The Chemical Peel Series - Sensitive & Rosacea 

[00:00:00] Speaker: You don't always peel when you get a chemical peel. And that's okay. That's not like an indication of whether it's worked or not. 

[00:00:07] Speaker: Welcome to this week's episode of Beauty Babble, and this is episode three of our series on chemical peels and common skin conditions. Today we're talking about sensitive skin and rosacea. How are you doing, Suzanne?  

[00:00:23] Speaker 2: Doing pretty  

[00:00:24] Speaker: good, thank you. What about you, Dream? I'm doing good. Thanks. We are, I want to say knee deep in chemical peels. 

[00:00:34] Speaker: We're deep diving into chemical peels.  

[00:00:37] Speaker 2: It is kind of where we are definitely the season for it. I guess you could say, most people, a lot of people aren't traveling, it's colder, people are indoors more so, yeah, and like we said before, we're getting a lot of questions about chemical peels, and sometimes I think it's because we haven't maybe done it for a few months, so then you gotta re think about things, and then [00:01:00] things are changing all the time, and you're learning new things, and we kind of, you know, looped this together because, you know, sensitive skin, rosacea, like level one could be, it's hard to determine sensitive in that first stage of rosacea sometimes, so without a proper diagnosis, how do you determine, that's why we thought we would loop this in together a little bit. 

[00:01:21] Speaker 2: Yeah,  

[00:01:22] Speaker: why don't we start off with that, where we talk about, okay, sensitive skin, rosacea, we're doing them in one episode, but what is the first step for determining what your, which skin condition you are actually treating?  

[00:01:36] Speaker 2: Right. So, Well, I always feel that if there is a rosacea being diagnosed, that's by a professional, not a, not us as estheticians or facial technicians, it is a doctor someone in the medical industry side that's actually giving you a proper diagnosis of it. 

[00:01:55] Speaker 2: Not because it was googled. [00:02:00] I think we're, we think we're diagnosing ourselves of what it can be, and I usually just tell my clients when I see them is that, well, it does look like rosacea, but I'm, you know, I'm not a doctor, it's best to see a dermatologist and because if you have a proper diagnosis, you know how to proceed forward properly and safely without aggravating it and pushing it into another area. 

[00:02:24] Speaker 2: Stage you're making it worse. And I think that's what people need to understand just because you have red cheeks Maybe even a few broken capillaries doesn't mean that's a diagnosis for right rosacea Because some dermatologists and they've come back said no you just have sensitive skin. So take care of it  

[00:02:42] Speaker: Okay,  

[00:02:42] Speaker 2: so  

[00:02:43] Speaker: would you if you suspect that somebody has rosacea, would you want them to go to a dermatologist or doctor and get a diagnosis before you do a chemical peel on them? 

[00:02:54] Speaker 2: Not necessarily. I put that out there that I would. In order to proceed further, [00:03:00] we can do something today. So that's when I would hover to the sensitive sides of the skin because that's going to be similar. I mean, if their skin is inflamed, you can see how bumpy or looks almost like an acne in those areas. 

[00:03:15] Speaker 2: And you know, you've probably seen rosacea before, you have clients that have had it. It looks like it. pretty much, then I would still act on the side in the back of your head. It's probably rosacea, but I don't tell my clients that they have it. That's the difference is I don't diagnose for the client, but I would still treat accordingly. 

[00:03:36] Speaker 2: What I see in front of me, right? So I think with rosacea, if it's not inflamed or at that level of itchiness breaking out, they're not using their medications, right? Those are all signs that they, they had something triggered and it, it made that inflammation cause the inflammation, right? So I think if we start off with just, I mean, all skins like a little bit of a gentle [00:04:00] chemical peel. 

[00:04:00] Speaker 2: I mean, there's lactic acids, there's so many types that we could still venture to. I don't know if I gave a direct answer or not on that.  

[00:04:09] Speaker: You gave a politician's answer, I feel like.  

[00:04:14] Speaker 3: unfortunately, it's the case with skin care,  

[00:04:16] Speaker: with skin treatments. There's never just one answer and it can't just be straightforward. 

[00:04:23] Speaker: It depends on your client, their skin, what's happening, all of that stuff. But when it comes to chemical peels, my default is always start gentle. With everyone's and then you go so even somebody with sensitive skin you can still get started, but adjust, depending on like the type of peel you would use the percentage the pH taking all those into consideration, and I was, you know, if there is an area that is. 

[00:04:55] Speaker: You know, sensitive or like inflamed, you could [00:05:00] always just cover that and avoid it just cover that with petroleum jelly, and then proceed to the other areas just because that's that gives a really good barrier and it blocks the. 

[00:05:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, there's actually some. Hmm, now I've drawn a blank what it was as researching something other than petroleum jelly because it's not the best for the skin, there's some other options out there, which maybe we can bring up next time. 

[00:05:23] Speaker 2: I'll look into that. Yeah. Better, a little better for the skin than that, than that. Well you're removing it, it's  

[00:05:30] Speaker: not like, that you put like, you want to put around the nose and nothing goes in. You're going to take it off, it's not on there for very long. True, yeah. But yeah, there's always options.  

[00:05:40] Speaker 2: Yes, there is, yeah. 

[00:05:42] Speaker 2: But I think, and we're also, this is like as if you didn't even know the person, right? If you have a client and you know their history, you've worked with their skin, I think you have an easier time making those decisions if you know, I don't know, it's, What triggers them and then you know, they're stressed and that's one of the triggers because usually a [00:06:00] flare up is a trigger that's happening something they ate their lifestyle, their products, what they're not using sunscreen, you know, they've been outside, they went on a vacation to the sun, you know, there's, there's a lot of factors. 

[00:06:16] Speaker 2: If you know your client, then, then you, you know what you should be doing and what you shouldn't be doing, if you wish. So we're maybe talking about, okay, someone comes in for the first time, they've done the consultation, the forms are done. And then you determine when they show up and you go, Oh, Hmm, you have. 

[00:06:34] Speaker 2: What I think is inside my head, rosacea, but then you can start talking to your client about does it run in the family, you know, like, maybe there's things that you can figure out like, oh, yeah, my mom has and my grandma and my aunts, it's like, oh, do you tend to take that side of the family genetically, you know, like, so you could start going, okay, you know what, it's okay, we can still proceed. 

[00:06:55] Speaker 2: But we always start out gentle anyways. So that's a lead in you [00:07:00] can say, so that you're not telling them a no, we can't do this peel for you because you're still going to adjust like you said, like you, you know, less is more and you need to build up what we used to do with chemical peels 15, 20 years ago, for that matter. 

[00:07:16] Speaker 2: Oh God, I'm aging myself even longer. Everyone was looking for that snaky skin, right? And then it worked. But people are using products like they are today. Their cleanser has, you know, I don't know, an AHA or BHA in it, their night cream does, their mask does, their day cream, like they have it in their products, so I'm not sure what we're trying to slough off into looking like snakeskin when they're keeping up with skin care and they're doing their exfoliation. 

[00:07:46] Speaker 2: So, I think people forget about that. Like, yeah, some people are going to peel like a snake, or maybe a tiny little section of areas, you know, like the chin that can happen. But that whole concept of what I remember when [00:08:00] retinol first came out and the doctors were doing it and they had to hide at home for a week. 

[00:08:06] Speaker 2: And the pictures were, well, first it looked painful as I was just peeling off and the redness. So I think we forget that, You know, science has, we've learned more, we've learned how to do things in a way that our skin can handle without having those adverse effects. So I think we just need to educate our clients a little bit more on that and let them know you're still going to get the benefits of what the chemical peel does, you know, not just surface level. 

[00:08:35] Speaker 2: It's not just an exfoliation, right? In some cases it is, I get that, but what's the goal? Yeah. Is the goal to slough the skin and get it to peel? Is that, but then I would ask why? Why are you looking for that?  

[00:08:51] Speaker: Yeah, not peeling from a chemical peel is not a bad thing.  

[00:08:57] Speaker: You don't always peel when you get a chemical [00:09:00] peel. And that's okay. That's not like an indication of whether it's worked or not. 

[00:09:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, like, especially when, when we are dealing with sensitive skins. Sometimes, too, people forget that, you know, there's, there's good enzyme peels that are considered a chemical peel, you have papaya, pineapple, pumpkin, like there's some other ones that you could use that, you know, they still have AJ's in them, they still have beneficial, you know, beneficial ingredients in them as well that help the skin. 

[00:09:29] Speaker 2: But I think. We as a society and as professionals think chemical peels are your, your classic AHAs and AHAs, right, your Jesners, your TCAs, as you said. So how do we do this without having the adverse effects to the skin? Like, you know, a comment that we just heard the other day was, why not noticing any differences from that, you know, peel that I had done? 

[00:09:51] Speaker 2: I'm not getting any extra absorption into my skin. I didn't see this person, it was just a comment. So my thoughts were, oh, [00:10:00] That's interesting. What else are they doing to their skin that their products are not absorbing anymore? So are you overdoing things that it's it's fighting back now? And these are under the surface where it's a guessing game. 

[00:10:13] Speaker 2: Like you said, it's a puzzle. Each person's different Normally when you have a chemical peel of some sort if it's done at the right stage or the right length or the right Product I guess or ingredients your skin feels good And when you put a mask on, your skin feels great and you have that glow that you're looking for, if you wish, or the purge of the skin, whatever the goal may be. 

[00:10:36] Speaker 2: But I think we forget that, especially for sensitive skins we're talking here, you need to be mindful because it doesn't take much for it to become that opposite and fight back. So you get the redness, inflammation, there's like this barrier that pops up without you seeing it that fights everything that's happening. 

[00:10:54] Speaker 2: And sometimes it's the sebaceous glands. You know, you're not necessarily going to be super oily, but, you know, they're, [00:11:00] that's what's keeping the balance of the lipid barrier. So if you've, if you've taken that away and you're jeopardizing the barrier, your oil glands are going to do its job typically, right? 

[00:11:12] Speaker 2: Not all the time. I'm not, I'm not a doctor, not a scientist, but typically those are the reactions to try to hold what's there. And I think that's something that we need to remember of, you know, the benefits of it without the irritation, especially for sensitive skin, you still want a brightening. But why do we have to feel that you need to feel the peel? 

[00:11:36] Speaker 2: That's another one. Well, I didn't feel much, you know, it's like microneedling. Like if you keep doing it, you're, you, you, your body gets adjusted to it. If you wish you start to what's the word? I'm going to adapt to it. I think you're used to it. Tolerance changes, right? And your skin is adapting. It's smart. 

[00:11:55] Speaker 2: And your body's intelligent. It's going to adapt to this. So maybe your first time you did [00:12:00] a 30 glycolic, you felt it. And next time you did it, you didn't feel it. It doesn't mean something went wrong. Okay.  

[00:12:08] Speaker: Yeah, but I think for sensitive skin though, I feel like they're going to feel it more if you have that reactive skin. 

[00:12:18] Speaker 2: Right, it should, I think visually you're going to see more pain than, you know, the client might have a high pain threshold and not realize, like, you know, they think, oh, why isn't this killing me? Like it should be awful and really irritating me, not necessarily. You know, there's people that use niacinamide and they can't even handle that, vitamin D. 

[00:12:43] Speaker 2: You know, and then you have someone that has a 30 glycolic, like I said, and they don't feel anything. It doesn't make it wrong. I just think we need to do more educating on our clients and knowing what to expect with it.  

[00:12:56] Speaker: I think, yeah, I think that's a big one is tempering [00:13:00] expectations. Mm hmm. If you're doing chemical peel services, but you haven't received a lot of chemical peels, I would say get some more like you being able to explain the feeling and doing, of course, everybody's going to experience it differently to a certain degree. 

[00:13:18] Speaker: Like you said, there's that tolerance, whatever skin condition you have, you might not have sensitive skin. So you might not be able to relate, but you can give them kind of a a range of what it could feel like but something else you said earlier that kind of stuck with me or made me think that when it comes to clients with sensitive skin, this is what I heard you say, try every try other things before you resort to your chemical peel, that there are other There are ways to you know, do that exfoliation. 

[00:13:55] Speaker: However, whatever the goal is, because that's variant depending on the client, [00:14:00] how else can you get there that isn't necessarily that classic peel? So maybe creating a cleanser with some glycolic in it in their facial or sending them home with products that might have that and just kind of seeing. So I think when I think about it, it's. 

[00:14:18] Speaker: a similar process just slowed down even more to kind of get a better understanding of your client's skin with this particular type of whichever you're using whether it's glycolic salicylic or lactic like just getting them to understand how is it reacting to this maybe it didn't like the glycolic but then you try lactic and it likes it better so you have to figure that  

[00:14:40] Speaker 2: And something we didn't discuss too is when we talk about the classic chemical peel is well, you have to prep them before they come see you too. 

[00:14:48] Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And I think that's an important thing that we need to help explain to our clients. If you want the classic, then I need you to start here. So it's like a, a [00:15:00] series of treatments and here's a treatment protocol plan that we can adjust as we go. But here's what I need you to do at home. And because you're sensitive. 

[00:15:09] Speaker 2: We're going to start here, right? And then you know as you progress, you'll have to look and see. So like if they have rosacea, for example, and you're in a series with them, you're not seeing them every week. But you have to make sure that you're explaining to them, if you have a flare up inflammation, a little bit of redness, any irritation, like you have to let me know. 

[00:15:29] Speaker 2: So you should be following up with your clients. If you feel that they're, or they were diagnosed with rosacea or they have that sensitive skin. I think either way I follow up with my clients, no matter what their skin type and conditions are and goals, I still do it. But especially with this, because you have to, you, you can't assume that they know this and they're not, and don't assume that because you told them, So I think those are things like, you know, any inflammation, flare ups. 

[00:15:59] Speaker 2: And again, like I [00:16:00] said, with rosacea, there's triggers, lifestyle, right? The foods they eat, products they use, stress is huge stretch, stress. They think they're saying is, is one probably the most common reason for the flare ups now. Well, we know stress causes inflammation in our body, so it only makes sense that it would affect the skin too, right? 

[00:16:21] Speaker 2: But I think too, that they got to look at. Microscopically, there's probably going to be tiny little broken skin, even potentially, they can't see it, but that's a tingle sometimes, right? So, or some will even have like the little pustule almost, and they'll think they'll want to use it on there. And you shouldn't be putting anything on those areas. 

[00:16:42] Speaker 2: What else can I say? What, what medications are they using? What currently do they have? Because a lot of times they're like a topical steroid. So we're not doing chemical peels.  

[00:16:53] Speaker: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. That's part of your intake, right? Just understanding what kind of medication they're [00:17:00] on. I think with you talking about that you know, having them to go home and use some products to prep, prep their skin for the peel. 

[00:17:07] Speaker: I usually always kind of default to that like at least two weeks before but I think with somebody with sensitive skin I might take it a little longer and get them to use the products a little bit more gradually because if there's like a salicylic sorry a cleanser with whatever salicylic or glycolic in it Maybe they don't use that every day for the first week, but every other day for the first week. 

[00:17:30] Speaker: And then they would gradually start using it every day. Just kind of getting them to ease into it. Mm-Hmm. . So the prep might be a little longer just to see how their skin reacts and like you said, like following up once a week, just saying, okay, so you used it every other day, how was that? Then you decide, okay, next week I'll start using it every day and then I'll touch base with you midweek. 

[00:17:51] Speaker: So there's a lot more contact I think that's necessary.  

[00:17:54] Speaker 2: Definitely. And another thing that I remember doing with some clients coming back to me is that I [00:18:00] actually had like a, a month calendar and wrote down exactly what they had to do and when they had to do it. And then it's K treatment number two and we'd start the day. 

[00:18:11] Speaker 2: Okay, now what are we going to do? And, and then follow up and saying, you know, there, it's not just them coming in and having a treatment with you. Right? There's, there's a lot more to this and if you're not, you know, I would advise you if you're not ready to do that full amount of work with them, you may not want to be offering chemical peels at that level because there's things that can go wrong and it's, it's you, it's going to fall on you, even though your client, you told them what to do, but I think it's better when you show them Take care. 

[00:18:44] Speaker 2: So in this day and age, I would be screenshotting it and sending that to them via email, some sort of way, paper trail that you advise them on how to do this. Yeah. So things don't go wrong. And even on there, put avoid [00:19:00] any other products. If you're looking at purchasing, please contact me. I really need to know what the ingredients are on there. 

[00:19:06] Speaker 2: I'm not saying don't do it, but please let me know before you buy it. So they're not buying from you, but you're, you're still going to take care of them. And they're not going to, they're not going to hide it from you either. They'll be telling you, Oh, I saw this online. I really love it. It looks good. Then you look and you go, Oh no, but you know, you have to be mindful. 

[00:19:24] Speaker 2: Could you wait till our treatments are done? Yeah. It would be like more explaining of why too, right? Like, right. Yeah. It's not getting mad that they're buying online and not buying from you. I think that's a big part of it. Right. For sure. But yeah, I think that's. I think we kind of covered it all, but definitely look at the milder side and look at building up and if there's certain areas, you said it already, you avoid certain areas. 

[00:19:50] Speaker 2: It doesn't mean you can't do some other spots. On the skin to help, right? But I think, yeah, when it comes to sensitive skin. And the other thing, too, is like, we keep saying it, knock it out of the park [00:20:00] with sunblock, right? Sunscreen, wear hats, something, like, and, and I always went over the top. I know there's those, those what are those called? 

[00:20:09] Speaker 2: Those The visors. The visors and stuff. Most people are not going to walk around. There are some that will do it. Mm hmm. Most won't. So literally have one on your shelf and say, well, how serious are you for chemical peels? Do you do this? You know how serious you are. Yeah. So if you don't want to wear this all the time Explain to me how you're going to protect your skin when you're out there. 

[00:20:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, so Yeah, make some c Also how much you are really paying attention to the care of their skin when they're not with you.  

[00:20:43] Speaker: Absolutely. So I think that like in a nutshell, when it comes to sensitive skin and rosacea, the answer isn't no. Yes, you still can. You just got to take more caution and take a slower pace when it comes. 

[00:20:57] Speaker 2: Very slow pace. Yeah.  

[00:20:58] Speaker: I love that. [00:21:00] Yeah. Awesome. Amazing. We'll be back with another episode next week.