Darnell Cox | 50+ Healthy Aging Expert.

"I love this peptide. This is by COSRX, a six peptide skin booster. It evens skin tone, hydrates, helps with firmness and smoothness, pore and sebum care, and improves skin texture. It has [...] a copper peptide in it, [...] signaling peptides, and acetyl hexapeptide-8, so it smooths fine lines, and it's so cheap [...] I've got like six of them in the refrigerator because I use them over everything. [...] I am literally seeing a huge difference just from using this on my body every night."

"Right on top of that I'm doing a vitamin C serum, and not just for my face, literally whole body. [...] As I am drip drying I put The Ordinary Ascorbic Acid 8% + Alpha Arbutin 2% on. This is not expensive, you guys, and now they made it in a 4 oz bottle. It's very, very watery, so this is what it looks like, I mean it's literally like water. You don't need much, a couple squirts and you rub it on your whole body, everywhere, literally head to toe is how I use this. It's an antioxidant, so it's great for your skin. It's also an active ingredient, it helps to even out that skin tone and brighten the skin, more even complexion, which as we know with fluctuations in hormones with age, one of the [...] signs of aging skin is that discoloration. [...] But that discoloration can be helped with things like vitamin C."

"The less irritating of all of those is mandelic acid and that's for really sensitive skin. I'll oftentimes use this if I'm going to peel my chest and my neck because the skin on your neck is different than the skin on your face. The skin on your neck does not secrete oil, skin on your face secretes oil, the way you treat your neck has to be very different than the way you treat the rest of your body. It loses collagen fast too because we're turning our necks all the time so it thins the skin as we age and we have to be very careful not to break that skin barrier or you will not be happy. A mandelic acid if you've got really sensitive skin is great and it's still an alpha hydroxy."

"This is the Timeless vitamin C, the best vitamin C on the market. The L-ascorbic acid has transformed my body skin. I've been putting this on my entire body for about three or four years now and it has transformed my skin. I've been a fan of this brand for so long, I absolutely love it. If I could bathe in this in the morning I would, and if I could bathe in it in the evening I would too. It works well with retinoids at night, though it doesn't always play nicely with peptides."

"Softwave uses ultrasound. It only goes down a half a millimeter deep. Does not go to the level where you have fat. So there's zero risk of it damaging any cell membrane of fat and having you lose volume in your face. What I felt when I did Softwave, and I've done it twice, is it felt like my whole skin was energized. I don't know how else to explain that, but afterwards, I'd never felt anything like that before. It was like my whole face just felt energized. And I did notice a lift afterwards."

"This is by 70 Wellness. This is the MyoLift Mini. This more looks like and functions like some of the ones that are done in medi-spas. If you go in for a microcurrent facial, it's done with a two probe system. This is a two probe system, not a two lobe system. And this gives you better control and really gives you a better kind of treatment because you can really manipulate these a lot better. So the pinch and hold technique is going to be very different than the press and hold technique. You can pinch with this. It has an erase mode."

"BPC-157 helps to balance the dopaminergic, serotonergic, and GABAergic systems of the brain, so it helps and has a balancing effect on neurotransmitters. However, there is a small portion of people that can have quite severe reactions to BPC-157 in terms of anxiety and all kinds of weird symptoms like neurological symptoms. For that reason, [...] you have to be cautious and [...] very mindful when you're introducing something like that into your body. You really have to tap into yourself and how you're feeling because if you wake up the next morning with severe anxiety that you didn't have the day before, [...] you have to be open to the possibility that it is this new thing that you've introduced into your body. What I've seen is the faster you stop, the better off you are. Gritting your teeth and musing your way through and just continuing to use it is a bad idea. There are enough people I've heard of now who've had an issue that I think it's worth mentioning so that people understand that it can happen."

"Juveau is a wonderful product on the market. It's a wrinkle relaxer that's put into particular muscles with small dosages. It does not go through the body, it just stays in that muscle and then it wears off over time. [...] When you put it in there, it retrains your muscle not to make those facial expressions, so the muscle stays soft and flat. That retrains your muscle to actually stay nice and smooth, and over time those etching lines that you have will become smaller, smoother, tinier."

"This one is Versed, it literally just helps with non-toxic vegan cruelty free fragrance free. Made for aging skin, dullness, dryness. It's an at home exfoliation tool with in-office results that safely removes buildup of dead skin and peach fuzz, no batteries needed. Skin is left smooth, bright, and products penetrate better. That's one of the things that I found is once I get this, the fuzz off, the products penetrate better and the makeup goes on smoother."

"This is expensive, I think like 400 dollars, maybe 300, no 400. I think with my discount you get it for 350. But it does help increase circulation. Red light therapy increases circulation, and when we're looking at the structure of your hair, circulation is super important in giving oxygen to the area and supplying nutrients. So your biotin, your iron, all the things necessary for growing the hair is in your blood. Your circulation, this is all super important because that's how your hormones are getting there as well. That's why red light therapy helps with hair. You don't need to protect your eyes from this because it's not shining in your eyes at all. I do this every other day for about 15, I think it shuts off at 20 minutes actually, but I do feel like this is one of the pieces for me, one that has worked. I did notice after using this, I did a whole experiment on YouTube where I wore this hat for three months every other day."

"I have the Nira Pro, but it's not on my calendar because I'm really backing away from heat centric products. My husband started using it for a long time and it had great results for him, but then he saw that the fat around my eyes got dissolved from an IPL treatment I had in the office for dry eyes, and we both kind of backed away from intense heat products at home, because you do run the risk of it being worse than when you started."

"I've been using iRestore. This is the professional device. [...] Red light therapy is [...] effective. [...] When you'll start seeing the results of red light therapy is about 30 days. [...] If you start doing red light therapy now, every single day in 30 days, you are going to see a giant difference in the health of your skin, smaller pores, more even skin tone, reduced texture, reduction of fine lines and wrinkles. It's stimulating collagen, plain and simple."

"It was called a Solo Wave and it was a microcurrent device that had little red light therapy and it was on a wand. Gimmicky waste of money. Not a big enough space to really do red light therapy. If you're moving around this little wand that has a red light, the surface area that's being treated is super small. It's super small. So you're not getting the same treatment area that you would if you had a mask or if you used a red light therapy panel. I was sent one of those. When I started realizing this is not really microcurrent, it's not really working. You can still use it for lymphatic drainage, which it works really well for lymphatic drainage, but that's about it."

"My husband has been using the NIRA Precision Laser around his eyes and I've seen major improvements. My only problem with these lasers is you don't know how strong they are. When you're using multiple modalities at home like radio frequency, like microcurrent, like red light therapy, retinoids, chemical peels, when you're doing these at home you have to be very careful that you don't exhaust the skin. So when you add in things like high-level lasers that are now available at home, my theory is that you take the [...] time away from things like radio frequency that heat the skin deeply, because a laser heats the skin."

"The J's 4D Laser Light Therapy Mask is six times stronger than LED masks. Instead of traditional LEDs, this mask uses laser diodes that focus light at a 20° angle, penetrating deeper into the skin for better results. It has four different wavelengths for face mapping because each part of the face has different needs and the mask addresses them precisely. 660 nanometers brightens dull skin and dark circles, 850 nanometers targets forehead wrinkles, 940 nanometers reduces redness and dullness on the cheeks, while 1,640 nanometers works on fine lines and marionette lines. This precision ensures that each skin concern gets the right treatment. The results are clinically proven by SGS, making this mask one of the most effective at-home treatments available today."

"It's called Altreno, A-L-T-R-E-N-O. It is a prescription strength tretinoin that is formulated with other types of ingredients that helps ease the irritation. So when you go to your dermatologist, if you can't make it to Mexico or you don't live in a city where tretinoin is not prescription or is only available in prescription, then you can ask your dermatologist if they can prescribe Altreno, which is a prescription tretinoin with a lot less irritation because of the other ingredients and the formula that they make it."

"This is a prescription strength Retin-A, it's tretinoin, it's a 0.05 percent. If you put this on your eyes on this skin it's going to eat it up like battery acid. So if you're dealing with fine lines and wrinkles, a way that you can still use your prescription strength retinoid is that you can add a little bit of a barrier, so you could add like a nightly moisturizer. You would do your tretinoin around your face, avoid the eyes, put a moisturizer on it first. It gives a little bit of a barrier. I like to switch to a retinol, an over-the-counter non-prescription for around the eyes because the skin is very different. You wouldn't want to put this on your neck because the skin on your neck is very similar to the skin on your eyes."

"This is a very good product, everybody, for not a lot of money. An SA cream is [...] a salicylic acid cream. It's made for rough and bumpy skin. Imagine what it does for smooth skin, right? It's an exfoliant. So I'll use it on those places where I've got keratosis polaris or I've got like little imperfections. I always put this on [...] first because I want to get rid of the senescent cells, those zombie cells, to clear the way so they're not taking up the precious resources of the other skin care that I'm going to put on top. This [...] doesn't really follow those same rules of layering skin care like you're dressing for the snow, like the lighter layers first. [...] It's a combination of like a cream and a serum and it just kind of disappears and blends into your skin."

"This is where I don't go anywhere without this, hands down in my opinion the best moisturizer on the planet. Why? Because it has an active ingredient in it as well. It has that peptide, the OS1 peptide that helps to decrease those senescent cells, those zombie cells, those cells that are like dying. They're in the process of dying and we want to speed them up so we get the good stuff, the rest of the skin care where it wants to go. This is the body version of this. And I always, this is my main moisturizer that I use on my body after all of my other actives."

"This is a 2% BHA liquid exfoliant. Great for acne. But again, when we're treating acne, we're treating aging. I know it's weird, but that's what it does. Why? Because it's a good kind of stress. [...] Anything that is irritating your body that is causing a biological response, whether it's a chemical peel, whether it's a [...] retinoid, whether it's micro needling, it's causing a chemical response in your body that is making it better. And [...] it's affordable. This one is not expensive."

"I know that sounds crazy but like I'm I feel like every day I wake up I want to conquer going to the gym or at least going for a walk or whatever I am not g to let my age just that number I feel like is it's just really number kind of like the scale because again back like women going on the scale I don't even own a scale because I don't even care how much I weigh like I don't because it's a number it's all about my ink your jeans fit"

"This is Paula's Choice, this is one of my favorite for the body. It's a skin smoothing retinol body treatment with antioxidants that diminishes appearance of uneven skin tone, helps provide firmer skin, hydrates and softens. Retinoids are the best ingredient because they hit all three different phases of hyperpigmentation: the production, the transfer to the skin, and then the treatment afterwards. [...] You can use this for the whole body."

"It decreases dandruff, it actually reinforces the role of sebum and it disrupts some of the fungal growth, but the side effect is dry brittle hair. I would say my hair turned to straw and that broke my hair off and has had me start all over again. I will never use it again because it broke my hair off. If you've got fine fragile dry hair in addition to hair loss, don't do it. Use more of a caffeine solution or rosemary instead. There's a lot of different things that will tingle the scalp and help, but you have to be careful that you're not damaging your hair in the process or stripping your hair, because that's the last thing you want. Not only is your hair falling out but it's breaking off too."

"One Skin OS-01 hair, this has been a game changer. There's a lot of research on hair loss. It's getting rid of those damaged, senescent cells, zombie cells, and it's making way for the good. I do a droplet of this, and then this is an OS-01 peptide it's in the same thing as the best body lotion in the world. You can take a micro needling tool and roll it in, or you can stamp it. I tend to like to stamp because my hair is so fragile, I don't want to roll things over the top of it because what if it cuts my hair off. So that's how protective I am of my hair."

"The solo one is one of them I think it's great for lymphatic drainage I don't think the red light therapy is doing it. It's too small of a head, it's not covering the surface. So when you're doing red light therapy, surface area that you're covering, whether it's one of these masks or the iRestore hat or the big panel, the surface area is important. And red light therapy in a thing that is this small, you're wasting your money. I think it's great for lymphatic drainage because I believe that there's a vibration on it, but don't think that you're going to get a good red light therapy from that."

"I had a client that was wearing the neck attachment. This is the Omnilux brand, but they were wearing the neck neck attachment and watching a movie at home and she said, "Oh, I can't wear that anymore." And I said, "Why?" And she said, "Oh it like it caused me to have like these hives and then I itched it and I actually scabbed." She kept pushing the button until it ran out of battery, would go off automatically and she'd turn it back on, kept doing this for the duration of the movie. And what that does is it creates too much energy in the cells in the skin cells and you will get a reaction that will cause you sometimes to even blister with a rash."

"This is one of the red light therapy top picks by the same company Omnilux that does my favorite mask. I don't think it's much cheaper, it's an expensive product but it really does help. I usually have this downstairs by my television and I will watch TV and then I have to cover this with a blanket because it lets off a little too much light at night when you're watching TV. So I'll put this under a blanket and just continually press this button for about three cycles and it's a 10-minute cycle that automatically shuts off."

"This is Brow Wiz soft Brown. [...] I like to go underneath the eyebrow a little bit because as we get older when [...] our eyebrows thin they tend to get thin from the bottom, so you want to bring your eyebrow down towards your eye. It gives you a little bit more youthful look. If you look at how your eyebrows looked when you were 13, 14, 15 years old they weren't these high arched brows. You see the difference, it just kind of anchors the face a tiny bit."