Post Menopausal Skin Changes | The Beauty Scientists

Join Dr. Kristy Hamilton and Dr. Roy Kim on the Beauty Scientists Podcast as they delve into the topic of menopausal skin changes. Discover how the drop in estrogen during menopause affects collagen production and leads to various skin issues.

Learn about non-surgical options like diet, exercise, and collagen supplements, as well as injectable treatments for stimulating collagen growth and addressing other skin concerns. Explore the hormonally mediated changes in menopausal skin, including dryness, itching, adult acne, increased hair growth, and melasma.

Gain insights into the importance of early intervention and get expert recommendations for maintaining healthy skin before and during menopause. Tune in for valuable tips and strategies to keep your skin radiant and vibrant. 

#MenopausalSkinChanges #SkinHealth #BeautyScience

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Transcript

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collagen drops 30% in the first five years of menopause and then it continues to drop 2% every year but that those like micro injuries from the laser causes that that damage causes your body to start trying to repair itself and produces collagen but to be honest ha fillers don't really increase or induce that much collagen growth go get those hairs lasered before they turn white or gray because once that happens you cannot get rid of them as easily Welcome to the 18th episode of The Beauty Scientists I'm Doctor Kristy Hamilton board certified plastic surgeon here with my colleague Doctor Roy Kim and we are excited for our next topic which is Post Menopausal Skin Changes so menopause is a big deal there's so many changes that happen to the body to the mind it's a major major pivot point in women's lives and that's half of the population of our country and the world so this is a big impact topic and we're interested in it because many of our patients fit into this category and there's big changes that occur so Doctor Kim I know you were recently interviewed on this topic by American Society of Plastic Surgeons so what what begins to happen what's going on with the hormones in women's bodies when we're starting to experience these changes there are a lot of hormonal changes as we all know but the biggest one that seems to affect menopausal skin is estrogen so specifically the estrogen drop causes a lot of skin changes it causes more delicate skin and essentially you're gonna have less collagen formation so what's interesting and sort of scary actually when I actually learned about this collagen drops 30% in the first five years of menopause and then it continues to drop 2% every year like forever unless we do something about it so that's actually a big deal and this is the sort of main source as to why we have all these different skin changes after menopause I did not know that 30% drop in estrogen no wonder women feel like I don't feel like myself like I look in the mirror I don't know who it is I mean that's a pretty drastic percentage yeah I mean we're sort of percolating along and then of course collagen production I think slows down but it doesn't drop that much that quickly in women before menopause or men in general until they're pretty old so it's a huge rapid change immediately so before we go into the other the other hormonal changes that affect skin so what are what are non surgical options for addressing this this collagen I I'm this is a I'm very passionate about this topic because I'm always working on increasing my collagen so what what can we do to help patients who are experiencing this, that's very alarming or pretty much all of us cause we're all gonna be losing collagen and yeah I mean I think there are couple approaches one is overall holistic one is in terms of actual direct non invasive skin treatments and of course direct invade or more invasive skin treatments so holistically weirdly enough it's diet and exercise like most of life so diet would include any foods that have more biotin collagen in them and people don't love thinking about this stuff but again we've talked about this in the past we're talking tendons ligaments gelatin which actually has a lot of these components now we do obviously have supplements so biotin collagen supplements of that nature also have a lot of collagen in it and exercise well increased blood flow helps with overall skin healing so you wanna lift weight slash get your heart rate up you wanna do both like weightlifting as well as cardio so those are two big things the final thing is sort of obvious but again you probably shouldn't gain a lot of weight and lose a lot of weight only because physically that's not great for your skin that makes sense and we know whenever you lose lose volume then and you have a collagen loss and loss of elasticity and elastin on top of that then the balloon has deflated and it's also sagging so that's not that's not the look that we're going for when you're especially when you're going to see your plastic surgeon yeah what injectable options do we have yeah so in terms of injectable options this is an interesting topic because just filling the balloon the deflated balloon or filling a wrinkle actually doesn't really increase collagen that much now this goes sort of against what we're we've been told by the manufacturers of these fillers but to be honest HA fillers don't really increase or induce that much collagen in growth the stimulatory fillers biosimulatory fillers to be honest don't they increase collagen a little more but they don't increase collagen that much either they seem to have an inflammatory effect along with a small stimulatory collagen effect and we're talking the non ha filler so specifically CAHA Calcium Hydroxy Appetite the Sculptra as well as a couple others which are not really common in the US not huge but they're definitely useful but it's not like repeated injections of those products will increase collagen a lot I think that in terms of the injectable world and the jury's out because they haven't been out that long or what we discussed in the past regenerative skin boosters which are not really out in the US yet we have SkinVive made by Allergan great product but it's mainly HA and it does induce some collagen growth but the regenerative skin boosters which are from products that you've love salmon skin DNA but it's not really skin yes that actually regenerates collagen cause it was usually used in wound healing the jury's still out because yes I'd like to see two years five years whatever for follow up but they do seem to work and they do seem to regenerate it's very exciting I just did and I wanna talk about this too so Laser Resurfacing because I am always trying to build my collagen so you don't need to wait till menopause haha to start counteracting this but that those like micro injuries from the laser causes that that damage causes your body to start trying to repair itself and produce this collagen and so I did exosome therapy on top of it this time and I did a much more aggressive treatment that I normally do cause I was at home with baby and had the opportunity to do that and I heal faster than when I normally do lighter treatments of the laser so that is not it's not a double blind controlled study but it's definitely caught my my eye and my interest so I'm excited to see more regenerative medicine techniques come to United States what what else so okay so that's that's some of the things that we can do and we were just talking about collagen creation after losing all of that collagens menopause started but what other what other hormonally mediated changes do we see to the skin once menopause begins yeah so collagen's a huge one but honestly other things include dryness and itching of the skin what we love to call pruritus which is a medical term so you may have to avoid soap or washing as often and you may need more moisturizer you may unfortunately get an increase in adult acne which like hey you know you're an adult you're well past being adult yet this new onset of adult acne just beware of that that can happen you can have increased hair growth hers I don't know if I can pronounce this hirsutism but yes you may have increased hair growth post menopause and melasma which you may or may not have after pregnancy or just in general it becomes more obvious more frequent and the big thing I think it's harder to get rid of post menopause than pre menopause so just be aware of that melasma is a fancy dermatology term for sort of a rash on your face it looks like a butterfly usually and that is just hard to get rid of and finally of course people love talking about hot flashes well unfortunately your facial skin may also experience flushing that's to be expected to a certain extent but if you have rosacea then it actually gets a little worse after menopause okay and so none of these changes are welcome none of them are like you enter menopause and my skin is now glowing so we got we do have answers for some of them right so and we talk about excess hair growth and of course it's not in places that we want it's not like oh you've got more hair growth on your eyebrows your eyelashes or your head we're talking hair growth on your chin no woman wants that haha so we do have we have laser hair removing out I tell patients if you notice that you're getting hairs on your chin and you are fortunate enough that you are a brunette and not a natural pale blonde go get those hairs lasered before they turn white or gray because once that happens you cannot get rid of them as easily so that's an option acne of course were well versed in taking care of acne or especially our dermatology colleagues so there's options there last one very difficult to treat whether it's the pregnancy related or hormonal both there's some good chemical peels and chemical mass that we do and then facial flushing or rosacea also can be difficult to treat but dermatology has some options for that but unwelcome changes yes unfortunately there are ways to treat them all but yes it would be annoying if you're an adult and great I have more adult acne now post menopause wonderful so it can happen and when we were talking about this topic before you would mention the fact that like time does not help any of this what what what did you mean by that when you were mentioning it yeah I mean the more you sort of let it go so specifically whether you have melasma whether you have hirsutism unless you mentioned hair extra hair weirdly enough I mean you wanna if you can't nip it in the bud that's okay I mean you just wanna be aware of it and then you wanna treat it a little sooner as opposed to later I mean melasma in a seventy year old is gonna be a lot different than if you're treating it in someone who's 50 or 30 or whatever it's if it's really set in it's harder to deal with and you mentioned hair removal of course I mean you'd rather have dark hair against light skin that's when you get the laser treatment you don't wanna be having you know white or gray hair the laser has a hard time eliminating that hair follicle yeah you need to have the pigment it needs a target something to go after that differentiates it from the surrounding skin so time is of the essence when it come when it comes to that so let's say if you're if let's say you're approaching menopause or you're starting to be perimenopausal what would you suggest to your female patients for staying ahead of the curve here I mean definitely having a healthy diet one thing I we forgot to mention is yes you want a high collagen diet we also want to avoid poor food specifically fast food alcohol high sugar all those things aren't really great for your skin we already know that we wanna increase exercise because that actually helps with blood circulation and that will help your skin and then weirdly enough hey if you can't intake enough collagen with whole foods you wanna take collagen supplements and you wanna start taking it now cause that'll set you up I think get you in a routine discipline where you're if you're always taking collagen supplements menopause hits you're already replenishing that collagen and avoiding that 30% drop in the first five years it's a very alarming statistic I'm glad we've mentioned it a couple of times resonating with me right now I really did not know that and then of course in our offices then you can also consider treatments to actually stimulate collagen production now of course it's nice that you're talking about holistic ways of doing it because you're not doing laser resurfacing on your whole body or at least we're not able to do that yet maybe something will come up in the in the future and then of course medical grade skincare helps as well so again medical grade skincare it's it's really it's like the consistency of using those products so that's something if you start now you'll you'll look like a different person relative to if you'd never tried it at all but it's you see the really the benefits of that on the long term I think I totally agree and then we all know you know prescription grade skin care is great it can definitely regrow collagen it'll thicken your skin you have fewer fine wrinkles better skin consistent color like you won't have red spots or pale spots rather your skin will be uniform in terms of color and I think one of the things that we don't discuss enough is prescription great skincare works great even if it doesn't work as well as you want even if you want a laser treatment or if microneedling treatment whatever you need a baseline of really awesome skin and when you get that laser treatment you're gonna heal faster and actually look better 100% my patients who have been working on their skin and taking care of it and wearing their sunscreen and and doing doing these treatments over time when they then go for a bigger procedure they have such an easier recovery than people who are starting for the first time but I still applaud anyone who's whether they've been on the path for a while they're just hopping and taking their first step it's a worthy journey and I'm excited about the other the regenerative medicine techniques that we were talking about so hopefully they'll be some really really great technologies coming out in the future in this area we see it starting already that will be like high impact any final thoughts on this very interesting topic no I think that you know like a lot in life it depends on your preparation so if you build a great foundation to your house it won't be as dramatic of a change and specifically not a great change but rather you're prepared and so hey you may not need anything even if you feel like you need something post menopause your body's prepared so that it can get a non invasive or invasive treatment so and you're gonna look much better much faster well I know I certainly learned a lot during this and I am not menopausal yet so that means I still have time to start working on loading up on the loading up on the collagen in here prepare myself as best I can in all the ways so you know that's me I'm always I'm always doing something yeah a fascinating topic I learned a lot and and I'm sure you the listener or viewer did too if you have more questions leave a question below or a comment and we will incorporate that into our upcoming podcast as well and as always stay beautiful stay beautiful