Erase Dark Spot Routine from a Dermatologist! | Dr. Shereene Idriss

Welcome back, nerds. I'm Dr. Shereen Idris. It's been a minute since we've gotten unready together. So what better time than today than to get unready through a nighttime routine together and to get ready together tomorrow morning after I wake up. Have been asking me about how to incorporate products, how to create a routine. My routine is heavily focused on dark spots, discoloration, melasma, because I used to look like this. And in the past three years I have been militant about sticking to a skincare routine, an over the counter one that targets discoloration and brown spots. And in that, that process, my melasma has not really flared up as aggressively. Now a second just little want to say before we jump in. My skincare routine is heavily focused on my own products because that's why I made them. I genuinely use them every single day. They are scattered across my vanity. I will give you guys a look. There's a lot of stuff here. I want you guys to understand the concepts of why I'm doing things so that you can apply those concepts for your own routine. When you're building your routine. Let's, let's jump. It is Monday night. We just got home from work. Get home, it is dark. I go to work, it is dark. It is always dark. But the first thing I do before I get myself to be too comfortable is go to my bathroom and do my nighttime skincare routine. Especially because you want to get the FaceTime with your products. I'm going to go change my top, get my PJ top on and then we'll start. Let's put the hair up because you mean business. It's all about getting the face time with active ingredients for your skin and making sure you don't just do it the hour before you go to bed or the 10 minutes before you go to bed so that you plop your face on your pillow and all of those expensive products get wiped off onto a pillow sheet. The best for sensitive teeth. Starting with my cleanser, I use the Dr. Eaters soft wash. It is a gel based cleanser that has the same ingredients as contact lens solution so I can open my eyes when I wash my face. My daughter made this by the way. So have in my mirror behind you these little towelettes. Every week, because I go in, oh, I almost, I'm almost done with this baby. Because I love it that much. I go in with a cleanser, I get some warm water and I gently warm it up in my hands just to get it nice and warm and Then I apply it straight to dry skin just like this. I apply it around my eyes, in my eyebrows, because my eyebrows I draw in every morning. It does not burn my eyes. It is very, very, very gentle. And then I take a wet washcloth and then I go into my eyes to get all the makeup out. So I do not need an extra makeup remover. It gets all of it out. I use two types of mascaras. I use a blue and a black. It comes right off and voila. That is how I wash my face. Just like that. And then I'll use the other side of the towelette to just, you know, work any kind of cleanser into my skin. Get any excess makeup off that might be there, make sure we're working it in, and then I'll go in for a rinse, head on over. Back cleanser is the most important step because it sets the foundation for your skincare routine. It allows, allows you to kind of figure out what you're doing next. I will go in and exfoliate. So tonight I am exfoliating. Because I am exfoliating, there is one thing that I will be skipping and that is a retinol. And I use various different types of over the counter retinols that we are testing that I am using. There are currently some things in formulation I cannot talk about, but I have pared back from going into prescription strength because I want to be more consistent and I tend to get a little bit sensitive or when I'm using the prescription strength too often. And so I am using over the counter more often than I'm using prescription. But tonight we're skipping it because we are exfoliating. Exfoliating sets the tone. And you want to do this anywhere from two to three times a week at most, maybe four times. The UV index is lower and it's really cold or the air is dry. But if it's summertime, maybe two to three times, ideally you do it at night. We don't exfoliate in the morning because we don't want to expose fresh skin to the sun. That's going to make us more sensitive. And what you exfoliate depends on your skin issues and skin type. I tend to veer on the drier side. So glycolic acid is great because it acts like a humectant. It's going to hold on to moisture. Additionally, given that I do have discoloration, I like to marry it to lactic acid because lactic acid can help minimize that discoloration. And then we also, in this particular Product married it to tranxamic acid, which is not an exfoliating acid. If you have melasma, you just want to throw everything at it. So combining it with an exfoliation, exfoliating acid allows it to work a little bit more efficiently. And that is why we mixed all three in the Dr. Idris major fade flash mask. The beauty of a gel is you can pick how long you keep it on your face and where you apply it. So for me I always apply it on the high points of my face like right over here. I don't go too close into my orbital rim because it gets a little bit more sensitive there and the skin underneath the eyes is more sensitive. I come right over here. I go on my forehead because you want to make sure that you are getting any sort of sunspots that has, you know, been brewing up there and then down my nose. Lightly, lightly, lightly. I don't come in here or in here because that is going to get irritated A few nights a week. I'll put this on for 20, 30 minutes one night a week. I'll even sleep with it from here down to my tits and wash it off the next day. It will be my one step nighttime routine that one night a week. But for example, if you're sensitive, just leave it on for five minutes and wash it off. It is spicy for everyone who applies it and then it settles down. So I'm gonna go for the next 10 minutes, scroll the gram, hang out with my husband. My kids are already asleep. I will be back in 10 to 15 minutes. Okay, I'm back. I'm gonna wash my face. My skin feels nice. It feels smooth. It always gets a little bit red after I wash it off. It will calm down in a minute or two. I'm going to use my de puffer. This is a arnica based serum in a roller. After you exfoliate, you want to go in to the serum serum phase of your routine. So given that it's an arnica based serum, Arnica is a great anti inflammatory. So it's going to help minimize that redness. It helps to depuff me way more in the morning. So I just use this tiny little bit amount. This again totally used as you could tell. But I kind of go light, light, light, light, light, light. And I'm not using it so much around my eyes at night because I'm not really trying to depuff my eyes at night. But I use it in the areas that I tend to get red and reactive which is usually around my nose. At night. So this is where I use it. Tiny bit on my forehead where I had a tiny little blemish of a breakout. That was it. It was tiny. I'm not going to complain about that. Et voila. I have depuffed. I then apply my serums. If your problem is brown spots, you want a serum that is targeting discoloration, something with kojic acid, arbutin, licorice root, niacinamide, di glucosil, gallic acid. Those are two ingredients that also help with redness. And that is what I put in the Dr. Idris major fade hyper serum. Again, this is a very doctor Idris products heavy routine video, because this is genuinely what I use. I'll go, 1, 2, 3, 4. I dropped that one, so four on my cheek. Et voila. I will apply this on my face just like that. And this is going to really be the powerhouse that parallels the effects of hydroquinone. Hydroquinone is prescription. If you're someone who has melasma, you're going to need to get a prescription of hydroquinone. Hydroquinone is the gold standard for that. But the problem with hydroquinone is you cannot stay on it forever. Long term, if you're going to use it, you use it for two to three months, you take a break for two to three months, then you get back on it. And the reason for that is because you don't want to become resistant to it. And we don't want to have too much systemic absorption of it for perpetuity. And therefore that is why you need a counterpart. And so what I tell my patients is, whether it's this or a series of ingredients that mimic the effects of this, you need to be on something that continuously suppresses how you make that pigment while you're on hydroquinone and off it, because you don't just want to get off it and not have anything that's suppressing it. So you want to continuously suppress while you're off it to keep that pigment at bay. And that's how personally, my melasma has not flared up as aggressively in the past three years. Additionally, when I do go to the beach, I maybe use the hydroquinone for one to two weeks after the beach, but really not longer than that because it is so much quieter and so much more at bay. And so that is the purpose of this. Once you are done applying your serums, if you have an eye cream that you like, you can apply it here. I tend to use use this as an eye cream. So after the eye Cream, we go into the moisturizer. I love a vitamin C moisturizer that I use both in the morning and at night. This vitamin C moisturizer, the active seal by myself, has a form of vitamin C that I can combine with a retinol when I'm using the retinols on the nights that I'm using it. It's known as tetrahexyl decyl ascorbate. And it is a vitamin C moisturizer that is lightweight, that's not going to be irritating. And so I use this baby twice a day. So I'm getting the benefits of vitamin C twice a day as perfection. So now my skin, my face is all done and prepped and for the P resistance, we focus on the lips. Your lips need skin care too. And this is why I created the barrier based duo system. So I do a light lip peel to my lips, allowing that to sit into my lips and get absorbed and then I lock it in with the base. Now I'll do this at night and I will do do this throughout the day, but I won't do the peel throughout the day. So then I apply the lip base and this is like pure, honestly soothing, calming butter for your lips. And it just allows your lips to heal and restore overnight for perfection. It's product before I go to bed. Recently turned on to this by a patient, Dr. Andrew Whale for Origins of Mega Mushroom Hydra Mist. But this just makes me feel like I'm in a spa. It makes me smell like a spa. It's very, very lightweight. If you are allergic to essential oils, do not use this. I enjoy the scent of it. I do this as a final step of my nighttime routine because I want to go dream and get taken away. So that is my nighttime routine. And I will see you guys tomorrow morning when I wake up and I will take you through my morning routine. Brush my teeth, shower. My morning routine is super simple. I depuffed. What I didn't show you guys was that one of my kids came in and smacked me over the head with my pillow. So that was a little hot. After I got off, I brushed my teeth, toilet, shower, come out and I feel completely open. It is a lymphatic facial in a bottle. It is Spanx for the eyes. I love that deep puffer. Mother effort is so good. So anyway, wash my face in the water. I literally let water run down my face. By the time I made it to the shower, the deep puffer has done its action and now I literally just use three things. I go in with the hyper serum because again, it's about consistency over intensity. Want to keep that pigment at bay. My routine is very heavily focused on skin tone. I believe that your skin tone and even skin tone is the first sign of aging. And I do the moisturizer right after with half a pump of the active seal or the vitamin C during the day. Then I'm gonna go put on my underwear, come back, apply my sunscreen, then I go back and get dressed. That's how I do it. I do skincare, underwear, sunscreen, clothes, makeup, so that everything has a minute to sort of settle. And you're not just applying products over product, especially because you want sunscreen to sort of set set before you apply your makeup. I've been testing out some ultraviolet, which just landed in the US but today I want to go with Augustine's Butter, their new mineral sunscreen. Let's see. I have been using it for a few days. I find it to be very, very elegant, at least in terms of formulation. It feels like it goes on your skin and then it just disappears. It doesn't feel like you have to fight it as a sunscreen. So that's nice. It is the non tinted version. What I like about it is normally I look at my teeth, if they teeth look a little yum with a white cast sunscreen, if it is white cast, but it doesn't. If you are interested in my makeup routine, let me know. But this is my morning. It's very, very simple. It's very, very fast. It's literally water, serum, moisturizer, sunscreen, makeup out the door. And I tend to focus all my efforts at night when it's my me time, my time for my skin. And I give my skin the time that it needs with the products that I'm using. Anyway, have a beautiful, beautiful Saturday and I will see you guys next week.