Nivea Creme

Every day a new breakthrough wrinkle cream, or state-of-the art moisturizer is released, and it’s amazing how far the beauty and skin care industry has come to bring us cutting edge anti-agers. This is what we are led to believe, but I realized most of my skin care staples are pretty old-school!

Retin-A
Back in the late 80s, I went to Tijuana with my parents and a bunch of my dad’s co-workers. All of the woman made a beeline to the cheap pharmacies there, and came back with tubes and tubes of Retin-A. My mom informed me that Retin-A was supposed to be a miracle wrinkle fighter, and it was the best wrinkle cream out there. Flash-forward 20 years, and guess what - Retin-A is still the best wrinkle cream! Now there is Renova, and Retin-A Micro, but it’s still basically the same thing. Thousands of wrinkle creams have come and gone, but Retin-A is still the best. It’s by no means a “miracle” but I view it as better than nothing.

Nivea Creme
Recently I started using Nivea Creme since it’s super cheap, and it’s a great moisturizer. It’s been around forever - since 1911! The other moisturizer I like is Clinique Dramatically Different Moisturizing Lotion. That’s been around almost forever as well!

There are, however, better moisturizers out there that are packaged in airtight stable packaging, that contain loads of antioxidants. But I have yet to find the perfect affordable super hydrating moisturizer that does come in stable packing, loaded with antioxidants, without pore-clogging ingredients. I know it’s out there, but I haven’t found it yet.

Sunscreen
All sorts of recent advancements have been made with sunscreens. The introduction of Mexoryl, Avobenzene, Tinosorb, and Helioplex are relatively new. But guess what - my favorite sunscreen ingredient is Zinc Oxide, which again has been around…forever! Actually I do concede that while Zinc Oxide has been around a long time, it hasn’t been in its micronized form for that long, so before that happened, Zinc Oxide sunscreens weren’t clear like they are now.

Chapstick
After years of sufferering from horribly chapped lips, blue Chapstick cured me! Petroleum-based Chapstick has also been around forever, and it never worked that well for me. There’s something special in the blue Chapstick, even though it only contains Petroleum, and two sunscreen ingredients. So since the blue Chapstick has only been around for 10 years, I guess you could say it’s new product, even though its ingredients are ancient. I also like using its retro cousin Vaseline for a variety of purposes - taking off eye makeup, slathering it on my lips or cheeks when I can’t find my Chapstick or Nivea Creme, and a few other random purposes.

There really have been some great breakthroughs with beauty products - much better self-tanners, excellent foundations, topical antioxidants, better pigmented eyeshadows, and I’m sure I’m missing a whole bunch of breakthroughs. But, despite all these advances, I’m still pretty old-school with my beauty products, even though I do fully embrace the newer Cosmetic Dermatology discoveries of Botox for wrinkles, fillers, and lasers.ambien detox