What are your limitations for recovering from cosmetic procedures?

Do you work? Do you have a special event coming? Is there any reason in the near future you wouldn’t want someone to see you if you had a black eye?

Yes, when you’re looking for how to keep your skin looking young, you can come across a lot of options that require significant recovery time. After all, most of us don’t want to face the world with a swollen face or black eye. But did you know you have options with little to no downtime?

At Epiphany, we’ve found that you don’t always need a long recovery to keep your skin looking young. Here’s how to keep your skin looking young without significant downtime.

How to Keep Your Skin Looking Young At Home

Young-looking skin starts with an effective daily skin regimen. Your daily routine is your first line of defense. When people take good care of their skin at home, it shows. Here’s what you should be doing at home to keep your skin at its best.

Retinol

Everyone should be using retinol — whether you’re 9 or 99. It helps with acne, diminishes fine lines and wrinkles, and gives your skin an overall better texture and sheen. It’s the fountain of youth in a bottle.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C is another at-home must-have. Apply a topical vitamin C daily to reap the benefits of the antioxidants and up your collagen production. Collagen is our body’s best tool for keeping our skin healthy — the more we produce, the better.

Sunscreen

Sunscreen isn’t anything new or fun — but it’s essential. Apply sunscreen to your face each morning — even if the only time you’ll see the sun is through a window. Sunscreen adds a layer of protection to our skin to protect us from harmful rays, indoors and out.

Related: How to Choose the Best Sunscreen for Your Skin

How to Keep Your Skin Looking Young With In-Office Treatments

Sometimes we need a little more than daily products to keep our skin looking young and fresh. Fortunately, your dermatologist has preventative and corrective treatments that enhance your skin even more.

Chemical Peels

Chemical peels are a perfect first step for in-office skincare treatments. No, that doesn’t mean you’ll look like Sam on Sex and the City when she burned her face off. That’s not what happens from a legit chemical peel.

Don’t let chemical peels scare you — they are a preventative step suitable for everyone. Different types of chemical peels use different strengths of acid to address different concerns. There are some peels that just give you a slight glow and other peels where you have to keep Vaseline on your face for a few days for complete healing.

As you explore your options, realize that some chemical peel options come with no downtime, while others require a little bit of recovery. Your dermatologist can help you select the right chemical peel for your needs.

Neuromodulators

If you’re looking to prevent wrinkles (especially the dreaded forehead line!), consider a neuromodulator such as Botox, Dysport, or Xeomin. By now, we all know that treatments like Botox are used to correct wrinkles, but many people forget they’re also a preventive measure against future lines and wrinkles.

When injected, these products lessen muscle movement — and less muscle movement means fewer wrinkles. See, the wrinkle exists because the muscle is crunching and moving in the same ways repeatedly. That movement causes a crease in the skin. If we can lessen the movement early, we prevent the line from forming.

Compare that to someone who’s looking to make their lines go away. If you’re 55 and trying to get rid of a line you’ve had since you were 25, it will take a lot more work. We’ll have to give you more Botox and probably use laser treatments to iron out the line that’s been there for the past 30 years. 

Dermal Fillers

When the face ages, people start to get the marionette and smile lines around the mouth and lines under their tear trough. Those lines appear because we lose fat in our faces as we age. Dermal fillers help us correct the volume loss. When we fill those areas back up, you start to look like you did ten years ago.

Remember, dermal fillers can be a correction, not an augmentation. Some patients are concerned about looking like they had an augmentation. We hear, “I don’t want to look like Kim Kardashian” — dermal fillers don’t always do that. That’s an augmentation.

When we use fillers to correct, it’s a way to keep the volume in your face. And, if you start early to prevent major volume loss, you’ll find it’s much less expensive to buy one syringe of filler to prevent a loss in fullness than the five syringes you might need if you wait until the damage is done.

Lasers

IPL is our most popular laser treatment. Intense Pulse Light treatments, or photofacials, are used to treat age spots and broken blood vessels. Keeping your skin clear of sun marks is one of the best ways to keep the skin looking young. Instead of layering on the makeup to cover up the brown spot on your cheek that you hate or those broken blood vessels, get them treated and removed. IPL can do that without much recovery time.

Laser resurfacing is another treatment option. This type of treatment focuses on tightening skin, shrinking pores, diminishing wrinkles, fading scars, and improving the overall age appearance of your skin. With resurfacing, you have two options: ablative and non-ablative. Ablative resurfacing cuts or breaks the skin resulting in about two weeks of recovery on average. Plus, it comes with the risk of hyperpigmentation.

Non-ablative resurfacing is the option with minimal downtime. This type of resurfacing causes a burn to your dermis but leaves your epidermis intact. There’s no breaking of the skin, so recovery is minimal. You may have mild swelling for a day or two, but otherwise should be able to proceed as usual. Non-ablative resurfacing gives the results of the ablative resurfacing but without the risk, recovery time, or pain involved with the ablative resurfacing treatment.

No matter how you choose to keep your skin looking young, don’t underestimate the importance of following through at home with skincare. By cleansing, moisturizing, and applying sunscreen, retinol, and vitamin C daily, you’ll see more enhanced, long-lasting results of your in-office procedures. You invested in yourself — now it’s time to maintain your young, healthy skin.