“Live” Chat Archives

We look forward to seeing you tonight at 8:30 p.m. for ‘Age Proof Your Skin’ with Dr. Elizabeth Arthur!

Hello everyone! Welcome to ‘Age Proof Your Skin’, the first of its kind LIVE CHAT event with Helendale Dermatology & Medical Spa!

I want to thank you for joining us this evening!

A couple of tips before we get started…

Please feel free to submit your questions throughout the event. You can enter a question in the space provided at the bottom of the Live Chat window. (with or without your name) You will see the questions posted once they are published during my response.

For questions on the same topic, I will try to encapsulate the answers to cover all.

At the end of the event, I will post a promo code for you to use to obtain your $10 off coupon for joining us!

hi shari, thanks for joining! those small bumps are actually “normal” but highly annoying. Sometimes topical vit A is great, whether with or with out glycolic acid. This retexturizes the skin. Microderm is also great!

home microderm is not the same as the office procedure. the office procedure involves either crystals or a diamond “grit” as well as some topical solutions that are infused in the skin. sometimes home micro derm…a misleading name…can actually irritate the skin. and yes, it works for our nemesis the white head!

eyelids can be tough wanda! sometimes surgery is the only thing that will work if you have exessive skin. the DOT laser is great at tightening that skin up. Jill my nurse practioner does a “madonna lift” that does work great if surgery is not the answer.

blonde fine hair is very hard to get rid of. generally speaking any laser and electrolysis are only temporary at removing this problem. usually i recommend waxing or a dipilatory such as sally ahnson/nair. our new epidermal plaing procedure takes it off great, but it will come back.

dysport and botox are very similar although each has in nuances…we mostly use botox in our practice. botox is the best for the 11′s, although “frownies” do help. we usually don’t use too many fillers in this area.

amy. are you there?! i hope so!

lasers are great. they all do something different, there’s no one laser for all or one size…we use a vbeam to get rid of the red, sometimes to stimulate collagen in a nonablative fashion…also use the DOT, which is a fractionated CO2 laser to tighten and get rid of dark spots. I’ve had personally all the laser in the office, to improve different things. not everyone has broken vessels tho!

there’s no one product that does everything…but that being said…one of the more complete produsts out there is skin medica’s tns essential serum. it has vit c, antioxidants, growth factors, skin brighteners…add some topical vit A and +/- some glycolic acid and you’ve got eveything covered. plus it’s all in one container!

one, we want to make sure that the skin is healthy. we either do that wilth products to turn the cells over, or with the DOT laser. then we can define the lip line with a filler like juvederm or restylane…but nothing worse than good lips and bad skin!!

botox is great for the lines on your forehead! and the pigemtation…that’s usually easy…we need a combo of a skin brightner (hydroquinine, l arbutine or kojic acid), some topical vit A, and some glycolic acid…but a great sun block! sometimes light peels or microderm are recommeded also.

i encourage people to start when they start seeing the lines staying after they’ve come in from the sun, when they wake up, etc. there’s prob not use for “preventative” botox…

soemtimes karen you do have to remove it! faces are easy…necks are hard. faces can be tightened with lasers, fillers and collagen stimulators such as sculptra. necks can’t be tightened unless you “pull” the skin with a lift.

fuller lashes are easy with latisse! it works in everyone and allergan is almost always running promos on the product. it works on the brows also. we know that as we get older, out lashes and borws become lighter, thinner and our lashes shorter…believe or not…this change in lashes makes a huge differenc in the way we look. amy k at out office does great permanent makeup for perm eyeliner and eyebrows.

hyperpigementation needs the trifeca of glycolic, topical vit A and some sort of brightner like hydroquinine…sometimes peels and micorderm are also needed. oh yes…a great sunblock is paramount!

once the capillaries are ther usually we have to use the vbeam laser. most patients only need 1-2 treatments of this. the procedure is usually 200 $ per session. skin medica has a great new “moisturizer” that’s very smart for stabalizing the vessels called calmplex…patients have loved it so far.

those are prob seborrheic keratosis, early ones. sometimes the retin A will partially treat them…and you need either jen or i to freeze the rest of them off!

age spots can be treated with a bightening system of the “trifecta products” or the DOT laser works great, along with tightening the collagen. I had the DOT done after my son was born to get rid of all the pigementation adn it was great!

the skin doesn’t have a harsh reaction, but the skin will generally ” peel” after a medium strentgh peel…like a sunburn, but NOT painful!

for rosace, we usually recommended a sun block, that’s chemical free. containing zinc oxide or titanium only.

sometimes if we can soften the chin with botox, those lines will also soften. we can put botox around the mouth to help with the “smoker” lines that develop in all of us

the madonna lift is usually 2-3 treatments with the DOT laser around the eyes. it opens the eye area, making it look younger. healing usually take 5-7 days…where you have peeilng skin. jill purupura my NP can talk to anyone about this if you want…

where a sunblock when you’re out and NEVER GO TO A TANNING BED!

accountability. our products at the office have studies and more importantly they have ME. if you’re not happy, i’m not happy. the clerk in wegmans doesn’t have any responsibilty for your skin. the fda allows companies to put “anti-aging” on their products if it contains a sunscreen…i doubt your co-workers claims…otherwise it wouldn;t be in walmart…

thanks cythia. usually we can VBEAM laser keloids and improve them greatly…it will still be there, but should look better. a second shot might be owrth it tho.

not really anything new for spider veins, soemtimes they super resistant. sorry lynn!

yes, sometimes a combo of botox in the neck and along the jaw, along with maybe some fillers can do wonders. i put botox along my upper neck to make my jaw better looking and it helps immensely. coem in for a consult and we will be honest if we can help.

i would agree personally

good sunblock, COMMON SENSE, a great vit C topically, some topical antioxidants that’s got most of your bases covered. glycolic acid is a wonderful very economical way to take care of your skin.

u may need allergy testing or you may have sun damage. let’s take a look.

slik peels, or wet microderm are great throughout your life. they keep the skin cells engaged into normal behavior…like the rest of our body, our skin will get lazy…we need to keep them awake!!!

We are just about out of time for this event. I want to thank everyone who has participated in this event tonight.

We appreciate your business and having you as clients of Helendale Dermatology.

PROMO DETAILS: The promo code for the $10 coupon is HEALTHYSKIN10. To obtain your $10 coupon, please send an email to

Trish at trishh@helendalederm.com. Put in the subject line HEALTHYSKIN10 and provide your mailing address.

Coupons will be sent directly to you!

Thank you again for your participation. I hope that you enjoyed this event.

We will be sending out a survey this week and would appreciate your feedback!

Have a great night!

I will be posting answers to all the ?’s that I didn’t get to! Thanks to everyone. This was great.

I will answer ALL the remaining questions tomorow…as my daughter is snoring very loudly next to me…check back tomorow here at this link. We will also post this session on our website. Thanks so much again!!!

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the bumps on the outer portion of the arms where your triceps are…that’s keratosis pilaris. this occurs in prob close to 80% of caucasians. glycolic acid i high concentrations (glytone makes a KP kit-17.5% unbuffered glycolic acid) or even lactic acid in lower concentrations will help control. no cure for it…just control. i hope this is what you were asking about?!

neck skin is almost impossible to tighten to any degree without surgery. faces can be “tightened” with lasers that stimulate collagen such as the DOT, lasers that lift such as thermage and refirm, and fillers and sculptra (both injectable products)

usually we use filler around those areas to soften the lines. the key is too soften them, not try to totally erase them. if we chase some lines around the mouth area too much…people will have a mouth area that’s too full and they look very ape-ish…and obviously that’s not the look that any of us would want. both jill and i are very aware of “over-filling” people…

the “madonna lift” is a name for the DOT laser around the eyes. it usually entails 2-3 treatments. downtime is usually aaround 4-7 days. during this downtime your skin is brown and peeling, but not painful. the laser itself feels “hot” while it’s being done…but it’s very fast. we do use eyeshields and a topical anesthetic cream is applied before the procedure.

fillers last different amounts in different people, and last different amounts of time in different areas of the face. generally speaking lips will the shortest amount of time, where as a nasolabial fold might last a year or two in some people. we try not to recommend fillers based on how long they will last, but what would be the appropriate one for the person and the area that’s involved. jill and i are very honest about what’s your best interest and your best value. we have no allegance to one product so it’s not like everyone gets one thing.

no we don’t. i’m not sure that i buy the whole ultrasound thing yet. we used to use ultrasound to break up fluid after liposuction. not sure that it really changes collagen enough or creates enough heat to “lift” skin. there are a few reputable people that offer this…so maybe there is something to it…time will tell! if it’s good, we will have it!

we need a good balanced diet to obtain all those nutrients and vitamins to keep collagen, blood vessels, etc. happy. Excessive vitamins orally can have problems. I take a daily extra D, fish oil, and extra B. vit E orally is out of “style”. Kale is a great source of A orally. Everything else I try to get from a diet that comes from nature.

botox in the neck is great for some patients. what is does is it relaxes the platysma bands that can cause the longitudianl ridging of the neck. horizontal lines are impossible to get rid of. necks and chests are more sensitive, but we do still use products on them. the same applies…topical vitamin A, antioxidants, sunblock, etc.

we would use the VBEAM laser, usually 1-2 treatments, sometimes more if they’re extensive. skinmedica has a new cream called calmplex that stabalizes the vessels better than anything we’ve ever had before.

sure…you are what you eat?!! we have a magnet on the fridge here that then says…”that makes me cheap and fast”…no seriously. foods that nature gives us are so much better for us. great skin foods…avocados, nuts, salmon, water, berries. anything that’s high in antioxidants and that is full of good fats!

try to get her to stop scratching at them form the get go. anti itch lotions (sarna, our pramasone, cortaid) will help. then if she’s picked the skin off, apply something like cetaphil cream or plosporin and keep the areas moist and covered. a dry scab will always heal worse than a moist one.

yes, it does!

i personally love toners. there’s some great ones for rosacea patients. my personal favorite is phytomer’s eau marine with rosemary. the last thing you want tho is alot of alcohol or witch hazel.

it can vary. on average in NYS it runs about 100-110 per bottle. my bottle usually lasts 8 weeks. allergan usually runs promos. they’ve done 40$ off, buy one get one free. petition your representatives to let md’s sell it…it would be cheaper! NYS is one of 5 states that it has to be a script. most pysicians sell it in CA for 75 or less per bottle. allergan’s promos can prob be found with “lash perks” at latisse.com. right now we have a 40$ off coupon.

it depends on the persons skin type, the lesions quality. sometimes it takes a few times!

stay out of the sun and probably the obagi nuderm system. come by and look at carol, my assistant’s hands…they’re spotless!

it stings…not so bad tho!

we do try to use products there. obagi make a neck product just for that, TNS essential serum was sctually just written up for that purpose. sometimes will put a smidge of botox in the crinkles to settle them down. we can do the DOT laser on the chest, we have to do a lighter energy, so sometimes it takes more than 1 treatment.

self tanners and spray tans are perfectly safe. the “dye” has been around for ages and literally just stains the skin…so no problems. just exfolaite super well before hand and make sure to wash your hands after applying!

topical vit A’s (retin A, etc.) and glycolic acid chemically exfolaite your skin…so “scrubbing” isn’t really needed. a light gommage…i mean light…can brighten the skin up. scrubbing the skin with some apricot scrub or a home microderm kit prob does nothing for the anti aging routine.

thanks again everyone-your questions were awesome!!