How To Use Azelaic Acid For Best Results || Demonstration | Dr Sam Bunting

So it's my favorite

acid

and it's almost always on my list of ingredients that I recommend, but it's still not as well known as I would like, although I'm working on it. It's

azelaic

acid

and it's so important that I would do it. Let's say it's an essential part of my daily clinical practice because it's so versatile and beneficial, but it's gotten off to a slow start and it's really only in the last few years that it's started to appear in over-the-counter products and of course now there's a I'm in a hurry. for getting the

azelaic

acid out and becoming more well-known, so today I wanted to answer some of the questions that I keep getting direct messages about on Instagram, so it seems that despite being more and more well-known, it's still not fully understood how to do it .

Use it to get the most out of it, so today I want to get to the bottom of this and give you all the tips and tricks that I consider essential to my practice and I speak from experience as someone who has used azolic acid on their skin for over a decade it is essential to me because it helps with my tendency to redness my tendency to breakouts it is great for texture it is a great antioxidant there are really very few things that I think it doesn't help with when it comes to my skin but In terms of whether it is suitable for you, let me go over the situations in which I commonly recommend it to my patients.

First, like I said, it's great for breakout-prone skin, so it has some of those poor clearing benefits that you find with a retinoid and it's certainly a real hero when it comes to treating sensitive skin that such Maybe you can't tolerate retinoids because it helps normalize keratinization, basically preventing those pesky little comedones from forming, so that's the first case and I find it really essential for skin prone to breakouts during pregnancy. particularly in that first trimester, where the skin can be very stormy, it is essential for the treatment of rosacea and I think this is probably the most important topical because not only does it help calm the acute inflammatory phase of rosacea, but it really helps to reach the core. of the rosacea problem by reducing that overzealous inflammatory response to our environment, so in the long term, the skin I think is the most likely to reduce the progression of rosacea, so it is really useful in prone skin to redness and I certainly found that that has been the case with mine, so it is also useful on skin prone to pigmentation and in melasma because it inhibits the effect of tyrosinase which limits the step in melanin production and again it is useful In pregnancy, where melasma is so common, where else?

We use imperial dermatitis where the skin is in that delicate, uncomfortable state that little bumps appear here and here sometimes in response to skin care sometimes just one of those things is acne it's rosacea it's probably somewhere in between but again it's really useful um and like I said it's a good antioxidant it's good for texture so it also has anti aging properties so really the question is when is it not useful so let's look at a

demonstration

of how I use it in my morning routine skin care and how we do it. integrating it into the rest of our routine so that it melts perfectly, so let me show you how I use azelaic acid.

I'm going to do my morning routine with it, so I'm going to use the flawless and glowing serum that's 10 percent. Azoleic acid, which is the highest concentration before we get into the prescription space of 15 and 20, is now a pretty typical consistency for an azaleic acid product and in terms of where it goes in the routine, so I have clear skin. , it's just dry it now and if you were using vitamin C as well, I put vitamin C in first, but I'm going to use this just because it has a little bit of extra scoring glycoside and if you're also using something like niacinamide, that can work anywhere on your routine because it penetrates the skin very easily, so I would tend to use it after a product with asylic acid, you can easily find it in moisturizers and even sunscreens, this already contains five percent niacinamide, but if you are just using a Serum Pure azolic acid, for example common or Paul's, feel free to apply niacinamide after, so if you are using a simple oleic acid serum, vitamin C before niacinamide after, I would not use any other acid along with the acid Azelaic. and I wouldn't tend to use benzoyl peroxide in addition to azolic acid.

I would be in one situation or another if you are prone to acne so if I had spots I would use benzoyl peroxide on the spot and then I might use azolic acid on the rest of my face so that brings me to the dosage and I think it's very important to get into the habit of dosing all actives like oleic acid, including oleic acid, so I teach patients to use the fingertip, which is the distance from the crease to the tip of the finger when dosing their active, so With this one the pump makes it easy, of course, but if you are using a tube it is the same, you must get used to visualizing what you are using to be consistent.

Use it daily or on an alternate daily basis while using it, so half a pump is about half a fingertip or a large pea, however you want to picture it in your head, but I'm going to use a full fingertip, which is a line as long as from the crease to the end or approximately three centimeters long, so it is enough to treat an entire face. Do you need to treat the entire face? I would say yes, I treat azelaic acid the same way I would a retinoid in that case. You can get benefits from using it all over your skin, so even if you're only prone to acne on the lower part of your face or just have a little bit of perial dermatitis and are treating rosacea, which primarily occurs on the middle part of your the face, you should know that Azolic acid will give you additional benefits for your skin beyond treating the problem because it improves texture, improves luminosity, decreases pigmentation and is a good antioxidant, so you really won't lose out and I think that It's a bit of a fail not to. get those lovely benefits all over your skin, you don't just want to lessen the problem, you want to improve the overall appearance of your complexion with what I call enhanced field shift, so when it comes to dosing your skin correctly for field shift, That's when I implement the 13 point technique for you, those of you who are not familiar with it.

It's where I use a small amount spread evenly all over my face, so I'm going to do three dots on my forehead, three per cheek and then four final ones two on the chin two on the nose this is just dosing the face then I'll take the rest, I'll apply it evenly on my fingertips and then move it over the skin and it basically guarantees that you get a nice even layer on the problem with just treating the problem areas is that you often end up feeling too much product and then you run into problems of irritation.

You know these ingredients are powerful and punchy and you don't want to overtreat them because then your skin gets irritated, dry, maybe a little sore and the next thing you know you have to skip a couple of days, you get discouraged and you're done. abandoning and we don't want that, so I'm massaging you carefully but thoroughly. so I treat all surfaces of my face evenly, making sure to go over the nose where you want to get that nice poor cleansing effect and you know it's almost there so I'm going to give it another minute but that's essentially a massage so firm until it is completely absorbed wait a minute or two the whole process takes about three minutes and then you are good to move on to the next layer and just like retinoids I am very careful not to get into the brow bone , so I don't treat the eye area, it doesn't really have any benefits that are particularly helpful for the eye area and of course it can irritate and I don't get too close to the lip so I stay away from the vermilion border , so that's It's very important to put it in the right place, don't let it build up on the sides of your nose, in the crease, because that's a place where the product can build up and naturally it's prone to getting a little bit left. dry and flaky, and the following. you know your makeup is sticking your sunscreen isn't blending evenly so it almost clears that area and you can basically increase your use of azelaic acid, I often say start every other day especially if you're in the sensitive skin brigade , so do you know that you have sensitive skin or that you have rosacea or perial dermatitis or that you are prone to eczema?

So start every other day with the half-a-finger amount I mentioned, but you can increase it up to twice a day. with a full amount on the fingertip depending on the situation, so during pregnancy for example I will have my acne patients use it twice a day, the same for my rosacea patients and even in the context of melasma during pregnancy again, twice a day is ideal at once. when you can't use retinoids and if you use it at night, it can be incorporated into the product that you use, many times you will use a retinoid and now there are some products that include night serum that combine a retinoid and aselic acid.

Personally, I don't usually recommend azolic acid as a separate step if you're using something like tretinoin or even retinol where the preparation hasn't been combined into a single formulation, so if that's the case, use your retinoid at night and continue using it. . azolic acid in the morning alone, so that's my hyper detailed and comprehensive guide on using azelaic acid. It is one of my favorite active ingredients. I want you to make the most of it because it is very versatile and well tolerated by sensitive skin. and all those tricky, rosacea-prone, payroll dermatitis, acne-sensitive skin types, so let me know if there's anything I haven't covered in terms of its use.

I hope that was all and that it answered all the questions I received on social media about it. It is a wonderful active ingredient and I hope you enjoy using it. Goodbye for now.