Cicalfate+ Restorative Protective Cream.

"Avène Cicalfate+ Restorative Protective Cream is the more occlusive, wound care style cream of the two. It's built around zinc and copper to support healing and it lays down a protective layer, so it feels richer and more cushioning than your average face cream. This is what I reach for when the skin is genuinely compromised, raw, chapped, cracked, post-procedure, basically anytime the barrier is actually broken down and needs real recovery. Think targeted repair treatment, not your everyday moisturizer. I love it for perioral fissures. If you're using or you've overused your tretinoin, just putting a little bit in the corners where your tretinoin starts irritating you before your perioral derm breaks out is pure chef's kiss. The key ingredients are the copper zinc sulfate complex and thermal spring water. It's my personal go-to, and for my daughter, because we get perioral derm pretty frequently."

"Both Avene Cicalfate and The Ordinary Soothing and Barrier Repair Serum contain 4-t-butylcyclohexanol, an ingredient that intercepts the irritation signal at the nerve level and stops stinging and burning on contact immediately upon application, making both exceptional for burning, itching, and stinging skin. The Avene has a lightweight hydrating gel texture with panthenol and Avene thermal water, making it refreshing, lightweight, and cooling, great for dehydrated feeling skin and for oily skin that doesn't like heavier textures. It's very light, refreshing, and non-sticky, and any skin type would appreciate it. It's a good option for highly reactive skin that reacts to ingredients like fragrance or plant extracts, because the ingredients list is minimal, just the humectant content and the 4-t-butylcyclohexanol. Avene is the best for highly reactive skin looking for minimal formulas in a lightweight hydrating gel texture."

"This is a great one because it's really like a multifunctional cream in the sense you can use it all over like almost like slugging once in a while to restore your skin barrier. You can also use it regularly if you have super dry, eczema-prone, sensitive skin as your moisturizer or you can even put this on to spot treat additional flaky areas on top of your moisturizer. I use this, I love it post procedure. I love it when I get irritated like from my retinoids or my skin gets really sensitive. I will occasionally use it as just my moisturizer on my rest days if my skin is not happy. It's great for wounds, it's great for shaving, diaper rashes. It is a thicker balm, nourishing and creamy and occlusive. So if you're acne prone, I think that's why you just have to be careful and not use it on a daily basis and just watch what you put on underneath it because that's really the problem. Ingredient wise, it's got C+ Restore, which is this probiotic blend that really helps to support the skin barrier along with copper and zinc that we also know is important for our skin barrier health."

"This really is one of the thickest, richest creams I have ever used. If you are truly looking for something that is thick like toothpaste, something that really repairs the skin and repairs the skin quite quickly when your skin is burning and it has that itchy, dry feel, you are going to really love this. It does have copper and zinc to help replenish your skin's moisture. This one is honestly suited for your nighttime routine. If you're someone that wears foundation and makeup, this is a little rich and thick to be using with makeup and a little bit too rich to use underneath sunscreen. I do like to have this on hand for those days where my skin feels angry, but especially for those winter cold months. My skin can get quite irritated and dry during the winter and this always saves my skin."

"This is the large size of Cicalfate, it does come in a 40 ml size just like the La Roche-Posay product, they're around the same price, around the 10 pound mark. I think of them as being the kind of thing that's great to have in the bathroom cabinet for sore chapped skin, and they're suitable for use on just about any part of the body, on the face, in the private areas, on your baby's bottom if they've got nappy rash. They have quite a similar formula to the La Roche-Posay one, we have a mineral oil glycerin base in terms of the occlusive humectant side of things, some antibacterial metals, copper and zinc, and a postbiotic, which means treated bacteria have been included in the formula to help stimulate the skin immune system, plus panthenol, which is a good skin conditioning agent, good for repair. The drawbacks are that if you want to use this during the day to tackle an upset barrier you're going to struggle a bit, I don't think I have any patients who'd be happy putting these on during the day, they don't sit well under sunscreen and makeup, they're very much the kind of thing you'd put on to soothe the skin at nighttime. A great thing to have in the bathroom cabinet, a perfect little rescue for sore areas, but with barrier repair having come so far we can probably do better when it comes to cosmetic elegance and user friendliness."

"I have been going through a lot of the restorative protective cream. Went through a whole tube of it. I love using it as a hand cream, but one phenomenon that happens to some people with theirs is they get it in the mail or they order it or whatever and when they go to open up it's like completely separated and it's almost like a flood of thermal spring water shoots out of the tube then there's like this bluish blob. Some people are able to get the product to mix back together and be fine, but others are not. That's like a really frustrating thing to encounter. This is not an inexpensive product, especially here."