Retinoids baby

You know them, you love them, you’re buying out every tube of Beauty of Joseon’s ginseng+retinol eye serum. But you haven’t stopped to ask yourself— what exactly is retinol? What is it doing for me? Well, my dear… allow me to explain.

Retinoids improve skin texture.

Retinoids, with their unique ability to improve skin texture and renew cell turnover, hold the promise of radiant and youthful skin. If you’ve been doing all the assigned reading, like a good muñeca, you’ll remember that the skin comprises three layers. These include—from deepest to the surface, the subcutaneous layer, the dermis, and the epidermis. The last layer is broken up further into five layers. When all is going well, the upper cells of the epidermis are shed and replaced by lower cells, which migrate upwards and flatten as they mature. As we age, however, this process of cell shedding and replacement tends to… slow down a bit. Retinoids shake things up. It goes a little something like this: you squeeze a bit of retinol cream onto your finger, rub it gently across your face and neck, and the retinoids travel a long, treacherous journey across your cell membranes and into your skin cells. The retinoid will undergo changes in the cell before making its way to the nucleus, where the magic happens. Just as sure as cell activity slows down with age, retinoids find the genes that control cell renewal and get them working again.

Retinoids activate collagen production.

You know how the story goes: you get older, lose collagen, and your skin gets more lax. While this story may be slightly oversimplified, it’s not wrong. Collagen is a supportive structural protein in your skin. It provides a scaffold on which your skin can rest. Environmental stressors like pollution and UV rays degrade the existing collagen. Fibroblasts (cells that produce collagen in the dermis) readily replace the degraded collagen, but like in the epidermis, the renewal process slows as we age. Much like retinoids wake up cell functions in the upper layers of the skin, they also trigger some changes in the dermis. It tells fibroblasts to ramp up production. Interestingly, retinoids also increase the amount of fibroblasts present in the dermis.

Retinoids are a great acne treatment.

As much as you may languish about the size of your pores, those darling little buggers serve as passageways for natural oils to moisturize your skin. Where you may encounter a problem is overactive oil glands that cause clogs in the passageway— making your pores appear big. Because retinol is so good at renewing your cell turnover, it can prevent pore clogging. So it prevents breakouts, reduces the appearance of pores and also does a secret third thing: minimizes discoloration. Retinoids block the transport of melanin, a pigment that gives your skin its color, to the epidermis, thereby reducing discoloration.

So, simply put:

Retinoids are the crown jewel of skincare. But the crown has to sit on a great foundation— they can’t do all this great work on their own. Make sure to balance your skincare routine with a good cleanser, a decadent moisturizer, and your favorite sunscreen to milk all the benefits from this amazing skincare product.