The Risks of Skin Whitening
Safety
Like most procedures that radically and permanently change your
appearance, skin whitening does have risks. Permanent damage to your skin, the
exacerbation of diseases, depression, disappointment in results, these are all
possible results. If you’re not careful and choose products that contain
toxins, you can even cause permanent harm to your nervous system, terrible
birth defects, or even death for yourself and your children.
Be certain you have realistic goals. Most skin damage is caused by
overzealous skin lightening, when the person who wants their skin tone changed
chooses to overmedicate. Skin lighteners are often dangerous chemicals, and
when overused can burn or scar your skin. Be prepared to wait up to three months
prior to seeing any real difference in skin tone. If you don’t think you can
wait, consult with a doctor about your options.
Things to Remember:
Don’t use anything that contains banned substances or substances that
have been questioned by health authorities. You should be able to find plenty
of alternatives to dangerous substances. Make certain you have a full list of
ingredients for any skin lightening products you purchase.
If you have serious skin problems, consult with a qualified dermatologist
prior to using any skin lightening products.
Always research any product prior to use. Try to find consumer websites
that discuss all the negative reactions as well as the positive ones.
Skin damaged by chemicals can be very difficult to repair. Always remember
this prior to using the cheap alternatives you found online;
those cheap alternatives can cause damage much more expensive to repair than
the more expensive products would have cost you.
If It’s Potentially Harmful, Why Take the Risk?
Skin whiteners in the US are often marketed more as youth treatments
than as products to make your skin lighter. Time, unhealthy lifestyles, and
environmental damage are often cited as causes of skin darkening, and these
whiteners offer to “cleanse and purify” your skin to remove this sort of
damage. In Asia, the same whiteners are marketed to “whiten and brighten dark
skin tones.”
With the growth of the Internet as a sales medium, this market has grown
steadily more lucrative. The Internet also allows for the sale of unsafe
products, and some of the leading international companies that sell unsafe
forms of skin whiteners have extensive online domains, based in Southeast Asian
countries.
Skin whitening is often advertised as a way to look better off, younger,
or prettier, and the products sold to poorer women, especially dark women, are
often the ones with more toxicity. These products are generally sold in ethnic
oriented grocery stores and ethnic beauty salons, and are often manufactured in
very poor countries and exported legally and illegally to the West.
Higher end skin whiteners are generally marketed to affluent Asian women
living in Japan, Korea, China, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and
other Southeast Asian countries with emerging economies. This segment of the
skin whitening industry is worth billions of dollars, much more than the low end segment.
Skin Whitening Active Ingredients
While many of the low-end products use bleaches and skin-destroying
chemicals to remove the melanin in skin, the high-end products are generally
composed of chemicals that block the sun and suppress the synthesis of melanin,
the pigment that causes your skin to be dark. This can be done through the
action of various chemicals, or through extracts of herbs that are touted as “safer.”
A link is often made between youthfulness and skin whiteness. And, as
dark skin is often spoken of as “hyperpigmentation,”
“age spots,” “dull,” or “pigment pathologies,” an implication is made that dark
skin is diseased skin, which the skin whitener can “cleanse and purify.” Or that your skin can be “transformed” and “restored” through the
actions of whiteners. In one advertisement for a major skin whitener,
Asian “yellowness” can be replaced by “flawlessly radiant skin.”
Skin Disorders and Skin Lightening
There are several skin disorders that should raise a red flag to skin
lightening. The basic rule is to avoid skin lightening if you have any skin, immunocompromising, or systemic disorder until you speak
with a doctor. Your skin is the primary defense you have against germs and
foreign substances, and if you damage it, you may be leaving yourself open to
disease and infection.
Chemical Peels and Skin Problems
Chemical Peels: Oral herpes is a definite issue; if you have this, you
must speak to your primary care physician and obtain a prescription to prevent
any herpes breakouts. Herpes during your peel could result in an infection over
your face, and could result in severe permanent scarring.
If you have crusting or excessive weeping from your peel, you should
speak to your skin care specialist. For typical light peels, you should feel
and look normal in three to four days, while deeper peels will have a longer
recovery time.
If you have pain, especially in specific areas of your face, speak with
your skin care specialist immediately. Also report any blisters right away.
Watch for and report any redness with pain; this could be an infection.
After your peel has healed, if your skin type has been misdiagnosed,
ethnicity not fully reported, or skin problems not all reported, you may have worse problems with hyperpigmentation
or hypopigmentation than before.
Laser Resurfacing, Microdermabrasion, and Problems
In less than 10% of patients, some darkening or discoloration will
require bleaching creams, and can be resolved in less than three months.
Prolonged redness will delay the fading of skin overall by a couple of months
as well. If your surgeon is not as good as he should be, you may have more
intense burns associated with laser resurfacing; choose doctors experienced in
laser resurfacing. If you have oral herpes, talk to your primary care physician
about getting a prescription to prevent a breakout during your treatment;
breakouts at this time can result in permanent severe scars.
Olive, brown, or black skin may have serious pigment changes regardless
of the resurfacing method chosen.
Patients with psoriasis, eczema, or herpes; patients who are prone to
abnormal scarring or keloids; and patients who have
used Accutane in the last year and a half are not
good candidates for skin resurfacing. Speak to your doctor about these issues.
Intense Pulsed Light may cause some blistering or slight bleeding,
though this is rare. Hypopigmentation and hyperpigmentation after the process are also risks, and may
take up to a year to clear up.
Microdermabrasion has fewer side effects if you are a healthy
adult. However, if you are not perfectly healthy or have a skin condition, you
run a more significant risk of hyperpigmentation,
perforation, bleeding, or infection. It is also possible that you could be harmed by inhaling the corundum particles often used.
Avoid microdermabrasion if you have the
following conditions:
- Undiagnosed lesions
- Recent herpes outbreaks
- Warts
- Active, weeping acne (stages 3-4)
- Active Rosacea
- Unstable diabetes
- Auto-immune system disorders
Melanin-blocking substances may irritate your skin or cause permanent
coloration changes in your skin, especially if you don’t use sunblock while you’re treating your skin. Ochronosis (black speckles) may appear in patients with
darker skin, particularly if high strengths are used for long periods of time.
Exogenous Ochronosis
About seventy percent of those who use 4% or higher hydroquinone for one
to three years develop exogenous ochronosis, a
progressive discoloration of the skin that is irreversibly disfiguring. It’s
limited primarily to those with very dark skin.
Acne and Skin Lightening
Chronic acne leaves some nasty scars. Can whitening products fade this
scarring? Pigmentations left from scars are very different from those of
freckles; most acne scars are very superficial, while freckles are formed on a
deep layer of skin.
Whether skin whiteners work depends on the type of acne the scar was
formed by. Types of acne include closed comedo
(whitehead), open comedo (blackhead), papule,
pustule, cyst, or acne conglobata (on back, buttocks,
and chest), and each type has a different type of scarring effect.
The two main categories of acne are inflammatory and noninflammatory
acne. Noninflammatory acne includes blackheads and
whiteheads, primarily differentiated by where the clogged pore is located. If
it’s below the surface of the skin, it’s a whitehead, showing on the skin as
small, whitish bumps. They are caused by an imbalance of oil and moisture on
the skin, and tend to occur on dehydrated skin where oil is overactive in
compensation for the lack of moisture in the skin. In the blackhead, the
clogged pore has broken the surface of the skin. The dark appearance is caused
by melanin, not dirt. Regular exfoliation will ease melanin buildup and reduce
the appearance of blackheads.
Inflammatory acne is different; instead of a simple clogged pore, it’s
caused by an inflammation in reaction to invasive bacteria. Papules are small,
firm pink bumps, and are the mildest form. Pustules are small round lesions and
clearly contain pus; they’re red at the base with a yellowish or whitish
center. Nodules or cysts are large, painful, inflamed, pus-filled lesions deep
within the skin. They may harden into a deep cyst, and can leave deep,
hard-to-remove scars.
Acne conglobata is rarer,
but more serious. It involves pustules and nodules developing on the back,
buttocks, and chest, and may be complicated by severe bacterial infection.
Scarring acne can leave behind include ice pick scars (deep pits), box
car scars (similar to chicken pox), rolling craters (cratered like the moon
– General Noriega had scars like this), or hypertrophic scars (rubbery,
dark red, firm, often confused with scars from a burn victim).
You may be more fortunate and get macules, or pseudoscars, which are flat, reddish spots that may remain
up to six months. It will disappear with no trace, unlike a scar, and regular
exfoliation will improve its appearance and speed its disappearance.
Post-inflammatory pigmentation is the discoloration of skin where a
lesion healed or is healing. Some of this may last up to 18 months,
particularly with sun exposure. This is the most frequent type of scarring for
an acne sufferer.
Whitening products suppress melanin production and treat skin
discolorations caused by an imbalance in melanin production. Scars changing the
surface of the skin rather than the color (like icepick
or rolling scars) cannot be treated with whitening products. Instead, whitening
product fade post-nflammatory pigmentation, though
not as effectively as they fade freckles.
Acne sufferers think whitening products will help. But for many, the
root of the problem of acne as well as scarring is dehydration or skin dryness.
Whitening only helps post-inflammatory pigmentation, or macules
once they’ve occurred. Your oil/moisture is still imbalanced. First you must
fix the imbalance. Afterward, you can work on repairing the scars.
Serums and essences can help achieve that balance by penetrating deep
into your skin, unlike ordinary moisturizers. Regular use helps you obtain an
optimum balance of oil and moisture. And as skin is hydrated, skin cells
damaged by acne will be repaired. Ultimately, the top layer of damaged cells
will slough off; if the cells beneath are properly hydrated, you’ll see a
decrease in acne.
Once the balance has been achieved, you need to repair the damage. For
scarring, exfoliation is your best bet. Start with peel-off masks and scrubs to
exfoliate dead skin and sebum, and minimize the appearance of post-inflammatory
pigmentation or macules.
If your acne does not improve, it may be hormonal. For this, you should
see a doctor. And if your scars are very severe, you may have to see a doctor
to get a chemical peel.
