Medical-Grade vs. Over-the-Counter Skin Care Products
People spend a lot of money trying to look their best. It’s understandable that they would do this because the way they look affects the way that other people treat them. There are certain aspects of our appearance, such as our height, that we can do very little to change. Then there are other aspects of our appearance that we can change with surgery and invasive procedures.
However, it is interesting to note how drastic of a change a person can make in their appearance by knowing how to use skin care products. Not all skin care products are created equal. The quality of the results you get will be based in part on the quality of the product you use.
Over-the-counter skin care products have been designed to work on the majority of the population. For this reason, the concentration of their active ingredient is relatively low. They do this so as not to negatively affect the skin of the general population.
Medical-grade skin care products are made to be a lot more potent. They can only be purchased by a physician. They have been developed and researched to the point that they have a sufficient amount of the active ingredient to actually make changes in your skin. A higher amount of the active ingredient usually equates to better-looking skin.
In addition to having a higher content of the active ingredient, medical-grade skin care products have the purest form of that ingredient. They are made using the latest technology and can be adapted to your particular skin issues. Over-the-counter products are usually less expensive than medical-grade skin care products. This is because lower quality, raw products are used, which in turn sacrifices how effective the skin care product really is.
Over-the-counter products are designed to sit on the surface of the skin. Medical-grade skin care products have been designed to penetrate the epidermis and affect deeper layers of the skin. The difference between an over-the-counter skin care product and a medical-grade skin care product is the same as the difference that exists between a tooth whitening procedure that is sold at the local pharmacy and a teeth whitening procedure that is performed by your dentist. Since your dentist has access to stronger products, the results are going to be better.
The FDA closely regulates medical-grade skin care products. Most of these are marked as pharmaceuticals. By law, they must have 99.9 percent pure active ingredients. Before they can be used by the public, there must be scientific evidence showing that the skin care product is beneficial and that it does what it advertises. In other words, before a medical-grade wrinkle reduction cream can make it to the market, there are multiple studies done showing that it really reduces wrinkles. This is not the case with over-the-counter cosmetics.
Over-the-counter skin care products allow you as the customer to self-diagnose your skin and select the skin care product that you think is best. However, when you use a medical-grade skin care product, it is a trained medical professional who examines your skin and prescribes medicine that will adequately address the issue you have.
