How To Get Rid Of Age Spots

Hi, my name is Dr. Wakerly. I am a GP working for the NHS and I also specialize in dermatalogy.

I also have a company called The Beauty Doctor which specializes in cosmetic treatments and dermatalogical treatments as well. So, I am here to help you talk about age spots. Generally speaking, they are as a uniform flat patches of skin.

They look a bit like large freckles, and their official name is solalentigo. Very very important though, not to confuse them with suspicious little legions. So, it must be uniform if they itch or are painful or ulcerate or scab without healing or enlarge, or have an uneven pigmentation.

If you are worried at all, you must see your GP before just assuming that they are age spots. They usually occur on the face and on the arms and necks. There are various ways of treating the age spots.

You need to basically reduce the melanin activity in the melanin-containing cells in the body. So that's what's producing the browness of the skin. So, you can use various creams which contain retinae or vitamin A based creams such as azelaic acid and hydroquinone and kojic acid vitamin C, those are the creams that reduce melanin activity of the skin cells.

Kojic acid works quite well because it is less irritating than the vitamin A based creams or hydroquinone, and you can use that long term. I use a cream called Blending and Bleaching cream by Skin Tape, which has got kojic acid in it and vitamin A. And the kojic acid helps reduce the potential irritation caused by vitamin A.

So you don't get irritation with that cream at all. And that works very well, you can just use as a moisturiser. And also the retinae has an anti-aging effect as well.

But you do need to use an SPF to help prevent sun spots from getting worse. Because after all, the reason you have got sun spots is because of sun damage and age. And especially if you are using hydroquinone or a pure vitamin a based cream, that increases your sensitivity to the sun and they can also cause irritation.

So, SPF is very important. So with retinae or vitamin A based cream, you need to be careful that you are not pregnant or planning for pregnancy because they can cause developmental disorders of the baby. And with hydroquinone, you need to not use it for long periods of time.

You can use it for about maximum of two to three months, and then have about a month or so of break before starting up again. Also, you can use very gentle acid peels, mandelic acid is quite a gentle kind of acid which is slightly stronger. It doesn't cause peeling at all, and that comes with a scrub which always helps lighten the age spots.

Or you may use very mild hydroxy acid peels such as glycolic acid which makes your skin go a bit red. But again, lighten the sun spots. You can't use very strong peels such as TCA peels which will cause you to peel.

However, you must be careful if you have darker skin because they can make the sun spots worsen or cause different areas of darker pigmentation to come up in the skin. And then you can also have laser treatment as well to try and lighten the spots. If the sun spots are very small, you can freeze them using liquid nitrogen.

Most GP's have that facility with them and what that does is that, it freezes the skin and then it comes off in the scab, and then it heals very nicely. Although you have to be careful, if you got darker skin or skin that pigments very easily, I would perhaps avoid that. Or not use that by itself or use that in conjunction with something like a blending and bleaching cream.

So only natural, that's how you can improve your sun spots and I hope that that's been of some use.