet. Be the first one and get the conversation started!

Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.
By submitting this form, you agree to EmpowHER's terms of service and privacy policy