Ever since I was a teenager in the early Nineties, I’ve been obsessed with skincare.
I was desperate to find a cure for my dreadful acne — my terrible skin was a source of deep embarrassment, and for years held me back.
In the end, it wasn’t apple cider vinegar, home-made sugar scrubs, toothpaste, TCP or peel-off masks that eventually improved it; it was seeing a dermatologist.
These days, I’m no longer a spotty teenager, I’m a qualified dermatologist myself and a spokesperson for the British Skin Foundation, specialising in both beauty and medical skin problems with a particular fascination with anti-ageing.
The process of getting older outwardly can be seen in the skin before any other organ of the body. Growing old cannot be hidden, unlike many other medical issues. We are living longer than ever before and the anti-ageing market grows ever bigger, bombarding us with celebrity endorsed potential ‘cures’, some of which are utter rubbish.
It drives me mad, the amount of bad information out there. Over the past ten years, I’ve seen hundreds of patients, many of whom, faced with a barrage of anti-ageing advice, are crying out for clarity.