Skin Lightening vs. Peeling, what is the difference?

With every skin condition, most people will want simply to take a big eraser and “delete” it. Since our skin is not a paper they will try to delete it with a peeling. It can be scrubbing lemon all over your face or going to a beauty therapist or dermatologist and get rid of the damn thing. DELETE IT!

Unfortunately, things do not work this way, definitely not for hyperpigmention. I do recommend a gentle peeling maybe twice a week. I use milled oatmeal for it, you can also go milder and use yogurt but anything stronger is not very recommended, especially for people with darker skin.

People with darker skin have actually a higher chance to end up with more spots after peeling. Peeling is basically damaging the skin so it’ll regenerate in a better way – This process causes inflammation. The problem is that when a dark skin regenerates the pigmentation regenerates too and even stronger, read here about post inflammatory hyperpigmentation.

If it’s in the summer or in a warm country so double the trouble. The skin is thinner after peeling and the sun will usually effect some parts of your face more than others because it hits your skin in different angles throughout the day. The upper cheeks will usually be the first to become darker. This is why the most important hyperpigmentation treatment is sunscreen.

Nowadays, maybe only in Russia and some parts of Europe there is no hyperpigmentation. That means, if you were born and grew up there and did not go every summer to get some tan or simply burn yourself in a warmer country like this woman here:

Chemistry of hyperpigmentation

Skin spots are accumulation of pigments, the same pigments that is in charge of our skin color and our hair and eyes color. It is made in the bottom part of the Epidermis – the outer layer of our skin and help to protect our skin from the sun. This is why the sun will worsen any kind of hyperpigmentation. Once we have a small spot on the skin the sun will target it and the melanocytes will make more melanin to protect it. It’s because of the same reason that a black car gets warmer in the sun than a white car.

Skin Anatomy

The skin cells that produce the melanin are called melanocytes. These cells have long “arms” (called dendrites). These arms go to the surrounding cells and up to the outer layers of the epidermis. These arms are full of melanin and it goes out to the surrounding cells and gives them color.

Do people of color have more melocytes?

Surprisingly, The answer is NO. All of the people from any color or race have 800-1000 melanocytes per square mm of skin. Dark people do not have more melanocytes but their same amount of melanocytes makes more melanin so their skin looks darker. We all have the potential to be black as Bob Marly

How is melanin formed in the cell?

Melanin is made from tyrosine. This amino-acid is made in the liver and is used in many biological processes in our bodies. This is the process:

The products are pheomelanin that makes the red color like freckles and Eumelanin which is much more common and makes the dark pigment – brown. These are the two types of melanin and the variety of skin colors is made by the ratio between these 2 types of melanin.

This first two steps of this reaction are induced by an enzym – tyrosenase. This enzyme is missing in albinos and is very active in African skin or darker skin.

These two steps are oxygenation reactions. That means an oxygen is added to the molecule as in the firat step (The “O” in the diagram) or an electron goes out as in the second step and then the double bonds are formed, rings a bell from chemistry lessons? Maybe for some of you:) No?

Oxygentation is the process the is in charge for many aging processes, also hyperpigmentation and what we use against oxygenation is anti-oxidant such as vitamin C.

So, stopping this process will reduce the production of hyperpigmentation. We use two very strong herbal antioxidants in our skin lightening all natural skin lightening soap and cream. All about them in thje next email.

For any skin lightening, inquiries, ideas, questions etc. please comment.

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