Sue: Hello everyone welcome to PHTV channel four in Palos Heights I'm Sue Jankowski, and we are around Palos. Today we have our guest back. She's been here before. It's Jill Stetson. Welcome Jill.
Jill: Thank you, Sue.
Sue: Welcome to our program.
Jill: Good to be here.
Sue: Jill comes to us from skin trust and that is right here in Palos Heights and what we've been talking about is your skin, and it's so important. I think a lot of people are realizing that now. Right before the show, we were talking about how you know a few years ago, people didn't talk about you know the value of taking good care of your skin. It’s got to last as you age and actually, that is what we're talking about today.
Jill: It is.
Sue: Skin as you are aging. And I think no matter what age you are you want to start thinking about taking care of your skin so that it gets you through all of your life in good shape. Alright.
Jill: And the other part of that: it's never too late.
Sue: Oh well that's good too because you think well, I already did this you know I'm done but no, you can keep it keep it going.
Jill: Yeah, you absolutely can keep it going.
Sue: Well, that's great.
Jill: And a lot of people say can you really reset the clock with your age and that's similar to it's never too late, but you can improve your, you can improve your skin. You absolutely can.
Sue: Yeah, well you're generating new skin cells all the time. I mean because in one of our talks here, if you got a chance to view our show before, we talked about you know getting that old skin off and that is you know because new skin is coming in.
Jill: Absolutely.
Sue: So that new skin, you want to treat very well.
Jill: Yes, you do. And that's why that we go back to the whole exfoliation and how that really helps with that, and you know we're going to talk about aging skin today, but I always like to start with is people will say can you reset the clock and you can't. But it's really talking about aging itself and the fact that if you take care of yourself, we’re not talking about a 55-year-old becoming a 30-year-old, but we're talking about having a youthfulness as you age to your skin and it was back in September of 2017, Allure magazine came out with an article, and they're one of the biggest consumer Beauty publications out there. They came out with an article about we need to change the discussion about aging and there's nothing anti about it, which is a word that's used so much in my industry, and I so agreed with them, because I thought there isn't. We started to age from the moment we were born, so there's nothing anti, but we can age youthfully. We can maintain that dead vitality and that vibrance. We can maintain confidence in our appearance, and that's what this discussion is all about.
Sue: I like that, because every time you hear the word anti-aging, it does have a little bit of a negative tone to it, and yes we everyone is aging, it's just reality and you want to go forward as positive and as well, you want to make yourself look as good as possible. And keep your skin healthy. That's the other part.
Jill: That is, and it makes sense because our generation, I'm a baby boomer. We don't want to age like our, the generations before us. We want the vitality. We're working longer. We want to be active. We want to maintain a confidence about our appearance, so we feel as best we can for where we are in that process.
Sue: Absolutely. Well don't know where our interest is peaked. How can we do this? How can we get ourselves to the point where we're taking better care of our skin as we proceed through life?
Jill: Well, maybe we should step back and talk about what does happen as we age with our skin, and you can see by with one of the slides, but as we age, it accumulates over time. It's that our skin is affected by the external factors that we talked about last time. Sun, pollution. All that has an impact on it. Hormonal changes, or using the wrong products, not caring for your skin, and genetics. Genetics play a big part in how we age too, but all of those are factors that have an impact on how our skin ages. If you break that down, and you break it down starting in your 20s and move it forward. In our 20s, we're actually quite radiant, and our skin is good, and no real fine lines. However, when I was in my 20s, I did start to use an eye cream, because I had some fine lines. It disturbed me greatly, but it was something to just condition my eyes. In your 30s, you do pretty much develop those expression lines around the eyes, but you're pretty youthful with your skin. In your 40s, then you might have a little bit more fine lineage around your forehead, still with your eyes. 50s and 60s is when it hits us a little harder. We might have more pronounced fine lines, we might have the nasal fold area here you might feel some depth, it's more, it's deeper in there and you may have a little sagging along the jaw line. And as you go into the 60s, you continue to have that, and maybe you have some textural changes and maybe your skin isn't as bright. It's a little dull, but that's what happens as we go through the aging process.
Sue: And it just happens to everybody.
Jill: It does.
Sue: Except if you're a celebrity, it doesn't seem to happen to them.
Jill: It's curious, isn't it? And every once in a while, their secrets will come out.
Sue: And their doctor.
Jill: Yes, absolutely.
Sue: Okay well those things do happen, and you know there's nothing that is really negative about that. That is what life is, that's what it is, so we want to make the best out of it.
Jill: We do. So, if you feel as you go through the aging process and you have dark spots, which is pigmentation, you might be dehydrated, you have some of that and sagging, your skin isn’t as firm, it's not as bright as you want, there are many things you can do, and I think the most important item is how you care for your skin every day. And we talked about this, in I think our first program. If you are taking good care of your skin morning and night 365 days a year, that's a lot of good care.
Sue: Yeah so that's easy. You're at home, you can do that.
Jill: Absolutely.
Sue: Do you want to just quick review for people who haven't actually maybe seen the other shows, just review what that skin care would be that you were doing on a daily basis.
Jill: Absolutely. To have a good routine, you want to have it morning and night. You want to cleanse your skin morning and night and in nighttime, you want to cleanse twice. Once to remove makeup and toxins and once to in the second time, to really clean your face. Then you want to use your eye cream morning and night. Just dab it around your eye area will and it will wick up underneath. You want to use your sunscreen every day all year long. It's not just a summertime habit. It's what you want to do all year long and the example that I give is: if you don't use it in the wintertime and it's snowing out and then you have sun that hits that snow, that light that hits that snow is so intense, it's more intense in summertime. So, you want to do that, and then you want to use the right moisturizer on your skin and these are just the basic things before you get into the other ingredients we'll talk about, but make sure your skin has a right moisture and especially as skin is aging many times I work with people and I test their moisture before we do anything else because if you put the right moisture into your skin you can solve many issues and not have to worry about some of the other ingredients that are out there and then you want to exfoliate your skin two to three times a week and do that as your second cleanse at night using the right ingredients. And you know we talked there's so many wonderful ingredients that you can use out there, and that's really the role of a dermatologist or more importantly an esthetician to really help you find the ingredients that are right for your skin type and whatever issues you might be concerned about.
Sue: And there are many skin types of work you know if you are not using the right products for that, maybe your skin is dry, maybe skin is oily or something or whatever. You want to use the right things.
Jill: You want to use the right things, and you're so right. I was just working with someone last night. She had definitely t-zone, and she was in our age group. T-zone activity that was very different than her cheeks, so her skincare regimen is going to be quite different.
Sue: A little different.
Jill: Yeah.
Sue: Well, and some of this I think sounds like oh my goodness I'm going to do this morning and night, but actually when you get used to it.
Jill: It's not too bad.
Sue: It really is pretty quick. You know, you're doing a good thing for yourself, and it really is a very quick part of this.
Jill: It is. It is. It's not laborious as it might seem. Once you get into it and it's pretty quick, like about three minutes and you're done.
Sue: Yeah, see. Three minutes you can do it.
Jill: Yeah.
Sue: Okay, so we want to do that, and then so we're saying that as you age I mean you just talked about this, but you know the beauty of your skin at age 20, and how it differs you know when you're 50 ,60 and so on because of obvious reasons, so you're doing different things for your skin at various ages. What kinds of differences are you doing and what's changing for you?
Jill: Yeah, Well let's just we'll start with the 20-year-old.
Sue: Okay.
Jill: And what they do. The 20-year-old: using a good sunscreen, using antioxidants on your skin even to protect it further, and perhaps starting an eye cream if you were like me, but you don't necessarily have to do that, and exfoliating going back to that regiment. Those are the things to do. In your 30s, you want to do the same. You want to add an eye cream; you want to use your sunscreen. Between 30 and 40, you might want to add a retinol to your to your regimen, and retinols have come, they’re one of the most powerful, youthful aging ingredients that you can use. It's a Vitamin A. There are prescription vitamin A, there's medical grade products that have many different formulations. You don't have to get one that can be irritating, because it can be very irritating, so there's many different formulations, but a retinol is very important to use. Then as you get into your 50s, you want to continue that track, but perhaps add peptides or stem cells whether they're fruit based or ethically cultivated human stem cells. And then really in your 50s and your 60s, also add that hydration because hormonal changes will drain some of the moisture out of our skin. They play havoc with many things in our body, but our skin is one that they do, and I find that if you just add the right moisture and hyaluronic acid, and we did talk about this in some of our other shows. It's to me as powerful as a vitamin A is out
there now in skincare. There's wonderful formulations. There are some formulations that aren't as effective, but there's a wonderful formulations with hyaluronic acid, and that can be just be it plumps your skin, it brings a radiance back to your skin, because we just don't have as much moisture in our skin.
Sue: Right. Okay, well now you mentioned the retinol and that can be prescription base, but can you just go get retinol without going to a dermatologist?
Jill: You can. Absolutely. You can start in perhaps a drugstore and buy a product that says it has retinol in it, and it does. It doesn't have as much, but it's a good start. Then you can work with an esthetician like myself, and I have medical grade products that I have different lines, so I have different retinol products available, so I'll tailor that to meet your skin type, and then you can certainly go to a doctor for a prescription grade, but it's become such a wonderful ingredient, especially for youthful aging that there's a lot of different formulations and the companies have made them that way.
Sue: Okay, well that's good to know that. Yeah, I mean I think most people as we suggested
earlier in the show, you suggested that you’re going to a dermatologist once a year to get checked out. Right? Important if I remember correctly.
Jill: Yes.
Sue: You know go back to go to dermatologists, and then you can have that conversation with your dermatologist about maybe the use of retinol, and they might be able to prescribe something for you if you want to do that.
Jill: Absolutely. And I would say a retinol too: if you want to get a prescription grade one, that's very good if you have some significant sun damage, and if you have perhaps the firmness isn't as great on your skin, or you have some deeper wrinkles in your skin, or fine lines, then that that is very appropriate for that.
Sue: Okay. Well that's good to know too. And the hyaluronic acid. Is that also are you able to get that from a dermatologist? Or that is just more of an over-the-counter thing that you need to go out and search for?
Jill: That is something that really if you can find a good esthetician, they can help you with that.
Sue: Okay.
Jill: There are products that are over the counter, and they'll give you some, but they won't give you as much as a medical grade product would be, and based on some of our other conversations, a medical grade product means that there is a higher concentration of the ingredient in it with research behind it, so it's a good investment to do that. So, there are various ways in which you can find them.
Sue: Yeah, and it really goes a long way.
Jill: Oh, it does.
Sue: So, you know it might be a little pricey. You know it'll last you a long time.
Jill: Well you know what I always say too sue, is that skincare is an investment. You want to make sure you get a return.
Sue: Right.
Jill: And so, you want someone that’s going to help you learn how to use the products appropriately, so you're not using too much. And many of the medical grade products that I work with, you don't have to an exorbitant amount, so they do last a long time, but it's in it's an
investment but there's proven results behind it, which is you know what you want.
Sue: Okay, so now hopefully you're noticing we're putting up some great slides as we go along, so you can really get that visual about some of the things we're talking about. And in one of the slides we’re going to show is what happens at various ages. So, tell me about this slide, because I haven't seen it yet.
Jill: Yeah. Well, and it's similar to what I was sharing before is that you know the wrinkles that you get, and I think one of our slides shows the progression the same person, and a progression through the aging process and just how our skin changes. The fine lines around our eyes or perhaps on our forehead, our nasal fold area, a little bit of the jaw dropping on us. So those are the changes that actually happen.
Sue: Yeah. Okay, so what can I do, well you just described some of the things just the cleansing. Is there anything else we can do to kind of help us you know keep that glow going?
Jill: There are. We haven't talked about this and I know we're gonna have a program that goes into more depth with it, but professional treatments work with your daily care. I personally and professionally believe that what you do every day to your skin is most important with the right ingredients, but then I think that the professional treatments and those would be facials, micro dermabrasion, chemical peels, derma planing. So many of them are out there, that it makes sense occasionally to do those, and if you go back to maybe the age groups, I think if you're in your 20s, every once in a while, facials are wonderful. You get the relaxation; you get more exfoliation on your skin. It's going to help you get the even better benefit out of your products at home. In your 30s, I think seasonal changes and unfortunately, we only have two seasons here in Chicago. Summer and winter.
Sue: We kind of skip by those other ones.
Jill: We do kind of skip by those. So, I say twice a year have you come in for a tune-up. Have your skin professionally looked at, and then professionally cared for. When you get into your 40’s, then I encourage people perhaps quarterly if we're not treating a specific condition like discoloration, or brown spots, or maybe you're more concerned about your fine lines, so this is just good maintenance. And then in your 50s and 60s, you can do monthly. You can do every six weeks, but it's someone that's staying in tune with you with the aging process, and what I always say to people is if you're using good products at home, you don't have to see me as often unless there's something very specific you want to accomplish.
Sue: Right, but otherwise that's good to know too, because I think about facials which are wonderful, and they are relaxing,
Jill: They are.
Sue: You look at yourself afterwards and go I'm never putting another drop of makeup or anything on my face again, because it's just glowing glorious, but you do wonder how often
you know should you be doing something like that.
Jill: And I try to work with people to on, you know, it's based on your lifestyle. I think if we if we had our ideal world, we'd want to get them every month.
Sue: Right, yeah.
Jill: And the way your skin works is you could, because your skin cells are coming up to your epidermis, and they're sloughing off, but you know, I think you just have to look at all, a number of different facets when you make those determinations.
Sue: Okay, all right. Well so, let's talk about some of the treatments you mentioned like microdermabrasion. I mean, I've heard that word, but I don't exactly know what's happening when that's going on?
Jill: Well we talked about when you're at home, you exfoliate your skin two to two to three times a week, it's a higher-level exfoliation, and it's a mechanical exfoliation in my world, so basically, it's a higher-level exfoliation. I'm going to get in and do more with your skin.
Sue: Okay.
Jill: And then the benefit you're gonna have is that you'll get better results from your products at home.
Sue: Okay, and what was another one you mentioned?
Jill: Derma planing.
Sue: Oh okay. That sounds even more like we're getting out, really.
Jill: Yeah, and derma planing is again mechanical exfoliation, and it's where a medical scalpel is taken and don't let this scare you.
Sue: Okay.
Jill: It’s very gentle
Sue: The word planing, you know.
Jill: But a medical scalpel is taken and gently, I scrape off the dead cells and any of the vellus hairs which are the baby fine hair that you have on your on your skin, and they don't come back more course, they don't come back in greater force, but it's lovely, and it's a mechanical exfoliation as well, so do two different types.
Sue: okay so these are probably you know, things you can look into too if you're thinking I really want to do some really good stuff to my face.
Jill: Absolutely, and then it's what you do after that and there's many different treatments that I'll do after each of those, so you do the exfoliation and then you actually treat the skin, and it all depends upon what's going on with your skin.
Sue: Okay. And together you would decide that.
Jill: Yes.
Sue: Or the esthetician you go to, together would decide what would be good for you.
Jill: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely.
Sue: Great, Okay.
Jill: You know, something else that I meant to bring up when we were talking about what
happens to your skin. The eye area is so key, and what we don't realize is that our eyes age much faster than the rest of our face. The skin is very different. We don't have oil glands underneath here; the skin is thinner, and our eyes will show our age 30 times faster than the rest of our skin.
Sue: Oh, wow.
Jill: And think about it, because a lot of lifestyle issues come out underneath the eye area. Lack of sleep, dehydration, puffiness. It might be caused by salt. It all has an impact on it, and it comes out on our eyes.
Sue: Would wearing sunglasses help with that? Because you’re protecting.
Jill: Oh, I think so. I think so, and some manufacturers have gotten smart that now they put SPF in the eye creams, and I just saw that start to change over the past year up to that point you wanted to put your sunscreen close to your eyes, so it would wake up, but I'm a proponent of
sunglasses, because you're not going to squint and therefore, you're not going to cause more fine lines over there. We have enough going on.
Sue: We do. Okay. Well that's good to know too, and so now we're talking about all the good ingredients of products and we talked about the retina, and the hyaluronic acid. That’s a tongue twister.
Jill: It is, it really is.
Sue: I think I wrote it wrong too, but I did write it down, but okay so, you know actually before the show we were talking about how our moms would always you know, put the cream on their face or whatever and that was a long time ago.
Jill: It was a long time ago.
Sue: So, skin care products have changed a lot since then and uh you know what's the difference? Like what good ingredients do they have now that they didn't even know anything about or think about, you know, during our mom's era?
Jill: I know, and we were both alike too, but I love to show the next slide, because it's Halina Rubenstein, and how many of you remember her, she had, it was such a wonderful name, and she had one of the very first skin care products out there, and everyone loved it, but it had ingredients in it that you do not want on your face today. It had mineral oil, it had wax, um those are not the things that you want to put on your skin now, but it felt good. Yeah, but it just shows you I'd love to show that, because it shows you the difference in where skin care has come, and even when I was growing up and my mom was just like yours, we played a lot with
products which is probably why I became an esthetician, but we played a lot with them, and she loved her lotions and potions, but they weren't any anywhere near what they are today. There's so many good things on the market.
Sue: Right.
Jill: There really are. And it’s advanced, and I believe it's advanced because of the aging population.
Sue: Right. Right. And so many things have changed over time too. Just our knowledge about things like that.
Jill: Absolutely.
Sue: And like we said, we didn't really use skin block or sun block when we were out in the sun. We never did as a child.
Jill: No, we did not.
Sue: I know we didn't know, you know, it I don't think it was really readily available, it wasn't really widely thought of. We just went out in the Sun.
Jill: And we did, but you bring up an excellent point. And that is, you know, we're talking about the aging process of skin, and we're sitting here as baby boomers, because we didn't have that, so we're all about correcting and protecting. People in their 20s and 30s. You won't have the corrective issues that we have, because you have access to wonderful products today that will help you not have the issues that we have, and the biggest one of those is sunscreen.
Sue: Yeah, the sunscreen. Yeah, I mean and all my kids I mean they use it religiously, and their children, you know, they're just like they're coating those children with sunscreen when you can. I never coated them with sunscreen.
Jill: And we're talking about the cosmetic part of it, but with sunscreen, it's so important for the health of skin, so you don't get skin cancer.
Sue: Right. Exactly.
Jill: Because that's more important than the cosmetic, and we don't want to get that, and the Sun is intense.
Sue: It is. It is very. Okay, so we have better products than we used to have.
Jill: We do.
Sue: And so now the next thing is, and I look at this all the time, I look at it of course with food products, which I know a little bit more about, but I'm looking at natural products and organic products. They sound kind of the same. It’s natural, its organic. Are they the same?
Jill: They're not the same, and I get that question a lot. I want something natural, and when someone says that to me, I say tell me what you're looking for, because there's nothing really natural. There is organic, but really what people want is safety. They don't want bad ingredients on their skin, and there was a whole movement in the professional skin care product world several years ago where parabens were used. And parabens are preservatives, and the manufacturers got very smart about it, and took them out. They still have preservatives, but they're safe preservatives, and that fostered this whole movement of natural versus organic. There is no one that regulates, the FDA does not regulate skin care products. They regulate sunscreen only. So, the only organization or department that regulates organic is the US Department of Agriculture, and they do it because of plants, but there are no set standards for what is an organic product, what is a natural product, and who's looking out, but some guidelines to use if product is organic on the label, that means it has 95% organic, but not 100% ingredients. If a label says we have organic ingredients, it's up to 70% organic ingredients. Organic products can be wonderful depending upon the line. What you want to be very careful about though is they have a much shorter shelf life, and if you use one of those products when they've expired, I have seen very bad reactions to skin, so just be aware of that. There's wonderful organic products out there, so I guess yes, there are organic, and I think when people gravitate towards organic, they want safety in products.
Sue: Looking for safety.
Jill: Yeah, and make sure that there's not toxic ingredients going into their skin.
Sue: Okay. Well then, speaking of that, we're talking about these products that do have an expiration date, may or may not be authentic, which we're talking about what would be distributors of products.
Jill: Yes.
Sue: That may not actually be the authentic product.
Jill: That's right.
Sue: okay, so explain that a little.
Jill: That's a big issue. There are major companies, online companies, that you can buy products, all kinds of products from, skin care being part of that. And you go there, and they have wonderful pricing, and I like a sale as much as anybody, but what people don't understand in the skincare world is that those products are not authorized to be on that site, and that means that the manufacturer who made the product is not the one who is giving that distributor the product. Someone else is, and most likely it's a counterfeit product. So, you can buy it. Many times, you might be okay, but there are certain products out there that are not okay. They have dangerous ingredients in them. They have expiration dates that causes chemical reactions in the product that that have been exceeded, and the reason I know this is I work with my manufacturers, and I know they work very closely with these distributors to make sure their products are not on there, because they've not authorized them. I'm an authorized dealer. A spa is probably an authorized dealer. A dermatologist is an authorized dealer. Online, some online distributors are not manufacturers, and they're not authorized dealers, so just be careful that you want to be very careful and make sure that they are an authorized dealer meaning that they are authentic and real products from that manufacturer, so it's enticing because of
the price, but you could have some a reaction that would not be something that you're looking for and want to have happen.
Sue: Okay, so you really want to do your research.
Jill: You do, and if you aren't interested in a product, go to the manufacturers site, see what they say about their distributors and who they distribute it through, because you'll find out that they'll say we do not distribute to this company, this company, or this company, so I don't want to name companies. I'd rather have you do the research, but just if something is so inexpensive just there is a reason, so just be careful about that, and that's why I always try to educate people, and say just be really careful.
Sue: Yeah. With what you're buying, and what you're using.
Jill: And those are just some of the things that you don't know on a day to day basis.
Sue: No, you don't. Okay, now you mentioned that that our viewers could go to some fun websites. Well, I'm wondering is it gonna be fun Jill?
Jill: Well, and I have to tell you that, yeah well it can or cannot be.
Sue: It could be a little scary.
Jill: And I almost lost some friends over it.
Sue: Tell our viewers what it is.
Jill: You'll see the slide with it, the organization of the website is called face my age, and I stumbled across it probably about three years ago when I was watching Chicago tonight. They had two gentlemen on there that developed this, and they developed this site basically for plastic surgeons, but it really went to the consumers, and consumers started to love it, and if you take a selfie and upload it, and you answer five to six questions, they are going to compare all this information to their hundreds of thousands of people that they have in their database, and they will tell you what they think your age is based on your skin.
Sue: Oh, so you don't tell them your age?
Jill: Oh, no. No.
Sue: And they're gonna say you're 97, and you're like oh.
Jill: I doubt it, but they will give you, they will give you an age, so it's just fun, and maybe do it with some friends sometime. Have fun with, but if you're curious, and I know people will always
ask me how is my skin doing, and I'll try to tell them how it's doing. I will never guess ages, because I'm terrible at it anyway, but people just want a barometer to say hey how am I looking?
Sue: Right.
Jill: How's my appearance doing.
Sue: Right.
Jill: But do it with some friends.
Sue: Yeah, I mean it would be fun to do it.
Jill: It is fun.
Sue: Okay, so that's a fun thing you can go look at, so I guess before we wrap up, Jill, I'm wondering if there's any other skincare tips that we need to know for this time before we go, and you know just, yeah.
Jill: Yeah, a lot of it is a review of what we talked about, but I think the message is you can reset the clock, and you can feel good about how you're aging. Again, we're not going to be 55 and go back to 20. That's not going to happen, but there's so many wonderful things. There's so many wonderful products and ingredients that can just help you feel good about yourself.
Sue: Yeah, and that is you want, and you want good healthy skin.
Jill: Yes.
Sue: So, you want to feel good, look good you know for whatever age you are.
Jill: Whatever age you are, and I always say to people it's not about perfection. It's just about feeling good about how you're going through this aging process.
Sue: Yes that's wonderful thank you, Jill.
Jill: Oh, you're very welcome, my pleasure.
Sue: I'm really glad too, Jill is gonna come back again a couple more times. We're going to talk about some other things I think you'll be interested in. Just how to feel good and look good, how to choose makeup, and yeah, it's just some really great ideas for you to think about, and I think this is great for all ages of people, especially I mean I think you know older people, but those young people get started on our realizing, you know, I do have to take good care of myself so that as I go through life I'll be satisfied with I'm so my appearance, and the health of my skin.
Jill: Absolutely.
Sue: Thank You Jill. Thanks for watching us. We'll see you next time at Around Palos. Bye.