Dark Spot Treatments: Differin Dark Spot, Faded by Topicals, Versed | Doctorly Reviews

what's up everyone we're back dr maxfield dr shaw welcome back to our channel dr lee where we talk about all things skin care and dermatology today we're going to be doing a little bit of a product review reaction video product review something sort of interesting that's come up a little bit in regards to the lightning of dark spots yeah we brought this up or brought part of this up in passing we're gonna dedicate some time to this and we're also gonna talk about spot treating the dark spots is this a good option are there better

options what should you be doing so dark spot spot treatment here we go spot treating dark spots dark spot spot dark spot hat spot treating dark spots here we go dark spot spot treatment here we go all right let's roll the clip i'm completely shook tater tots about this little bottle i'm not affiliated this is not an ad i am just giving you my personal experience for the past three days on this this is differing that's the name of the product the brand and it's dark dark spot correcting serum with four percent nia seminared no

seminared probably said that wrong anyway it's clinically proven technology to reduce the appearance of dark spots and discoloration along with acne marks i've used this three nights in a row after i got out of the shower and when i tell you i woke up this morning actually i could see the difference on the very next morning from the first time i use this but all you do is put a little bit on your your hand and put it on wherever the spots were my spots were right here it was like a line of them right

here you cannot see them anymore even without the makeup this is this is this is amazing it's 22 at cvs but this is that this works actually so i thought i'd just let you know it's kind of expensive more expensive than i thought it was going to be yeah i saw you looking at me out of that first of all this is dr maxwell's like favorite accent uh he like loves this accent this is what his wife sounds like so i married my wife just for the accent okay different dark spot correcting gel very interesting

a lot of things to unpack in this video let's first start off with a timeline of the treatment of dark spots because one of the things and we'll talk about this is how long does it take to see results when the treatment of dark spots three days one day i would say too quick i would agree with that this is actually something that's very variable you don't know so i was like trying to build a skin timeline at one point and part of it was like risk for dark spots since i reviewed all the literature

looked into it it's very very highly individualized some people like can you fade a dark spot in a week that's pretty fast and i made it in a month that's pretty usual longer than a month depending on the cause can happen longer than three months for some people also can happen well i think it depends on the mechanism of the ingredient that is in this dark spot treatment because if you have something that's exfoliating or you have something like a retinoid that's going to increase cell turnover you're going to see quicker results with that than

you'd see with something that stops the transfer of pigment because if you're stopping the transfer of pigment you need to wait for new pigment to form and then you need the old pigment to be released from where it was and so it depends on the mechanism the results that you're going to see but i would say minimum a week to a month and then maximum like you know even three months to six months with dark spots with skin care you know it's always important to remember like if you bought this product and you didn't see

results in a day or three days that that's that doesn't mean it's not working you got to stick with it for an extended period of time that is probably an underappreciated point in skincare but i think we talked about it a lot i know more and more actually not true i can't think of any other time i've seen anyone else talk about it no i mean well the thing is skincare is not makeup right and there are some skincare products that double as makeup products but the truth is we're not makeup which makes it a

little bit less exciting it does like when you're making like tik tok videos where i can't just say like boom boom like look at me like i got so much better unless you're looking at like a moisturizer or hyaluronic acid or something that does have more of an immediate flowy effect to the skin but something that's like actually a treatment is going to take a long time to see results and last thing about the timing of when to treat these i always say this you have to treat the underlying cause first so when you're spot

treating acne you know it's assuming the underlying acne has gone and you're just treating the dark spot but if you're treating melasma or whatever other post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation have to treat the cause before you dedicate ingredients in time to the dark spots all right so now let's talk about the ingredients and whether or not this is an effective dark spot treatment once upon a time this contained two percent hydroquinone now without any warning it disappeared from the label and now it's been replaced by four percent niacinamide instead why did this happen well the cares act passed

last year to remove hydroquinone from over-the-counter products and they're no longer available so they just switched out the formula so a formula that i believe was probably more effective before has now been switched out for a four percent night cinema okay so before we go on to the rest of the ingredients let's actually go and delve into that a little more because i love niacinamide is it a replacement for hydroquinone so there was a study that compared four percent niacinamide to four percent hydroquinone and it showed similar efficacy the hydroquinone was more effective for dark

spots niacinamide was slightly less effective but the niacinamide had less irritation that would occur with it so i believe that yes this clinical study did show similar efficacy in clinical practice hydroquinone is much more effective than niacinamide right and that see that was my take on it too it's actually interesting because you can find small studies on a lot of over-the-counter ingredients even some of the prescription ingredients like small studies and dermatology but then you get into the real world in real practice you know we see hundreds of patients every week thousands of patients throughout

the year who are dealing with acne or dark spots and we kind of log all of this in our mind and so dr shaw has had the similar experience to me and i'm like there's no way niacinamide is as effective as hydroquinone in terms of treating dark spots melasma pigment hyperpigmentation it's not even close so i'm like backlogging all of these thousands of personal anecdotal experience with our patients comparing it to one small study and this is like a danger and a trap of kind of living off of an abstract a lot of things in

small studies don't actually translate to the real world and you'll notice a lot of small studies do compare some of these ingredients i'll just say it rosemary oil to minoxidil we got one small study bookmarking this we'll see how it pans out in real life can't underestimate the value of like personal experience when that vastly outnumbers the small study that is available i mean you're looking at things on studies where a lot of people can pull the data and say oh well then niacinamide must be just as good as hydroquinone and you'd have a study

to support that but then you would talk to people that see patients and they would tell you like no way no shot so i think it's important to take both of those in mind when you're making decisions about what to put on your skin now this product no longer has the higher the quinone in it is going to be less effective but still going to have benefits because we do like four percent niacinamide now let's talk about the supporting ingredients in this okay so alongside that four percent niacinamide which is a thoughtful percentage we have

water is the first ingredient alcohol is the second ingredient that's something uh dr shaw might have something to say about it just stings when i put anything with alcohol on my face it stings it burns my eyes i just don't like the sensation now there are studies that show that even if you put alcohol on the skin it doesn't seem to disrupt the skin barrier that much maybe increases dryness a little bit because of the evaporative loss you know i just don't like the feeling of alcohol in my skin care products yeah you know i

actually i have more resistance in the doctor shop but i did have the same experience i don't like want to call out products individually but this retinol serum b3 from la roche i think alcohol is their second ingredient as well um and i i just put it on without reading the ingredients first when i got it and it's like man this is kind of irritating like immediately and i think i had the same experience so sure it's anecdotal some people have a problem with it some people don't but for people with very sensitive skin alcohol

in the ingredient list i think could be a problem so after alcohol you know you've got your niacinamide you have your other supporting ingredients sodium ascorbyl phosphate which is a form of vitamin c also has brightening and lightening properties sunflower seed we like that and then it has fragrance lower down in it so fragrance product alcohol in it niacinamide being switched for the hydroquinone overall i actually think there are a lot better dark spot treatments on the market especially at that price point i agree so i mean i think nice cinema is a jack of

all trades but i'm like starting to do this more and more i'm bookmarking ingredients to a supporting role which is where i put niacinamide or is like something that can carry the team or actually like drive the ship like a retinol but talking about individual products or alternatives that may be more effective maybe they're better tolerated but we actually have a really good armament of options nowadays with what's come over the counter in the last couple of years absolutely so a lot of good dark spot treatments that don't have hydroquinone in them and are a

little bit more robust in formulation than this one so let's start off with faded which i don't have in my hands right now but very popular product that's come out available at sephora and i believe online combination of ingredients we've talked about it before killer for dark spots and hyperpigmentation now you could spot treat or you could treat a larger areas like areas of melasma as well with this very very effective start slow with it does have a lot of very powerful ingredients in it will list all the very powerful ingredients here but faded by

topicals by faded faded by topicals very effective i think more effective than this product faded is loaded with ingredients not only for hyperpigmentation but it's also loaded with like soothing and moisturizing ingredients to try to offset some of that irritation with that being said it still can be very irritating but it's in a heavier like moisturizing cream base now if you're looking for something in more of like a gel formulation first out of sight dark spot gel is another great option it also has multiple ingredients to target the hyper pigmentation of course it feels a

little bit lighter because of the gel and then also has some targeted soothing ingredients so just a little bit more succinct but an alternative right so it's got niacinamide tranexamic acid kojic acid licorice root so a lot of ingredients to treat hyperpigmentation more robust than the different product that's out there and it's a gel formulation versus faded which is a cream formulation so if you want something with a little bit of a different texture you may like the first one better meant alternatively so i have this from zitstica i uh dr shaw loves i feel

like he loves these holodrip hydrocolloid patches are like little patches for acne spot treating i like hydra so when i have a pimple and i don't want to pick at it i really like the mighty patch from hero cosmetics like it's not a non-medicated patch you put it on fades really well with my skin blends decently because no no you were looking at a different brand when you saw the one that was really obvious okay okay these by zip sticker these have okay so they have hyaluronic acid niacinamide they have ascorbic acid or butane kojic

acid they have licorice root they have tranexamic acid so a lot of beneficial ingredients in them and these are micro darts so they poke little holes in the skin to deliver these active ingredients now you use this as a spot treatment can get to be pretty expensive because you know they're single use you could use these as a spot treatment overnight yeah now the micro dot idea is something to kind of help penetration of the medication or ingredients all the same into your skin i like that in theory i don't think they're that irritating despite

kind of how it sounds there's some evidence that shows that these are effective way to deliver topical pharmaceuticals into the skin so it is kind of an interesting thing they do absorb um i think that these ones are very obvious in my opinion um like that is not faded at all like this is why i prefer the mighty patch dude he's so dewy he can't even get this thing to stick on a street i don't know i think it's actually i don't know it looks like a bandage like a see-through clear bandage if you're using

it overnight it is going to deliver effective ingredients i don't know what the concentration of these are but i could see it potentially being an effective way um to treat dark spots this is kind of just like topicals in a patch form but again we always talk about occlusion uh being occluded and having that micro dart penetration i think it may be more effective as far as spot treating little pricey wouldn't last as long certainly as the other topic what if you have six dark spots right exactly that's what i'm saying halfway through this package

over here like i understand the utility for acne because not only is it helping it heal it but it's also keeping you from picking at it which can make it worse and the patches are cheaper and go further you get like you know maybe a hundred in a pack sometimes so this seems like you could go through a whole pack in a week yeah this maybe is that rescue treatment for your wedding you know this is this is that this is exactly what this is for we get this all the time there it's like oh

i've got a pimple but my wedding is next week what could you do we have our own things but that's where this falls this is that emergency rescue fair enough yeah so i do like this i think it's good but i think it could add up really quickly if you're treating a lot of different dark spots these other products out there faded and the one from first really good options this one from different because it's changed the formulation and because of some of the other ingredients in it not my favorite for dark spots especially because

there are so many better competitors out there now it's all relative and it's kind of underwhelming given the other great options we have so as far as like overall impression uh it's fine there are better options and hopefully we've given you a short list of better ones to treat spot treat your dark spots and make sure to go check out the creator that made the original video she seems like a really good person it's that southern like hospitality you know it's like i agree i agree i love it she does seem super super nice thank

you all so much for tuning in please like comment and subscribe we'll see you in the next video yeah we appreciate you always yep and that creator seems like a really nice lady so you know um you know really uh go follow her um you've tickled my tater tots she would say it seems nice though you know my little tater tots are gonna put this in there i don't know baby okay probably one of those