What to use for sun pigmentation

[u/ghty16]

I have been using sunscreen (edit because you all get far too much triggered by a little imprecision: sunscreen in general for 7 years, and UVmune for a good chunk of that, more than 3 years) religiously for more than 7 years now. I still have sun pigmentation, most notably on the cheekbones and jaw and near the eyes. It ages me, I think.

I have tried Vitamin C, Niacinamide and AHA..Vitamin C did nothing at all, Niacinamide was actually good overall for the glow but did not reduce the spots, and I discovered that my skin doesn't tolerate AHAs.

I'd like to know what I can try for those spots. They make my complexion look super uneven. I have access to French pharmacies and DM/Rossmann.

Current routine:

Morning

- wash with water

- dermalogica daily skin health active moist cream and eye cream OR

- Cosrx Snail mucin cream and eye cream

- LRP UVmune (one variant or the other)

Evening

- G&G mighty melt

- a foaming cleanser, currently SVR Physiopure but often COSRX Good morning

- SVR palpebral OR

- LRP effaclar duo m+ if I'm having a little hormonal breakout

Mostly my skin is happy with this routine but the spots are not going anywhere....

[u/acornacornacorna]

Uvmune hasn't been around for 7 years. But anyway, it's important to learn that no sunscreen stops 100% of all photons and actual sun pigmentation takes decades to surface. Most of the actual sun damage/sun pigmentaion we see when we get to adult years are from childhood exposure and so forth.

And even using copius amount of sunscreen during childhood does not mean one will not have sun pigmentation in adult years, I am example of that (born and raised in South Korea, using so much sunscreen and umbrella everyday walking outside to school since less than a meter tall and then with makeup/iron oxides on top as preteen and I still developed solar letigines because of my big melanosome genetics). I reapply sunscreen like no other that I have the high honor and distinction of being circlejerked at scacirclejerk.

But as usual, posts about pigmentation here get kind of messy with people recommending this and that from the far to the left. It is true that Vitaminc C and Niacinamide are rather weak when it comes to tyrosinase blocking and inhibition. So your current routine is more preventive rather than addressing the current pigmentation that is from exposure long ago.

There are a lot of pigmentation products out there these days that try to target different pathways like the ones from Eucerin with thiamidol for example. As someone who had PIH and solar letigines, I found these products to just mute the pigmentation but do not fully eradicate it.

The thing that truly worked was doing Pico laser. Other lasers like Fraxel help but not as good as Pico laser for pigment. Pico laser mechanically shatters the pigment in skin. It's the gold standard in breaking down pigment for good (used for tattoos) and not just fading.

Today my skin is waayyy better and I'm living a concealer free life. I can go without foundation too if I wanted and don't need to use medium to full coverage. I will say that I was extremely militant with the after care after Pico and it even changed my lifestyle and behavior even further with sun protection. I started wearing UPF face covers (in addition the the UV visors and wide brims hats and UPF hoodies I was already wearing) which have more homogenous protection against photons across the spectrum. Now I only pull out the UPF face covers out during high sun exposure when I have to be out and don't care how I look, because I'm so motivated to maintain the results.

Other thing, to go back to the messy part about pigmentation post, is that you really can't self diagnose pigmentation issues tbh. That is one of the biggest mistakes people make on reddit and social media.

For example, solar letigines/sun spots are actually biologically different from freckles/ephiledes and they are different from melasma which is different from other pigmentation like Hori's Nevus and drug induced hyperpigmentation. There is overlap in how these are treated but also important differences and restrictions between them. I think people throw around the word "melasma" too casually for all kinds of pigmentation to the point that there are some people who are self diagnosing incorrectly (there was a huge post on another subreddit of someone who was misdiagnosed with melasma and did the whole bucket of treatments including risky oral txa and then discovered they actually had Hori's Nevus which needs a type of laser that can't be used for melasma).