ReviewWithout question, the best book I’ve read on skin care.”—Paula Begoun, author of Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without MeAbout the AuthorLeslie Baumann, M.D., founded the University of Miami Cosmetic Medicine and Research Institute in 1997, the primary university-run exploration center consecrated to cosmetic dermatology and skin care. Her revolutionary skin typing scheme has been adopted worldwide. She is also the author of the bestselling textbook Cosmetic Dermatology and is a regular contributor to Yahoo! Health.Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.Chapter One

Why Skin Typing?

Introduction

How a lot of times have you gone to a cosmetic counter and expended $50 to $150 on productions you never again use? Has a saleswoman or cosmetologist sold you a line that “did wonders for me,” but does not one thing for you? Have you invented an allergy or irritation to a product without knowing them cause? Why does your best friend swear by a facial care product that makes your skin look and feel terrible? Should you or shouldn’t you use soap? Why do you hate the feel of sunscreen, though you know you ought to use it? Is a chemical face peel right for you? Should you consider using Retin-A? If you owned a Subaru Forester, you wouldn’t follow the maintenance procedures for a Volkswagen Golf. So if you take place to have dry, sensible skin, why on world would you use a moisturizer, cleanser, and cosmetic procedure
more suitable to an individual with oily, immune skin?

The reason? You don’t know what type of skin you have; therefore, you don’t recognise how to care for your skin. Until the publication of The Skin Type Solution, the Baumann Skin Typing System was not widely known or available. While a great deal of persons have a ordinary understanding of their skin, most have relied on normally known but imprecise, unscientific definitions that fall short of providing a unfeigned and finish picture.

My a great deal of years as a dermatologist, researcher, and professor of dermatology have convinced me that no one ever needs to have a “bad skin day.”

Knowing your Skin Type is the missing, necessary step to finding your way to beneficial merchandise and treatments–and finelooking skin. But if you’re like the typical first-time patient at my bustling University of Miami clinic, I’ll bet you:

·Don’t know your Skin Type
·Don’t know that it’s necessary to base skin care conclusions on your Skin Type
·Use the wrong productions for your Skin Type
·Spend much more than you ought to on those products
·Use the wrong procedures for your Skin Type
·Fail to take vantage of procedures that would gain your Skin Type

When it comes to using skin care productions and services, most people have been in the Dark Ages, wandering through a maze of product misinformation and overzealous marketing, lucky to stumble on anything that works. To the right way care for your skin and prevent aging, you need a treatment model that describes and captures the very real and scientifically verifiable distinctions in skin physiology.

Skin Typing does just that.

Plus, you need a concrete program quintessentially and on an individual basis tailored to the distinctive traits of your Skin Type. The Skin Type Solution provides all of that critical selective information and guidance.

Once you’ve ran into your Skin Type (through answering a questionnaire in Chapter Three), you may go straight to the chapter on your Skin Type and find everything you need right there. There is a science to skin care, and once you recognise your Skin Type, it all gets a lot easier.

I’ve expended the last ten years defining and clinically testing my Skin Type solutions on thousands of people who are in need of medical care at my University of Miami clinic to ascertain that my scientific criteria will work for everyone, of each skin color, ethnicity, age, and sex. And it does.

Perhaps you’ve already benefited from understanding your psychological type, your learning style, or your Ayurvedic type. If so, you’ll be grateful for how critical it is to get a handle on your Skin Type. This understanding lets you take control of your skin.

My Special Expertise

The guidance and gems I’ll give you won’t appear anyplace else. I launched, and presently direct, the University of Miami Cosmetic Center, the introductory university-run cosmetic exploration center in the United States, where I treat thousands of persons who requires medical care each year. In addition to being an MD, I am a professor at the University of Miami and the chief of the Division of Cosmetic Dermatology, making me the initial cosmetic dermatologist in the United States committed to the field of cosmetic dermatology who is likewise a full-time university faculty member, instructing and conducting research.

This unexampled combining affords me a distinctive position. My academic responsibilities keep me right on the cutting edge of research, while my clinical work has been a proving ground for refining the recommendations that arise from my findings.

My clients–who range from gorgeous fashion models to topflight professionals, to fellow physicians, to all kinds of men and women concerned with regards to aging–have reaped the gains of my distinctive understanding of the role of Skin Type in skin care.

As a scientist who is likewise a woman who loves to experiment with beauty and skin care merchandise and routines, I’m tireless in seeking out and researching all beauty choices because I use them myself. What’s more, as a person who wants to look my best all my life, I may put myself in your shoes and figure out how to best serve your skin care needs.

Defining a New Typology

Up until now, the field of dermatology lacked a rational model that humans could learn to follow and utilize for themselves. Prior to Skin Typing, the preexisting mode of analyzing skin divergences dated back to the early 1900s, when cosmetic giant Helena Rubenstein introductory disunited skin into four categories: normal, combination, dry, and sensitive. While that was revolutionary for it is time, today we may utilise more precise scientific criteria to the range of skin differences.

Before Skin Typing, even dermatologists felt frustrated, since we all want to understand skin better and offer our people who are in need of medical care tailor-made solutions. But until now, the revolutionary classification of the sixteen Skin Types was not there to help.

Here’s just one example of the kind of confusedness that runs rampant, even amidst professionals. I not long ago was on the advisory board of a major company with two prominent dermatologists. One was an “R” (someone with resistant, nonreactive skin) and the other one was an “S” (someone with sensible skin). Right there in front of the company president, the two had a big argument, with the “R” dermatologist claiming that there was no divergence in skin care merchandise and that it was all syndication hype. She could use anything on her facial skin, she told us, even Ivory soap, without a problem. The “S” skin dermatologist was shocked. Almost everything made her skin turn red and sting, she retorted. These two skin pros did not perceive that their opposing points of view stemmed from their opposite Skin Types. I saw very without doubt or question that something was missing and wanted to simplify skin care, once and for all.

As a clinician, I’d seen the harm caused by following an unsuitable skin care routine. As a caring doctor, I’d heard the feeling of annoyance at being hindered or criticized and confusedness of people attempting to make good skin care selections while barraged by a plethora of merchandise and overwhelmed by conflicting and oftentimes misleading merchandising claims. Because each person had queer skin care needs, I noticed that the same merchandise did not work for everyone, so I tailored individualized skin care regimes for my clients. Over time a clear, consistent, and replicable typology emerged. The sixteen Skin Types are the keys to a finish diagnostic and treatment program that covers each substantial skin element and that really works.

My scheme measures four components in skin: oiliness vs. dryness, resistance vs. sensitivity, pigmentation vs. non-pigmentation, and tightness vs. wrinkling. Determining where you fall in each of the four categories serves as the foundation for typing your skin. Your Skin Type is more than the sum of the four dissimilar factors. Their interplay and expression are distinctive for each type. After seeing in a literal sense thousands of people who are in need of medical care and refining the Baumann Skin Type Questionnaire over the last ten years, I may see to it you that Skin Typing captures each Skin Type’s distinguishable calibers and shows you how to work with your type’s intensities and weaknesses.

Once you perceive your Skin Type, proper skin care isn’t elaborated or costly. You won’t need to use a shelfful of products. Honing in on what your skin needs will actually simplify your beauty routine, making it having little impact to follow and more economical. Following the counsel I’ll extend in your Skin Type’s chapter will end “bad skin days” because it will end bad skin care decisions.

How to Use This Book

In reading the opening chapter of this book, you’ll acquaint yourself with the underlying principles of Skin Typing. In Chapter Two, you’ll learn my modern vocabulary to support you comprehend the dissimilar elements that I take into account when determining your Skin Type. In Chapter Three, you’ll take the Baumann Skin Type Questionnaire. Once you tabulate your results, you will recognise precisely which one of the sixteen types describes your skin. You may then turn directly to that chapter for a finish profile that will provide you with everything you need to take charge of your skin and give it the best possible care. The bottom line is that by reading your chapter, you will get to recognise your skin. This will provide the foundation for following my subsequent advice.

Each chapter holds Daily Skin Care Regimens quintessentially designed to address your Skin Type’s problem areas. To follow your type’s regimen, you will need to use the kinds of productions I recommend. I’ll provide a list of suggestions for each type of product, as well as extra suggestions to use when you have specific skin problems.

If you presently use productions that you find effective, you may likewise carry on to use them, if you wish. However, if you determine to do that, I advise you to consult the lists of ingredients that define which ones are favorabl…

Most helpful customer reviews

87 of 90 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent information!
By Leanne
I purchased this book after reading a review about it in a magazine, and I’m extremely pleased with it!

Before buying the book, I was worried that the questionnaire that Dr. Baumann provides wouldn’t be as easy as it was to follow since, in the past, I’ve often found that questionnaires sometimes don’t reveal your categories as clearly as they could. In this case, however, her questionnaire was simple and accurate, and I learned a great deal about my skin.

What I also like is that Dr. Baumann provides you with information in case you fall into a borderline area in one of the four categories. For instance, I fall between the Wrinkled and Tight skintypes in one category, but the book suggested that if this is the case, that I follow the Wrinked guidelines to prevent the formation of future wrinkles. She offers similar suggestions throughout, so that you know when and how to use the products she recommends.

I also like how Dr. Baumann provides products in a variety of price ranges, many of which can be found at a local drugstore. The only downside is that some of the prices were a bit more expensive than her price rating system seems to suggest. For example, each of the products is rated from $-$$$ in terms of its cost. Two of my recommended eye creams were in the $$ price range, when one, in fact, costs $55 and the other $68. It seems like these should have been placed in the $$$ range, and these aren’t the only examples of this nature.

Overall, though, it’s been an excellent purchase! Considering how much many of us spend on beauty and facial products, the book is a very good investment. Personally, I know that it will help me avoid making costly mistakes in the future. Instead of continuing to spend money on products that don’t work for my skin type, I now feel like I will be a more confident shopper.

70 of 73 people found the following review helpful.
A good place to start for the skin care novice
By Amazon customer
In my teens and twenties I never paid much attention to my skin, partly because I didn’t have any major problems and partly because I wasn’t very interested in beauty, fashion magazines and the like. I’d wash my face in the shower and draw a couple lines under my eyes in the morning and that was the extent of my skin care and make-up routine. But, at 34 I noticed a lesion on my face that turned out to be skin cancer. It was nothing serious and was taken care very easily, but it made me start looking at my skin more closely, and, much to my dismay, I realized that I was beginning to show the signs of ageing; for the first time I noticed that I had crowsfeet, smile lines and age spots. I decided I probably should start taking a little better care of my skin, but I didn’t really know “what” I should be doing. Since it’s nearly impossible to get a dermatologist to spend any serious time with you, I decided to buy a book instead. I bought this one and I think it was a good choice.

The book helps you assess the type of skin you have and determine what products and procedures are best for you. It also impresses upon you the importance of sunscreen. For many skin types, like mine, Dr. Baumann suggests a Retinoid product that you have to get through a dermatologist. This seems to have been good advice as I have read several articles in other sources (NYTimes and Consumer Reports) that say that Retinoids are the ony products which have been scientifically proven to reduce the signs of ageing. So, for the recommendation of suncreen and retinoids, I’m very thankful to the author.

As far as some of the other product recommendations are concerned, I have taken them with a grain of salt. If I choose to use them, I buy the cheapest ones or look for another product that has the same active ingredient. Is she endorsing certain products for financial gain? Possibly. But, she does give you enough information so that you can seek out cheaper alternatives. One thing is for sure, this book did not save me any money. A tube of Avene (the Retinoid) alone is costing me $50/month and if you buy all the other “stuff” (special cleansers, eye cream, antioxidant moisterizers, etc.) you could “easily” find yourself spending over a $100/month on your face.

The author is also a big proponent of Botox. She herself has been using Botox since she was 29. I personally perfer to stay away from needles and injections. Not only is it extremely costly and something that you need to do on a regular basis, but for me it seems like it’s taking the anti-ageing program a bit too far. We all are going to age, so a certain amount of acceptance (resignation?) seems in order. I want to keep my skin in the best condition possible, but I also want to be able to accept my ageing body and face (with it’s smile lines and crows feet). While I can “totally” sympathize with women (and men) who have these procedures, it is my hope that I can acquire a healthy attitude about ageing and spend all the money I would have invested in Botox on something more fulfulling, like wonderful vacations. But, perhaps this is easy to say while I’m still in my thirties. Maybe I’ll feel differently in my sixties.

At any rate, I think this is a very informative book and it has helped me make some well-informed, positive changes that hopefully are paying off.

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful.
A must buy book
By M. Edwards
I have had problem skin my entire life – acne, sensitivity. I have been sold every product under the sun wuth a promise it would help and never did. I finally took Accutane which cleared up my skin but made it even more confusing to buy products. I finally have the answer.
I read the book and took the quiz only to find out not only do I have sensitive skin but I have EXTREMELY sensitive skin. I threw out more than half my skin care products and bought several on Dr. Baumann’s recommended list for my skin (dry, sensitive, wrinkled, non-pigmented). My skin has never been this clear – no spots, no itchiness, no flaking, nothing but clear soft skin. I even feel comfortable going without makeup now. Even after the Accutane my nose still had a lot of clogged pores and even they seem to be clearing up now.
Despite what others have said Dr. Baumann is very upfront that she tests for several companies – in fact she tests for so many that she is truly impartial – many of the products she would test would be from competing companies. Common sense tells you this. I also liked the dietary recommendations for my skin type – I have incorporated a few and have seen a difference.

This book is a must have for anyone – it demystifies the skin care industry and helps you figure out what to use and what not to use. It gives options and information you cna use for a lifetime.

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