Welcome back to the Skin Actives blog everyone! We’re getting a little bit personal today, because I’m breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to you, the people that read this blog each week.

My name is Brendan, and I’ve been working at Skin Actives Scientific for well…a long time now. We won’t get into that. If you’re an avid reader of the blog you may recognize my name from posts going back to at least 2020.

The reason I’m addressing you today begins with a series of photographs. I’m sure this is not an uncommon experience. 

In November of 2021 I was a groomsman in one of my closest friend’s wedding. I was deeply honored to be there. It was a big production, tuxedos, a mansion, late night dancing, the whole nine yards. Of course I wanted to look my best, not just for myself or for my friend, but to pay respect to this gathering and to the institution that my friend and his bride committed to.

I was 42 at the time and, like many people, my self-image could be articulated as “I’m doing fine! Could be better, could be worse. I’m getting older, and that’s just the way it goes. That’s life!”

I continued thinking everything was fine until the pictures from the reception came back from the photographer. Yeah, that’s right. It wasn’t until the deed was done and I was going through processed photographs in a digital album that it occurred to me: I looked well…not great. I looked like I was 52 not 42 and it just wasn’t the best possible version of myself that I wanted to present.

“How did you let that happen?” I hear you saying, “You work for a skin care company!”

I know, right? It’s embarrassing.

So when I saw these pictures I knew something needed to change. This wasn’t about beauty. I didn’t need plastic surgery or something radical. I looked weary, haggered, and older than I felt at the time. It was time to step it up, it was time to get healthy.

So let’s explore my foibles together, and hopefully there will be something you can take from this yourself!

The Origin of the Challenges

Okay so here is some background:

The fact is that I used to take care of my skin pretty well. As we stated before, I work for a skin care company and this stuff is literally just laying around. At Skin Actives, they want us to use the product and they make it easy to get into our hands, so back in 2019 I had a pretty comprehensive skincare routine going on.

But then something changed. I noticed that I was getting small eczema flare ups in the area around my right eye. Now keep in mind that these blemishes were not very large at all, smaller than say the area of the bed of your pinkie nail, and more obtrusive to my eye than anyone else's. That’s what I thought anyway, until I took my girlfriend and I took my mother out to dinner one night. 

We met her at the restaurant and as soon as pleasantries are out of the way my mom goes, “So what’s wrong with your eye? You look like someone took a swing at you.” I mean, I can’t roll my eyes hard enough at the presentation here. 

My Mom’s an RN so I explain to her the situation. “Oh yeah, that’s eczema.” my mom says “It runs in the family. Your grandmother had it so bad they had to wrap her arms in gauze. I can show you pictures. She had the scars from it until the day that she died.”

This is, of course, the first time I’ve heard about any of this. Nice.

See, I’ve been struggling with this terrible skin flaking on my scalp for years at this point, decades. I always associated this with just dandruff and with really, me using the wrong products. So I had tried to deal with it a million different ways, shampoos, medicated shampoos, cold water, hot water, someone even convinced me for a while that I wasn’t brushing my hair hard enough and I needed to exfoliate my scalp with a boar bristle brush (which as it turns out, is actually pretty bad for you if eczema is the problem).

Meanwhile, the problem was beyond simple, embarrassing dandruff. I would get these incredible skin flakes along my hairline. It was terrible to look at and hard to remove. They would show up in the middle of the day apropos of nothing and I wouldn’t notice until I looked in a mirror. I started wearing baseball caps everywhere because I just didn’t know when a breakout like that was going to occur. 

Now, it seemed, the problem was moving down to the parts of my face that I couldn’t obscure with a hat.

That night I went home and researched eczema. What I found told me that my skin was probably flaring up because it was reacting to…something. Truth is the world doesn’t really fully understand eczema yet. So I discontinued everything.

Then COVID hit and well, I just never restarted.

Two years later and I was at a wedding looking like I was getting ready for retirement. My skin was dry and brittle. My eyes had bags under them. I felt older than ever and to make matters worse, I was still getting small eczema outbreaks. Stopping my skincare routine was for nothing.

It was time to make a change.

5 Tips to Upgrade Your Skin in 3 Months

Okay, so caveat number 1: It should be noted that I am not a healthcare professional. Nothing I say here is intended to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent any disease. This is my own personal testimonial and should be read as such.

Caveat number 2 is this: these are the results I obtained and are not necessarily the same as the results you will. If you are working with a doctor or have a skincare routine that is serving you, take what I say with a grain of salt.

Tip 1: Use the Right Cleanser - This tip really can’t be overstated. When I was a kid I had bad acne. I had to go to the dermatologist, be on prescription meds, the whole deal. So I just had this idea in my head that my skin was “oily”. So when I started working at Skin Actives Scientific I was all about our Salicylic Wash. It made my skin feel really dry and “tight” which I just associated with “clean”. But I was wrong, “tight” actually means, “too dry”. 

Now don’t get me wrong, our Sal Wash (as we call it behind the scenes here at SAS) is great, I would recommend it to anyone struggling with acne. It’s just not great for me anymore.

So for a long time I was actually overdrying my skin based on a misconception about my own biology. And as I’ve aged, my skin has become increasingly drier each passing year! When I restarted my skincare routine, I got over my fear of oil and started using our Skin Cleansing Oil. It cleanses while strengthening my skin with the lipids my face needs. No middle age breakouts and goodbye to that “tight” feeling.

Tip 2: Take Care of Your Eyes - This won’t come as a shock to anyone reading this, but your eyes are where you show your age. I started really noticing the aging around my eyes I guess at the end of last year. It sneaks up on you. When I was in my 30s I was taking great care of myself and got a lot of compliments; people boosting my ego telling me I looked younger than I was. That’s over! Now that I’m in my 40s I’m pretty sure everyone knows.

So it’s time for me to take care of the area around my eyes, and I really should have started sooner. You should take care of yours too! Triple Correction Eye Cream is a favorite of mine and an absolute go-to that I recommend to all my aging friends. It has a great texture and with our airless pump you can dispense only a little bit at a time, so a single bottle lasts just about forever. And my results have been great!

Tip 3: Start Using a Night Cream - I think it was after the Super Bowl this year that I started using our Vitamin A Cream. I was reading some funny Tweets and there was someone who said something to the effect of: “If you think Eminem performing at the Super Bowl was fresh, you need to start using a retinol cream.” And I was like, LOL! That is me. So I did. 

And what can I say, I love our Vitamin A Cream. Do you ever have a cream you just enjoy putting on? Vitamin A Cream has a beautiful color, and a nice texture. I put it on right before I go to sleep at night.

Tip 4: Start Thinking About Your Cell Health - I think about cell health a lot. I mean, I write this blog twice a week and we talk about it here at Skin Actives a lot. So when I kickstarted my skin routine back into action I wanted to make sure that my cell health was being addressed.

How? Collagen synthesis and dormant cell reactivation of course! I started using our classic Collagen Serum. It’s a great product and I’ve been using it on and off for years. As a product it’s really improved. It’s far from the product I started using years ago in terms of its appearance and smell. The new formula is so nice and of course, it’s as potent and effective as anything else you’ll find Skin Actives.

Tip 5: High Potency EGF Spray Isn’t Just For Recovery Anymore - I owe this one to my friend Rachel, who many of you may know as our Customer Care expert. She mentioned to me that she was using our High Potency EGF Spray as a daily spritz. “Madness!” I thought to myself. And then I had another one of those eczema breakouts on my scalp.

Rachel and I had recently written a blog together concerning cell turnover and our Advanced Restoration line of products. Based on some of the research I had done about eczema I thought applying EFG spray couldn’t hurt. Meanwhile, one of the biggest problems I had encountered previously was that the flaking was so hard to deal with through the strands of my hair (which is actually pretty thick for a dude my age). “But the spritz will let me get around that.” I thought to myself, “Eureka!” 

And what can I say, after I started applying High Potency EGF Spray to my hairline, my flare ups decreased in number. Then they went away almost entirely. I still keep a ball cap in the car when I go out, because you never know (also, I like baseball caps), but I can tell you that I go out in public without them for the first time in years. And that’s an amazing feeling!

Well, to draw this blog post to a close, I’ll say that about three months after I started my new skin care routine I started getting compliments on how good my skin began to look. The first compliments were from my wife (who started out this story as the girlfriend in 2019). I never told her I was starting a new routine by the way, I wanted to see if the regimen would have an effect. And it did. I look and feel a whole lot better now, and the next time I saw a picture of myself, taken at a gathering with friends in March of this year, that haggard looking dude was gone and the person I remember being was back.

And that’s the power of a good skincare routine.

Thanks for reading this week, Skin Actives Family!

Stay safe this weekend everyone, we’ll see you next week for another blog!