People tend to either love or hate retinoic acid. Usually in 95% of the cases I find that the patient has been misinformed about this product and its use. Retinoic acid is a hormone that binds to receptors on your skin cells and tells them to speed up cell turnover, but at the same time, prevents cells from making genetic mistakes with replication.

It is a common false belief that retinoic acid “thins” your skin. Actually, the opposite is true. Because patients lose the dead layer of skin, it makes their skin more sensitive and vulnerable to the environment. The untrained person assumes this sensitivity occurs because your skin is thinner but this is not true--retinoic acid actually thickens your skin over time!

Retinoic acid will improve wrinkles, texture, color, and pore size in skin, but it will make your skin more sensitive. Be sure to apply it to damp skin, moisturize, and always wear sunscreen.

Retinoic acid is the only ingredient chemically proven to change the structure of your skin by increasing collagen and thickening the epidermal layer. No other chemical has been proven to do this.