What's the best kept beauty secret?

What you think reflects on your face, affects your voice tone and shows in your demeanour.

• Face - false lashes that are very natural and eyeliner on the inside of the upper lid with a gel liner will wear extremely well and give eyes more of a sparkle.

• Voice - if you want to grab the attention of a younger crowd move the pitch of your voice up 1/2 to a full tone and speak a little faster. If you want to impress the big boys, drop it down by the same measure and speak slower.

• Body Language - walk with confidence, good posture and with purpose - you'll turn heads - especially if you wear a great hat or ensemble with equal aplomb.

First, the best kept beauty secret is not found on the counter of a department store! It is an Rx. There are a few prescriptive treatments that dermatologists use that are an excellent part of an overall skin improvement regimen – these unique prescriptions are the best-kept beauty secrets, and all you need to do is ask about them; they are as follows:

• Anti-aging medications – Your dermatologist is able to prescribe the “gold standard” in anti-wrinkle and anti-aging prescriptive medications. For example, your dermatologist may write a prescription for a topical retinoid, which is a derivative of vitamin A that has been approved by the FDA and is backed by many years of research studies. In fact, topical retinoids are the only FDA-approved anti-wrinkle cream available. Retinoids cause an increased turnover of skin cells, and thus speed up the skin cycle, causing your skin to function much like it did when it was younger. Over time, topical retinoids can smooth fine lines and wrinkles, improve darkened areas of the skin, smooth rough areas, and improve sun damage – retinoids are generally considered to be the best anti-aging prescription available.

A word of caution: retinoids should not be confused with cosmeceuticals labeled “retinols.” Combined with “skin brightening treatments” (see below), and used under professional supervision, rather good results are frequently obtained with FDA-approved, prescription retinoids.

• Skin brightening treatments – In the nineties, skin brighteners were referred to as skin lighteners. Often, Madison Avenue marketers take something that is not new but make it sound new, by adopting a new word or catch phrase. In this case, the word “lightener” was changed to “brightener.” The way it works is: brighteners prevent irregular or overactive pigment production. A major cause of dark spots (hyperpigmentation) is damage by UVA and UVB rays. Hyperpigmentation can be worsened due to hormonal changes during pregnancy, or by certain birth control pills, or by hormone replacement therapy, or other variables. There are a variety of products available for skin lightening, but, for best results, avoid expensive, non-prescriptive products. Your dermatologist can give you a prescription that inhibits melanin production and will brighten your skin the best. Also, to get maximum benefit from a brightener, your dermatologist can explain how to use it properly and how to combine it with a sunscreen containing the proper SPF. As stated, some of the best-kept beauty secrets can be obtained with a simple Rx from a dermatologist.

Most people have heard of chamomile but not about the Superman among them, blue German chamomile.

This essential oil is a deep blue color, due to the extraction method used (the chamomile flowers it is extracted from are not blue). This oil has been around for a very long time, but most commercial companies don’t use it because it is extremely expensive—to add it, it can cost several dollars per jar or bottle of product. The scent is not the familiar chamomile tea-scent—it is much more basic, cool.

Skin care products that contain this oil will become tinted or specked blue, pale sky blue (if less oil was used), or green if some other ingredients in the formula are yellow.

This oil offers an incredible range of skin benefits. It is very hydrating, incredible at balancing very dry or itchy skin, it calms inflammation or redness, soothes, calms, balances excessive oil production, and it even improves acne. The oil is also very helpful for rosacea and eczema.

I have also found that people who are allergic to other species or forms of chamomile are usually not allergic to German blue chamomile.

There's another specialty product that we have; that if I'm going to be on television, or say tomorrow The Travel Channel's coming to do their shoot and -- I'll give away the secret Viscontour, by the same people that make Sculptra.

Viscontour is hyaluronic acid that's packaged in little ampules, and it's really slick in that it's the same substance that's in your cells that attracts and binds moisture and makes the cells either plump, if you have the high hyaluronic acid, or not so plump, if you're aging and losing hyaluronic acid from your cells.

So if you put hyaluronic acid -- and I say "acid" because it's acid pH technically, but it's not very acidic so that it's a harsh acid, it's very gentle -- and put it on when you've got moisture on your face, like after a shower. So what you do is you use your Clarisonic skin cleansing brush to take all the debris off your face and you would lay down and put the Viscontour on your face.

And if you really want to really, really plump your skin up for like a special occasion or for a special event or for a photo shoot or whatever, you would use two ampules and let it sit on your skin, actually pool on your skin, and then wait for it to also get down into your neck.

It will sink into the pores, down into the dermis between the epidermal cells, and it will very much plump the skin out by around 30%, which is a lot. I mean, that's visible. Anything between 20 and 35% is visible to the naked eye. And it smooths the skin, plumps it out, makes it very radiant looking.