What natural skincare product has stimulated your collagen growth?

For wrinkles, your best bet is to use a retinoid (Retin-A, Renova, Tazorac), and for firming/building collagen (thickening the dermis) then GHK and AHK copper peptides (such as those found in Neova products) should help. Ideally, you'd use the retinoid at night, and the copper peptide product in the morning (do not use anything else besides sunscreen over your CP product - it doesn't react well with AHAs or Vitamin C, from what I've read ...). Hope that helps - good luck! :-)

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leading dermatologists will recommend you get a glycolic as well as a antioxidant product. M.D. FORTÉ is known for glycolics. For antioxidants you'll see lots of doctors recommending Prevage. Prevage has idebenone (a derivative of the important CoQ10 compound) and you can only get the 1% concentration at the dermatologist. .5% idebenone Prevage is available at nordstrom and other skin care stores.

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Ladies...all these products sound great and I'm sure they do a great job, but you can save TONS of money and make these same products at home. The enzyme exfolient is fruit enzymes. You can mash up almost any fruit (papaya is a nice one), put it on your face, leave it on for a few minutes, and voila, you've saved tons of money and are getting essentially the same thing. Would you seriously pay $90 for fruit? If you buy these products, that's exactly what you're doing. You can buy ALL the ingredients available in pricey designer products, mix them together and have your very own, custom product. Personally, I mix my own DMAE, ALA, Hyaluronic Aicd cream. It costs me less than $4 for a one ounce jar. The only thing you cannot buy over the counter is retinol, but you can buy retin A, Vitamin A, etc., which are pretty close the the RX Retinol. I let the big guys do the research, then I look at the ingredients, and create my own. Most of the ingredients listed are for the cream base, then the actives are mixed in. Buy a good cream base, add the actives, and you have the perfect skincare product.

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You may want to try a procedure called collagen induction therapy. This is a procedure where a roller with tiny acupuncture is rolled over the skin to induce a micro trauma causing collagen production. There are 3 levels to the skin rolling- a home version, an esthetician version and a medical version. The procedure has been called the poor man's Fraxel because it basically does what the laser does by causing the body to produce collagen.

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It is true that your collagen production is reduced as you age.  It is also reduced in total due to breakdown exceeding production.  There are also changes in elastic fibers.  All of these natural intrinsic changes are combined with extrinsic changes ie. sun damage to produce wrinkles, discoloration and other age related changes.  

The only topical product shown to improve collagen on a microscopic level and therefore wrinkles is retin-A.  This can be obtained by prescription or in some skin care lines. 

Other topical products that can help skin are also available, but none has been shown to improve collagen on a scientific level.  The other important topical is sunscreen.  Minimizing the extrinsic damage will sustain you skin over time. 

Beyond that you are looking at some sort of medical/surgical intervention that can be anywhere from hyaluronic acid injections, (better than collagen) to fractionated lasers to ablative skin resurfacing.  All of which can be used to build up and remodel damaged and reduced collagen.   

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