What is Prescriptive Skincare?
When it comes to custom skincare, I like to make it personal.
Creating custom skincare solutions has become an important part of my practice. I liken the creation of these high-performance treatments to having your own skincare concierge. Not only do I tailor solutions specifically for you, but often we can streamline your beauty regimen whilst also offering far more efficacious and cost-effective alternatives.
What is prescriptive skincare?
By its very nature, prescriptive skincare is ‘prescriptive’ in two ways. It is first and foremost individualised to the patient, but it is also prescriptive in how it uses medical grade product and ingredients. These types of ingredients can only be prescribed by a doctor. Whilst there are many, many beautiful skin care brands on the market, none of those products we buy off-the-shelf are of a medical grade. You’ll be able to tell if something is medical grade because in Australia, our regulatory laws dictate that medical grade products must have your own name on the product and detail that the product has been prescribed specifically for you.
Vitamin A is one of the first things that comes to mind in speaking about medical grade products, especially in the form of tretinoin, which is the highest and purest form of Vitamin A. There are also many different forms of retinoids, which are also compounded products derived from Vitamin A.
In prescriptive skincare there are many high-performance ingredients in the toolkit, enabling me to create personalised solutions for a patient’s individualised concerns.
How Targeted can it be?
The beauty of prescriptive skincare is that I can adjust the formulations and the potency to suit an individual’s needs. Sometimes you’ll require more of a particular ingredient to address a skincare issue. Other times we’ll need to take a stepped approach to get your skin used to specific ingredients. Either way, I can tweak the formulas to be tailored to your needs.
The treatments I develop can target in two ways. They can target a specific type of concern or a specific area on the body. We can add as few or as many additive skincare products to suit the individual’s skincare concern.
What type of skincare challenges can we address?
The most common concerns I address are aging (such as fine lines and wrinkles), pigmentation, acne and rosacea.
My philosophy with prescriptive skincare is to keep the regimen quite uncomplicated. But at the same time, within all of these issues we’re addressing, I can mix and match and also be quite fluid with how to address the area of concern. Again, that’s the beauty of creating solutions targeted specifically for the individual.
It’s important to note that I work with a range of other modalities and can cross-refer my patients to other specialists in those situations where we need further investigation into the root of the concern. A good example of this might be perimenopausal skin concerns or skin conditions requiring laser treatment.
Are the prescriptions suitable for men?
Absolutely! In fact, most men start using their partner’s products and I often end up formulating something especially for them. I wish more men would choose bespoke products as they have skin needs that are quite distinct from women.
Male skin tends to be texturally different because it’s both thicker and they have more hair and needless to say they also shave their face and have a lot less estrogen! Men still experience a variety of skin concerns though and are not immune to the effects of aging, often brought about by a more casual approach to sun protection.
Products formulated for men might end up being a bit more potent than the ones I develop for women as their skin tends be a bit more resilient.