Dark Spot Treatments: Products I Love for Melasma & Hyperpigmentation | Skincare with @Susan Yara
if you’ve been following me for a while you’ll know that melasma and hyperpigmentation in general are some of my biggest skin issues and i know it affects a lot of you so today we’re going to talk about products that treat hyperpigmentation over the last few years i have been using so many products and so many ingredients to help fade my hyperpigmentation my melasma specifically melasma is a little bit different than your typical hyperpigmentation because it is induced mostly from either uv rays or from hormones for me it’s been mostly hormones because it’s been due to my two pregnancies that i also breastfed for and everything so it really just messed with my hormones but hyperpigmentation in general can really affect a lot of us especially people that have darker skin tones you can get hyperpigmentation from simply just you know picking out one of your pimples or even if you just let your pimple heal on its own it can still leave a dark mark and then you get this post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation so a lot of the time people are looking for ways to stop the dark marks i’m constantly looking for those ingredients in those treatments that will really just help fade all of the dark spots and even if it’s melasma or just a different type of hyperpigmentation we are looking for all of the same things essentially so let’s start with a product you’ve heard me speak about a lot over the years and that’s the ren ready steady glow daily aha tonic this is one of my favorite toners mostly because you get a lot of different benefits from it you’re getting exfoliation you’re getting the brightening but it also helps to fade your hyperpigmentation your melasma and the way that it does that is it has a combination of different chemical exfoliators in it so it has lactic acid in it which is very hydrating but also very gentle it also has willow bark in it which is a form of salicylic acid which is also great to unclog your pores but then it has one of my all-time favorite ingredients and that is azoleic acid all of these ingredients in combination are just great for exfoliating your skin but azelaic acid specifically has so many brightening and skin boosting properties to it and benefits it’s an ingredient that i think everyone should have on their radar and it took me the longest time to figure out why it was that i loved this ren ready steady glow tonic so much more than other exfoliating toners and that’s because of the azaleic acid in it if you haven’t used this before it’s really easy to add into your skincare routine you just cleanse your skin and then i like to put it on a cotton pad and swipe it over my skin next up the vichy peptide c anti-aging ampoules these are vitamin c ampules and i’ve been a fan of these for a while mostly because they’re very straightforward they’re very hydrating for the skin and you get pure l-ascorbic acid you guys know i’m a big fan of vitamin c it’s one of my favorite brightening ingredients but one of the things that we hear about with vitamin c ascorbic acid specifically is that it’s not very stable so what i really like about these is that the ingredient list is very straightforward it’s just hydrating you get 10 ascorbic acid in it you get the bichi mineral water in here to really help soothe your skin and then you also have peptides and hyaluronic acid in here so it’s a very very straightforward product and because it comes in ampules it all stays fresh the way i like to use them is i pop one open and i put the little applicator the plastic applicator on top of it and that will last you about 48 hours i get about three uses from each of the ampoules you just put a little bit into your hand like a serum and you pat it into your skin and then you’re good to go one thing though i want to point out about vitamin c is that vitamin c is just an all-around skin brightening kind of ingredient i don’t think this is going to be the workhorse ingredient that really just targets your hyperpigmentation or your melasma and you know goes to town on it this is the ingredient that just gives you that beautiful glow to your skin so that’s something to keep in mind i think a lot of people think it’s going to fade all of their melasma and their hyperpigmentation and it will definitely help that but this is an add-on ingredient in my opinion that just really benefits every skin type to get that glow next up is this it’s by skin medica it is their 2.
0 lytera pigment correcting serum so this was a gift actually from my esthetician vanessa hernandez she knows that i have dealt with hyperpigmentation melasma for a very long time she’s been working on my skin for years and she recommended this to me and when she recommended it to me i was actually breastfeeding still and she was like you can definitely use this on your skin you’re going to like it the main ingredient is tranexamic acid this has a combination of ingredients that are you know really good at stopping hyperpigmentation and melasma the main ingredients are tranexamic acid which is the tyrosinase inhibitor which means that it stops that production of the melanin that causes the hyperpigmentation and that’s why it makes it a very very good ingredient for people that have hyperpigmentation and melasma specifically tranexamic acid is actually an amino acid derivative so it’s not an exfoliating acid it works in a whole different way but this has lots of other ingredients besides tranexamic acid that really target that melanin that causes the hyperpigmentation there’s niacinamide in here there’s also a tetrapeptide blend in here so all of it just helps to balance your skin tone make your skin look brighter and stop the hyperpigmentation it’s a really wonderful ingredient the only thing i will say is that sometimes it does give my skin a little bit of a tingle to it when i put it on and i’m not sure what ingredient causes that and remember that’s very specifically to me and the other thing i’ll point out is this is pretty pricey to use but when i was using this this definitely worked well on my skin another product that i think is really great that has tranexamic acid in it is this one from skinceuticals this is their discoloration defense this is also serum what i really like about this is the combination of the different ingredients so it has tranexamic acid in it it has kojic acid in it it has other skin brightening ingredients along with niacinamide i think that skinceuticals can be very pricey but i feel like a lot of their products are just really great products and they’re very known to be effective and this is one that i’ve had really good results with next up is this one from my line deuterium it’s the alpha r button serum two percent if you haven’t heard me talk about this already i am obsessed with alpha arbutin it’s like the alternative to hydroquinone the way i like to think of it is you know if you don’t want to use tretinoin the prescription strength retinoid you like to go with retinol so this is the same kind of way to think about this is if you don’t want to use hydroquinone you go with this the way that it works is when you put it on your skin it then converts to hydroquinone so it’s a much more gentle way of getting the benefits of it so what this does is it helps to fade the discoloration in your skin so when you have melasma when you have hyperpigmentation alpha arbutin really helps to fade it the other thing that i really like about alpha arbutin is that you can use lots of other active ingredients this is not an exfoliator this is not going to be very strong on your skin in my opinion so i like to use this daily because it really is just very easy to use in my skincare routine and i don’t have to worry about what else i’m using i in fact like to use it in combination with lots of other hyperpigmentation products because in in conjunction with other products it works very well our serum also has niacinamide in it and hyaluronic acid in it so it’s also just very hydrating and very soothing and strengthening for the skin if you deal with pih specifically post inflammatory hyperpigmentation usually it’s from you know like if you get pimples and then it leaves a dark spot or something like that then this is a very interesting product for you it’s by zitstika this is their hyper fade micro dart blur patch for dark spots it makes sense that this sticker came out with this because they also have their killer kit which is specifically for those really deep painful pimples that you want to get rid of this is like the next step after that when you get the hyperpigmentation these are little patches that you put specifically on your dark spots and it helps to fade them if you don’t know about like the micro dart technology they have these little microscopic darts on the end of them and it helps to get the active ingredients to penetrate into your skin a little bit more but this is very very targeted for your pih some of the ingredients in here are tranexamic acid there is licorice root extract there is nice cinnamide in here there’s just this wonderful blend of ingredients that really help to target hyperpigmentation so i love the concept of these the thing to know about these little patches is that your pimple has to be 100 gone for this to work so you really do treat your pimple first when it’s gone and you have the dark spot that’s left over then you use your little micro dart patch and then last i love this product from allies of skin this is their 1a retinol and peptides overnight mask this feels a little bit more like a moisturizer for me and i use it kind of in that way if there’s one ingredient that i think everyone should have in their skincare routine whether you are fighting hyperpigmentation or melasma or acne or just aging anything that you want to fight in your skincare routine you have to have some type of retinoid and retinaldehyde which is the main ingredient in this one is really interesting to me because it is a precursor to retinoic acid which means that it’s just going to take one conversion to get to retinoic acid which is like your tretinoin so it’s still a little bit more gentle than tretinoin but it’s that one step before you get to it so it’s a really strong ingredient and it’s a product that’s going to work for your skin but you’re not going to get as much irritation as you would get with prescription strength tretinoin you know if you look at the ingredients list on this retinaldehyde isn’t the top ingredient there are lots of other hydrating ingredients in here there are antioxidants in here there are some brightening ingredients in it there are peptides in it it’s a wonderful blend and it feels nice on your skin you can use it on your own after you cleanse your skin or you can use it as your moisturizer so you can put on all of your other hyperpigmentation fading ingredients and then you can top it with this which is what i really like about it and then last but probably the most important type of product to have in your skincare routine if you have melasma or hyperpigmentation is your sunscreen this is by crave this is the beet shield you’ve heard me talk about this so many times this is a wonderful wonderful sunscreen it is spf 50 here in the us they have to call it an antioxidant day fluid but in korea it is considered an spf 50 and it is broad spectrum one of the things that i like about this for people that have hyperpigmentation is that it has vitamin c in it so it’s also very brightening for the skin it protects your skin and if you deal with hyperpigmentation that is the thing that you need the absolute most is to protect your skin because the sun and uv rays are really what caused the hyperpigmentation to get out of hand so even if you are treating it with all of these other ingredients if you don’t have a sunscreen in your skincare routine it doesn’t even matter you should just give up you really should because this is truly the thing that’s going to help prevent it and stop it from looking worse so those are some products i have used to treat my melasma and hyperpigmentation tell me in the comments below the products that you have used or if you’ve tried any of these and love them or maybe even hated them find me on instagram i’m at susan yara and i’ll talk to you soon bye
