In this solo YouTube vlog, dermatologist Dr. Shereene Idriss tackles seven pervasive skincare myths, explaining why they persist and providing evidence‑based corrections. She begins by noting the beauty industry’s reliance on costly education and marketing, then systematically debunks each myth: (1) mineral sunscreens are inherently safer than chemical sunscreens – both are chemical filters and efficacy depends on personal preference; (2) the notion of "clean" versus "toxic" beauty – clean beauty lacks a standardized definition and is a marketing ploy; (3) topical collagen as an anti‑aging miracle – collagen only hydrates, while retinoids, peptides, and sunscreen truly support collagen; (4) retinol thins the skin – retinoids accelerate cell turnover and can actually thicken the stratum corneum while promoting dermal collagen; (5) vitamin C alone cures hyperpigmentation – effective pigment treatment requires a multi‑step protocol with acids, tranexamic acid, hydroquinone, etc.; (6) a hydrating serum alone creates "glass skin" – achieving glass skin needs exfoliation, barrier health, inflammation control, and sunscreen, not just hydration; (7) gua sha, jade rollers, and facial cupping permanently tighten skin – they only offer temporary lymphatic drainage and can cause injury if misused. Throughout, she references patient observations, scientific rationale, and suggests evidence‑based alternatives, while briefly promoting her own brand and the TYB platform for consumer engagement.
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After 8 years of debunking myths and going through the whole cycle, certain old myths are new again, and it seems like we need to do a YouTube video debunking them once and for all because these skin myths should die. Unfortunately, this misinformation continues to be spread online because I will tell you, being within the beauty industry, the most expensive currency for any brand is education and marketing. So it's easier to jump on the bandwagon of what people assume is truth without questioning that truth, and that unfortunately is a tragedy. So today we are going to debunk skincare myths once and for all. And if you guys want me to dive in deeper into any one of these, because we're just going to touch them lightly, let me know in the comment section below. But before I jump in, I do have a skincare brand, Dr. Idriss. That's why I know that marketing and education is so expensive and the most valuable resource. But I officially joined TYB, which is a platform that basically gifts you guys, the consumers, for being obsessed with brands. They reward engagement, they reward community, and you get points not because you spend, but because you genuinely engage with the brands that you love. So it's a win-win for everyone. So make sure to check out Dr. Idriss on TYB. I will link it below. So myth number 1 is one that has been around for longer than I care to even know, but mineral sunscreens are safer and better than chemical sunscreens. Now, if I had gone back in time and I had been the PR orchestrator of the sunscreen world, I would have never called them mineral versus chemical sunscreens. I would have called them inorganic versus organic sunscreens. And do you know which one people would vote as potentially the safest if I had done so in the past? Ding, ding, ding. They probably would have said organic sunscreens were safer because organic sounds better. But the reality is organic sunscreens are chemical sunscreens. And here's the other reality. Mineral sunscreens are also chemical sunscreens because mineral filters made up of zinc and titanium are chemicals. And so one is not better than the other. There's been perpetuation of this myth because chemical sunscreens have been shown to be absorbed into your bloodstream, but not at high enough levels where they are shown to be endocrine disruptors. That has not been proven, and they have been around for literally decades, so things would have popped up by now. The other myth is mineral sunscreens are better because it sits on the surface of your skin and it basically reflects sunlight. But the reality is both mineral and chemical absorb UV radiation in order protect your skin, and one does not physically block versus chemically absorb. They both do the same thing, more or less, but one is definitely more cosmetically not elegant, and that is your mineral sunscreen. So the best sunscreen is going to be the one that you actually want to wear, that you love to wear, that was going to not only protect your skin from further sun damage, but if you're vain, is going to help to minimize the reawakening of past sun damage that is lying dormant in your skin. If you are wondering what I mean by that, Ask me below because that is a very interesting take when it comes to sunscreen, especially as you approach your 40s, 50s, 60s and the damage is already done. Truth: before you're 20. Myth number 2: clean versus toxic skincare. Clean beauty was a movement that I think started off with good intentions, but by stating and framing your product as being clean and non-toxic, you're basically saying everything else is toxic. And that is false marketing and it is a myth and it is one of the cheapest forms of marketing because it is leaning into fear, which by the way, social media has become as well. It's become a fearmongering algorithm system where if you can clickbait people into fear, you're going to get more clicks, more views, more virality, and that is not the goal here. So clean versus toxic, well, the truth of the matter is clean beauty does not exist. It just doesn't. There's no standardized definition of what clean beauty is, and it is completely a marketing made-up term. So all of these apps that have been built off the clean beauty movement, like the Yuka app, is based off of nonsense. Absolute focaccia of a mess of nonsense. It's bullshit. It is shit down the drain. It is something that you should not be focusing on because you scanning the labels is making you feel more empowered to be quote-unquote safe, but it's also in the back of your brains making you more scared of the other products out there and feeding into the narrative that they are dangerous. Products, when they get made, have to go through extensive studying, and you have to go through toxicology, and you have to make sure that your products are safe if you're going to put them over the counter. And you cannot be putting products out there going to be toxic to your health and well-being. Which leads me to myth number 3, collagen. Collagen is going to be the best thing for anti-aging. This is one that just gets perpetuated over and over again because you don't even have to say it, you just have to write collagen, and it is now assumed that if a product has collagen, it's going to help to promote collagen in your skin. The reality is collagen itself is a beautiful humectant. It's great for hydrating your skin, but it is never going to promote collagen in your skin, especially if collagen is in its pure form and it is very, very large. So that is something that I think is like a silent white lie from the beauty industry, because they're assuming that you think that the collagen that you're applying on your skin is going to promote your skin without necessarily saying it. It is in fact thought. And I know this because I see nearly 100 patients a week in my practice, and when people tell me that they use collagen products, they literally say, but I've been using collagen products, why does my skin look so thin? Because they're assuming that the collagen in their products is going to make their skin thicker, but it's not. So collagen is going to give you temporary hydration, it's going to give you a temporary plumping effect. It is beautiful for that, I have no problem with that, but no, it's not going to promote your collagen in the long run. So things you want to look for: retinoids, retinol, tretinoin. That's— that vitamin A class of ingredients is going to be the ingredient class that you want to look for to promote your collagen in your skin. It's the tried and true peptides that promote collagen. Peptides have signaling effects that can help with promoting collagen. And there are collagen peptides that you can also look for when you're talking about your products. If it has a collagen peptide, then yes, collagen can get promoted over time. But if it's pure collagen, it won't. Other things that can help to save your collagen but not necessarily promote it: sunscreen. Sunscreen is going to minimize how fast your collagen breaks down and you actually get depleted of it. It's going to help to protect your skin so that your skin stays better, firmer, hopefully longest. Last is in-office treatments that can help to stimulate collagen. But collagen alone in a cream is never going to help to support your own collagen. Myth number 4 is retinol thins your skin. Now, this is one that I've been very vocal on in the past 2 weeks because a certain expert without the right qualifications has been shouting from the rooftops that retinol thins your skin, and it does not. This is unfortunately a misunderstanding of both biology, physiology, and anatomy on their part. But retinoids are a class of vitamin A derivatives that help to increase the cell turnover of your skin, meaning as you get from the lowest layer of the top part of your skin within your epidermis to the topmost top part of your epidermis. That cycle takes around 28 days. But as you get older, that cycle slows down and it takes longer, like up to 50 days. So retinols or retinoids help to increase that cellular proliferation. So one might think if it's proliferating faster, my skin is going to thin if they do not know that it gets longer over time. Number 2, the uppermost layer of your epidermis, a.k.a. your stratum corneum, becomes thicker as you get older. So because cellular proliferation does increase, your stratum corneum now thins out the way it used to be when you used to have more luminous, radiant-looking skin. A thinner stratum corneum does not mean thinner skin. Retinoids have also been tried and true and proven to promote collagen down beneath within your dermis, helping to make the structural integrity of your skin stronger over time. So unfortunately, there's a lot of myths around retinoids. This was a big one that really got me irked in the past 2 weeks. But if we have questions about irritation, sensitivity, sun exposure, etc., with retinols, let me know in the comment section below. We can do a deep dive on this and we could talk for hours on end. Number 5: Vitamin C is the one ingredient I need for my dark spots or sunspots, AKA it is a miracle ingredient. No, it is not. Hence why I have a very hard time promoting vitamin C serums at over $150 because vitamin C alone is never going to give you a more even skin tone on its own. When you're talking about pigment, you need multiple ingredients within a protocol to address how your pigment is made and to stop it at various different checkpoints. You need it starting from the top down. Exfoliating acids like glycolic and lactic acid can help to get rid of the dead skin cells that are just sitting there so your skin can start to look brighter. Lactic acid actually brightens from within as well. And talking about the melanocyte, you want to make sure that you calm the production within the melanocyte. Tranexamic acid can help there. Within your melanocyte, you want to make sure that melanin is slowed down in terms of its production. And here you have ingredients like hydroquinone, you have kojic acid, you have arbutin, you have— even licorice root can help. And you want to make sure that that melanin that gets made within the melanocyte doesn't get transferred out into the rest of your skin, and vitamin C can help over here. So obviously vitamin C alone is never going to help, not to mention there are other ingredients like 4-butylresorcinol, amazing antioxidants like glutathione, hexylresorcinol that also help to minimize pigment. But guess where you can find all of these ingredients minus the hydroquinone? In a 3-step system that I made specifically for you guys called Dr. Idriss Major Fade. I simplified it for you so you could stick to it because consistency is what gives you results. And unfortunately, I cannot get myself to recommend any more $180 serum when you can buy solid products with multiple actives at the right levels to really target your pigmentation. Number 6: A hydrating serum is what I need for glass skin. Define glass skin, shall we? So when we think of glass skin, it's a trend on social that has been around now for a few years. It's important that we define it so we know what we're trying to achieve. Glass skin is often smooth-looking skin, so minimal texture, even-looking skin, so an even skin tone, and basically firm-looking skin, so hopefully some level of firmness and hydration. Is a hydrating serum alone going to help your texture, your inflam— your skin barrier, and your pigmentation? No, it is not. So once you know that, you know that flooding your skin with 7 different layers of hydrating serums is never going give you glass skin. We are not sponges, okay? Our skin, if it were a sponge, we would all look like poof balls, Michelin tires, um, people, baby, whatever, Michelin tire person. In order to achieve that, you have to have a holistic approach of all the different processes in place. A great exfoliating acid, if it can hydrate while it exfoliates, great. That's why I love glycolic acid because it is also a humectant that holds on to hydration. You want to make sure that your skin barrier is healthy and not inflamed. Inflamed. We want to make sure we're incorporating ingredients that minimize that inflammation within our skin barrier, or that we focus on our skin barrier health first. We want to also make sure that we are protecting our skin from future sun damage, but also protecting our skin from reactivating past sun damage, and that is through sunscreen. Sunscreen does both. Obviously want to hydrate in the process, but stacking hydrating serums alone— good luck, okay? That's all I'm gonna say. Number 7, I believe we're at, and I think this will be my final one for the day. Um, gua sha, jade rollers, and facial cupping makes me feel like we're back to 2018 all over again when I started my journey on social. But you can roll all you want, you will never tighten your skin in perpetuity. You will not, you will not change the structure of your skin, you will not increase your collagen density, you will not be snatched for ever. You will not. All you are doing is helping with temporary lymphatic drainage, and if you are unlucky, you are cutting your face in the process like Bethany Frankel did this past week. And it is very important that you guys understand that these tools can help with lymphatic drainage. Yes, there is a benefit to them, absolutely, but the benefit is temporary. And my biggest fear that I've seen now on social with Bethany and in my practice is that most people will go wrong and strong, and they do not know how to do this on themselves. And it's not something that you can necessarily teach because it is very hard when you are doing things on yourself to not want to go stronger. And so I don't think people are well trained with gua shas. I think they are tugging at their skin more than they are not. With suction cups, they are suctioning harder than they need to. And I think with rollers, people realize that rolling is fine, but because we're rolling back and forth, what are we really doing with our lymphatic fluid? And why not, you know, do something better than that? Which is why I created the Depuffer, which is, yes, a face roller with a serum that has benefits that long outlast the rolling effect. So having arnica in there, having niacinamide in there, having ash bark extract in there, you're going to minimize the look of inflammation and redness and puffiness. And that work of those actives are going to continue long after you're done rolling. There you have it. I hope you guys enjoyed today's YouTube video. Make sure to join Dr. Idriss on TYB if you haven't already done so. Again, I'll put the link on the bottom. And if you guys want me to dive in deeper into any one of these topics, or if you have any other myths that you are constantly hearing and want to know more about, please, as always, let me know in the comment section below and we will dive in together in the near future. But in the meantime, have a beautiful Saturday and I will see you guys later.
