Hey friends! Today is a bit of an update on how I am finally address the melasma on my forehead that was incredibly stubborn and simply not going away with “over the counter” skincare and even tretinoin alone. Sometimes you just need to head to a professional to get some help. While I pride myself on being able to address most of my skin issues myself, this one was just not going away no matter what I tried. I am super happy to have found something that is really making a difference. Do you deal with melasma? What brings yours on? Do you know your triggers?
Hey guys it’s melanie happy monday welcome back i hope you had a fantastic weekend so today i wanted to share with you how i finally am getting read actually getting rid of the melasma on my forehead i do have some before and um i guess almost after pictures there’s still a little tiny bit there but um i feel like within about a month or a month and a half it’s
Going to be completely gone based on how quickly i’ve gotten rid of it with this specific product that i’ve been using so um melasma can be certainly a very frustrating condition for a lot of people um i was lucky in that up until probably like the last few years of my life i’ve never really dealt with it i did not deal with melasma during my pregnancy with my
Daughter um in fact my skin actually looked pretty great during my pregnancy i didn’t feel super great but my skin was like yeah we like these hormones but um yeah in recent years i have started noticing some melasma on my forehead and it was incredibly stubborn um it can be caused by a whole host of different things hormonal sun damage pregnancy which i guess is
Model um but yeah there’s there’s different triggers for different people and my melasma was not awful i was it was actually quite easy for me to cover it up with my makeup and i just used powder foundation but it was frustrating because as you guys are aware if you watch my videos pretty regularly i am super diligent about my skincare routine i am on tretinoin i
Have been for several years now um i use a lot of different ingredients that should have ideally um made the melasma better and here’s here’s kind of i guess like the moral of my story me wanting to do this video is that sometimes you can buy all of the right products for from over the counter so things that you can buy at ulta at the drugstore at sephora wherever
You buy your skin care there’s a whole host of things to choose from right there’s retinols there’s vitamin c there’s um niacinamide there’s transamic acid like glycolic acids all sorts of wonderful over-the-counter skin care and i use a lot of that and you guys know that if you to watch my videos but no matter what i did no matter what i tried even with my
Prescription tretinoin it was not getting rid of the melasma on my forehead and mine was really interesting because it presented as like bands across my forehead and when i wasn’t wearing makeup they were quite obvious so i wear makeup most days so that’s fine but i just wanted for myself and it is a very like this is not a necessity in life like i didn’t have to
Get rid of this melasma it wasn’t destroying my life in any kind of way but it was just something where i thought i really that kind of annoys me because my when i look in the mirror it’s what i see it’s not necessarily what other people saw when they looked at me it’s not the first thing that they maybe noticed but it bugged me right so i’m always of the mindset
That if something bothers you and you can do something about it you should do it so for years i was trying all sorts of different skin care which made a wonderful impact on the rest of my face like i’m really pleased with the way that my skin looks um but none of those things ever touched the melasma really um and so finally a few months ago when i went into the
Dermatologist to have my yearly mole check um for skin cancer which super important if you’re not doing that you should be doing that especially if you are someone who grew up in the 70s 80s 90s and you regularly i don’t know maybe roasted slow roasted yourself on a trampoline covered in baby oil that’s what i did in the 90s and i’m sure that a lot of the damage
On my face is it’s from that time right like you ruin your skin and your youth and it really shows up once you hit like your late 30s and into your 40s listen things change a lot when you get into your 40s i hate to be the bearer of um i guess unfortunate news but you should work on preventative things if you are a little bit earlier on in life um protect your
Skin from the sun number one is what i would say but yeah um you know there’s there’s all sorts of things that i did and my youth that really weren’t great for my skin and now i’m paying the price and i do think that probably the melasma that i had popping up on my forehead was probably just prior damage coming through that’s what my dermatologist hypothesized
Anyway so when i went in i was like okay so while i’m here can i just ask can you think of anything that would get rid of the melasma on my forehead he was like oh yeah i’ve kind of been waiting for you to like ask about it because he actually made a note of it in my chart the last time and he was like i’m i was surprised that you didn’t ask for anything to but
He’s also not the type to like pressure you to like do things to yourself which is great which is why i see this particular dermatologist he was like i can give you a prescription um it does contain hydroquinone which i do know a lot of people don’t wish to use hydroquinone and that’s um that’s okay you might have to find something else that works for you but it
Turns out that hydroquinone was the ingredient that i was missing to actually get rid of the melasma so my message to you before i tell you what my little formula is here and where i got it and all that stuff but my message to you is if you are trying everything possible to address a condition that you have on your face that really bothers you if you’re not getting
Anywhere with over-the-counter stuff you might need to go see a dermatologist i know that that’s probably like everybody’s least favorite thing to do because prescriptions can usually be pretty expensive although i was really impressed with the price point of this it was actually less than what i paid for a lot of the skin care that i’ve been using for years now
Um but yeah go and go and talk to your physician and there there are stronger ingredients that are prescription um that can be uh compounded for you this came from a compounding pharmacy and there’s a few other ingredients that they can mix in there to really make that main ingredient a lot more effective so um i received a prescription through a company called
Skin medicinals um i believe they’re based out of arizona i don’t know if that matters anyway so this was a compounded prescription that my dermatologist sent over to to skin medicinals and i paid them directly this was not something that the insurance covered for me just so you know but this particular prescription for a three-month supply cost me 45 dollars
I pay more for my sunday rally good jeans and good genes never while it really exfoliates my face beautifully and gives me the most gorgeous glow it never took care of the melasma lactic acid was not doing it for my melasma a lot of things were not doing it for over my melasma so my formula contains the following things so i have hydroquinone which is the main
Ingredient hydroquinone is known to actually be able to like it essentially bleaches your skin um there is also tretinoin in this formula there is kojic acid niacinamide as well as a this is actually a i believe it’s like a hydrocortisone type ingredient but it’s called flucasanol but it actually uh helps the other ingredients um work better in the formula that’s
Why they put it in there now i will say i was warned that i would experience quite a bit of dryness potentially with this formula some flaking some peeling i was very diligent about hydrating my skin and i was using this on my forehead pretty much almost every single night maybe one or two nights a week i would skip it and just use a really nice hydrator up there
Like a moisturizer but for the most part um the rest of my face from here down i was not using this there because i don’t need it i don’t have melasma anywhere else it was just on my forehead i would apply this um to just my bare skin and then i would go over with a hydrating serum after about 20 or 30 minutes and then also a moisturizer and i feel like that that
Really helped my four head look incredibly soft and smooth throughout this process i actually didn’t deal with like a ton of dryness um i don’t think that your skin has to look rough during this process with a prescription type product i think you just need to make sure that you are babying your skin otherwise and it really was so um this has really been the
Only thing that i’ve been using on my forehead and you guys i can barely see the lines now i’m wearing makeup right now obviously the pictures that i will show at the end the very first picture is a picture i think from maybe the beginning of this past year or possibly early last winter um like end of december time um and then the second picture is just from this
Morning and um you can really see that the lines are significantly reduced um pretty much i can go without wearing makeup i don’t most days because i like it it’s part of my routine it makes me feel good but um yeah you guys it’s it’s getting it’s getting rid of it and um all i had to do was finally admit that the over-the-counter stuff just wasn’t going to do it
I could have kept going and going but it was not addressing the melasma with the type of ingredient that my skin really needed to get rid of it now here’s the thing melasma can pop back up right like it is something that can certainly flare up and so from time to time i might need to go back to this to help fade it but for the most part i feel like um you know
There is a good chance that i will have a really good outcome at the end of the three month period by the way you can only use this particular product because of the hydroquinone for about three months then you have to take a break for several months and then you can do another round if you want to um i think it’s just kind of a harsh ingredient and they really
Don’t want you using it on any kind of long-term basis which i get uh so at the end of the three months i will certainly just just continue to go back to using my regular skin care hopefully it doesn’t pop back up but it might so that’s the thing to know as well but i know now all i have to do is do another course of this treatment and that’s what works biggest
Thing you need to be wearing spf and preferably a higher spf so on the days where i have been actively like working outside in the yard i’ve been using an spf 50 just on my forehead the rest of my face i usually just go in with the paula’s choice um spf 30 and that’s fine also on days where i’ve been working outside i’ve been wearing a hat to try to just protect
That area as much as possible the hydroquinone can make your skin a lot more sensitive so it can track no one so can the different acids in here so you do have to be careful but um yeah just go see your dermatologist if something isn’t working for you it’s okay to i guess admit defeat and to just go ask a professional for help because that’s what they’re there
For right so anyway if you yourself are dealing with melasma and you’ve tried everything um go and talk to your dermatologist ask them maybe what their preference is i all dermatologists are different i saw a different dermatologist about 10 years ago um you know she was not quite as proactive as my current dermatologist um she wasn’t as much into like the skin
Care aspect of things whereas the guy that i’m seeing now definitely is so um you know dermatologist if you follow any dermatologist over on tick tock or instagram there’s a lot of times where they’re giving you like some differing advice and you just have to connect with the people that um sort of i guess you feel the most comfortable with so that’s what i did
I’m really pleased with how things are looking over here and yeah hopefully this helps you if you if you need to go do the same thing um i will go ahead and pop in these before and after pictures for you so hopefully you can see kind of the bands that i’m talking about um like i said the second picture is just from this morning and they are just greatly greatly
Reduced like i would say probably more than 80 percent improved from what it was just um just over a month ago so big difference thank you guys so much for taking the time to watch today um i hope that you have a great rest of your week and subscribe if you’re new give this video a thumbs up if you found it helpful and i’ll see you in the next one take care
Transcribed from video
FINALLY Getting Rid Of My Melasma! What did I need to do???? By MrKongsMom