Dr Dray on Serums: A Dermatologist's Verdicts Across 63 Products

"One of my all-time favorite antioxidant serums here. This I love. It is the Abib Glutathione Dark Spot Serum. This serum has these little capsules in it that just melt right into your skin. And the capsules contain glutathione, ascorbic acid, and niacinamide. I like that together because we know that ascorbic acid has all of these stability issues, but in the presence of other antioxidants that is thought to enhance its stability and niacinamide, of course, is an ingredient that I personally love using. And I think that's a great way to make use of those ingredients kind of in a complimentary fashion. Not to mention the serum itself is very hydrating. It's very moisturizing. I ended up using this first thing in the morning, letting it absorb and then once it dried down fully, putting sunscreen on over it. That's a great way to have antioxidants in your routine is to put them on in the morning either through a serum like this under sunscreen. [...] Really have enjoyed this and I have another one to get started on."

"We have the 20 oz bottle of AmLactin 12% Lactic Acid Lotion. [...] At this percentage strength, it not only improves epidermal thickness, but also dermal thickness. This is one thing that could potentially be helpful for those of you with solar purpura, like age related dermatoporosis, thinning of the skin related to the sun, usually on the backs of the hands and the forearms. You [...] get this huge bruise. [...] This right here, it's not going to get rid of that issue, [...] but it's one of the few things that can legitimately help with that. [...] This is the first month at this Costco you have the 20 oz bottle. Normally it's $18.99. This month, they're taking $ [...] 5 off. $13. [...] Yes, you can use this on the face. Yes, you can use it with retinoids. [...] AmLactin reformulated and [...] it no longer has the odor. I never noticed an odor from AmLactin myself, but [...] they reformulated it. [...] I've seen confirmation in the comments from over 20 of you [...] that you used to [...] not use AmLactin in the past, but you heard from my videos that they changed it and it doesn't stink anymore. So you gave it another try and you're so glad you did because you don't smell anything and you're loving it."

"Let's talk about a product that I personally use and I've used a lot this year. In fact, it was one of my most repurchased: the Maelove Fade Away Brightening Serum. This product I found personally for me to be very effective for brightening up my skin tone and lightening some dark spots, hyperpigmentation. What I like about this is that it's arbutin, and it's also kojic acid, and it's also licorice root, so those three are very gentle pigment lightening ingredients to brighten and improve skin tone, and they tackle slightly different aspects of the pigment producing machinery in a slightly different way, so they exhibit synergy. The formula overall is also very hydrating and moisturizing, and I've got news for you: when it comes to improving the appearance of hyperpigmentation, there's something to be said for moisturizing, because improving the moisture content of the topmost layers of the skin, ultimately through light scattering, helps dark spots appear less noticeable. For example, if you have dark spots on your skin, hyperpigmentation, it's a lot more obvious if your skin's dry. Moisturizing can just by light scattering help that, and moisturizing also improves barrier function, cutting down on the potential for you to develop irritation, which ultimately works against hyperpigmentation. So it's a very hydrating serum. I apply it, I actually usually only apply it once a day, although arbutin can be used twice a day, and I of course am really aggressive with my sun protection when I use it."

"I got to say the Virtue Healing Oil. [...] Since discovering the Virtue Healing Oil, I actually completely forgot about the Orbe one because what I like so much about the Virtue Healing Oil is, you know, I have pretty fine textured hair, like my individual strands are pretty fine and so a lot of hair products weigh it down and I almost never put things like that up here on the crown. Well, the Virtue Healing Oil I definitely can use up there."

"Paula's Choice 10% Azelaic Acid Booster is almost always going to make an appearance in these Sephora what to buy type videos [...] because when it comes to azelaic acid, an ingredient that is very helpful for redness, for hyperpigmentation, for acne breakouts, as a cosmetic ingredient there are a handful of products out there that have this ingredient, this has to be the best one in my personal experience testing out many. Azelaic acid that you buy in cosmetic products here in the US is not the same strength as what you get from a prescription product, but it shows promise as being helpful especially for addressing some of these issues. In addition to azelaic acid though, this has licorice root which again is good for redness dark spots and it also has a little bit of salicylic acid 0.5% so helpful for breakout prone skin cutting down on blackhead and whitehead formation. Azelaic acid can kind of tingle a little bit maybe make your face itch a bit. I have never found that to be the case with this product specifically, but it does happen for some people. By and large azelaic acid is well tolerated and it can be used alongside other ingredients. This is a great product to complement, maybe even a retinol. You could use it in the morning if you wanted to in an effort to help hasten the clearance of say dark spots for example."

"The Ordinary's lactic acid serum is just as good as a fraction of the price. [...] Objectively speaking, using it, trying it out, it works, it's not bad."