Dr. Syed Amiry: Hi! I am Syed Amiry. We are in Reston Dermatology & Cosmetic Center in Reston, Virginia. We are talking about how to choose the best over the counter products to rejuvenate your skin. And in this segment, we will talk about brown discoloration whether its melasma or mask of pregnancy or it's dark under eyes circles or it is just brown spots because of sun exposure. We will talk about over the counter products to choose to treat this conditions. These products include Retinol, they include bleaching cream, Sun protection and the final one is Vitamin-K.

I will begin with the first one. The Retinol product. There are two that I have actually picked in this category. Neutrogena Healthy Skin, Anti-Wrinkle cream with SPF 15 and RoC Deep Wrinkle Night Cream. I generally recommend to patients to use these products at night. But as you know when it has an SPF you can use it during the day. So the Neutrogena Healthy Skin Anti-Wrinkle cream can be used during the day as well.

The function of the Retinol is to remove the very superficial layer of the skin. Thicken up the healthy layer of the skin. Eliminate those skin cells that are either pre-cancerous or abnormal and evenly distribute melanin throughout the skin. As you know melanin is what actually gives the color in the skin and the brown discoloration. So now the function of Retinol is also to reduce the amount of melanin in the skin and therefore lighten up the skin.

The other function of Retinol is also as it exfoliate the skin, it thins out the top layer of the skin and therefore allows other products to penetrate deeper. Because of that I put every patient on Retinol or that's one of the things that at least they should start out with. So now we have exfoliated the skin with Retinol and prepare the skin for other products to penetrate deeper into the skin. We use a lightener.

The La Roche-Posay Mela-D Bright is one of the best over the counter product. It has a Kojic acid which is a bleaching agent and it has Vitamin-C. The bleaching agents are very similar to remove staining from your clothes. In this particular case, it reduces the amount of melanin in the skin. It also suppresses the amount of melanin that is produced in the skin. The other component of treating discoloration in the skin is sunscreen. Now if you did nothing else sunscreen would be one of the most important things that should be used and the one product that I recommend is Anthelios with Mexoryl. This is one of the best sun blocks on the market. If you are going to be out in the sun for a long period of time, the SPF of the product should be above 15 and it should be used every two hours.

The other thing to remember is that it's the exposure to sun that stimulates the production of Melanocyte, and so the more you protect your skin the less melanin you will have in the skin and the quicker the improvement. Another condition that's related to this is under eyes circles. These dark circles can be treated the same way as pigmentation anywhere else on the face which is Retinol, bleaching agents, sunscreen and then Vitamin-K solution for under eyes circles.

In the next segment, we will talk about large pores and how to treat them.