Gastric Sleeve Skin Care: 8 Ways to Protect Your Skin Now

Though loose, saggy skin might seem like an unavoidable result of rapid weight loss, there are steps you can take to preserve your skin before after gastric sleeve surgery.

As you prepare for gastric sleeve surgery, there is so much to feel excited about – increased energy, improved mobility, decreased pain, fewer injuries, and more. So it’s a shame that a fear of saggy skin can put a damper on that enthusiasm. It’s an unfortunate truth that rapid, significant weight loss often causes loose skin throughout the body and that a loss of facial fullness can lead to an older looking face.

Fortunately, there are steps you can take before you ever head into the operating room that can help minimize the effects of gastric sleeve surgery on your skin. In the future, we’ll address options for caring for the skin on your body, but today let’s focus on the face. These are the skincare steps you can begin taking now, in your home each day to keep your face smooth, bright, healthy, and youthful looking. They’ll be most effective if you begin several months before surgery, but they’ll help no matter where you’re at in your gastric sleeve journey

BEGIN A SKINCARE ROUTINE BEFORE GASTRIC SLEEVE SURGERY

If you don’t already have a skincare routine in place, there are three basic steps every person should take to care for their skin each day: 1) wash, 2) moisturize, and 3) protect from the sun.

Cleanse

No matter your skin type, start with a gentle, unscented, moisturizing cleanser. You want a cleanser that will clean away the sweat and grime of the day without stripping your natural oils. CeraVe is an inexpensive, dermatologist-backed option. It’s free of fragrances and sulfates that can irritate and dry your skin

Though you might be tempted to use an astringent cleanser if you have oily or acne-prone skin, resist the urge! In fact, acne prone skin might benefit most from moisturizing, as acne is often caused and worsened by a damaged skin barrier.

And before you finish this post, go throw out any makeup wipes you have, no matter your skin type! Though makeup wipes might seem convenient, they disrupt your skin’s ph balance and moisture barrier, they’re bad for the environment, and they’re honestly terrible at their one job – removing makeup.

If you find that a gentle cleanser doesn’t get all of your makeup off, consider double cleansing, starting with an oil based cleanser. Though I don’t wear makeup every day, this oat cleansing balm is my go-to when I do. It quickly breaks down even the most stubborn water-proof mascara.

Moisturize

After all that talk about moisturizing cleanser, you wouldn’t imagine I’d ignore the importance of moisturizer, would you? Once again, even the oiliest skin types will benefit from proper moisturizing.

Moisturized skin looks more fully, dewy, and healthy than dry skin. And it will stay tighter throughout weight loss too!

My go-to moisturizer is CeraVe’s Moisturizing Cream. It includes hyaluronic acid (more on that below) and ceramides to restore your skin’s moisture barrier. And it’s deeply moisturizing without being sticky.

For added hydration, consider using oils or a petrolatum product after moisturizing to seal in the moisture. I especially like rosehip oil for the added brightness it creates, but squalane and jojoba oil also work well.

Good old vaseline or aquaphor are also great options. These products are petrolatum-based. Petrolatum isn’t moisturizing itself, but it’s an occlusive, which means it seals in any moisture beneath. That can be just what dry skin needs, especially in the winter. But acne-prone skin may be better off avoiding petrolatum, as it may cause breakouts.

Wear sunscreen

You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again. Wearing at least SPF 30 every single day is the single most important part of skin care. If you want youthful skin without visible aging and sun damage, you must wear sunscreen.

Now before you put up a fight, let me acknowledge that finding the right sunscreen is a challenge. While chemical sunscreens can make your eyes sting, mineral sunscreens often cause breakouts. And all of them can cause an unnatural white cast, especially for people of color. But sunscreen is still worth it if you want to preserve the tightness, texture, and tone of your skin after gastric sleeve surgery and throughout your life.

Here are a few that I like:

If you’re going to skip sunscreen, you might as well skip everything other step mentioned in this post.

Seriously.

It’s that important

LEVEL UP YOUR GASTRIC SLEEVE SKINCARE GAME WITH ACTIVE INGREDIENTS

Once you’ve been consistently following the above steps for several weeks, you can start adding in active ingredients to propel your skincare to the next level.

A warning: NEVER ADD MORE THAN ONE NEW ACTIVE INGREDIENT TO YOUR SKIN CARE ROUTINE AT ONCE! Try out only one new active at a time to test your skin’s reaction to it. Once you’ve successfully used it for several weeks without negative skin reactions, you can add in the next one.

Hydrate your skin with hyaluronic acid

Did you know that hydrating your skin and moisturizing it aren’t the same thing? In a skincare context, hydrating means bringing water into your skin, while moisturizing adds oil. Ideally, you want to do both.

That’s where hyaluronic acid comes in.

Don’t be scared away by the word “acid” in the title – this isn’t a drying, exfoliating, or dangerous product. In fact, there’s already hyaluronic acid in your skin naturally. Hyaluronic acid is a magical little ingredient that pulls H2O molecules from the environment and into your skin. As a result, it plumps the skin up to reduce the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles, and even sagging. I like The Ordinary’s version (can you tell that’s my favorite brand?)

For best results, apply hyaluronic acid to damp skin after cleansing to that it has some extra water to absorb into the skin. It can be used morning and night since it plays nicely with most other skincare ingredients.

Apply retinol at night

Besides the three basics of cleanser, moisturizer, and sunscreen, retinol is your skin care best friend. It’s the most effective, most thoroughly research-backed product you can apply to keep your skin youthful. That means it can also be incredibly effective at preventing the loose facial skin after gastric sleeve.

But it’s also one of the best ways to really screw up your skin if you aren’t careful.

So here are the major reasons to use retinol, based on decades of scientific research:

And here’s what you can do to prevent dry, flaking, red, tender skin when you begin using retinol:

• Never use retinol on damp skin. Make sure your skin is thoroughly dry before applying.
• Never apply retinol at the same time as vitamin c or any kind of chemical peel.
• To make retinol less irritating, mix it into your moisturizer.
• Try the sandwich method – apply a layer of moisturizer, let it sink it, apply retinol, and then moisturize again.

The Ordinary’s Retinol is a good starter product, since the squalane it’s paired in acts as a buffer. You can start with 1% and then go up to 2% once you can use it successfully 5 days a week (I generally do three days on, one day off).

Once you’ve used over the counter retinol successfully for several months, talk with your doctor or dermatologist for a prescription strength retinoid like Retin-A or Tretinoin.

Wear a vitamin c serum during the day

Like retinoids, vitamin c serums can increase your skin’s collagen production. This will keep it more youthful and firm, even during drastic weight loss. In addition, it’s an antioxidant, which means it can help prevent and repair sun damage (but keep wearing your sunscreen too!). Best of all, vitamin c is uniquely effective at brightening skin and creating even skin tone.

For me, several months of vitamin c serum use, in addition to gentle cleansing, moisturizing, religious sunscreen use, and the occasional OTC peel, entirely changed the texture and tone of my skin. A 1/2 inch diameter sunspot on my forehead is completely gone, dark circles around my eyes have lessened, small sunspots around my eyes have faded, and hyperpigmentation and orange peel texture on my cheeks have significantly improved. That’s a lot for a $14.99 serum!

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One important tip: don’t use vitamin c and retinol at the same time – they don’t play nice! Instead, use retinol at night and vitamin c in the morning.

Exfoliate (but never scrub!)

As I just mentioned, occasional chemical exfoliation along with regular vitamin c use, can be an absolute game-changer for the texture and tone of your skin. These products will gently peel away the dry, dead, and discolored oldest layer of skin, revealing more even and healthy skin beneath.

Now, the word exfoliation might have you thinking of sugar scrubs, apricot pits, and coarse washcloths, but keep all of those items far from your face! Instead, use over the counter chemical exfoliants. Start with gentler formulations once a week, and never at the same time as Vitamin C or retinoids. Spot test to make sure the formulation works with your skin, and follow the package directions with care. Tingling and pinkness are to be expected, but burning and pain are warning signs that it’s too much for your skin.

As your skin becomes more resilient, you can increase use to twice a week and eventually try stronger peels. Here are a few chemical exfoliants I’ve had success with, starting with gentler formulations, and working up to more intense ones.

Finally, when trying new formulations, having an acid neutralizer on hand isn’t a bad idea, especially if you have very sensitive skin.

Try niacinamide for acne prone skin

Now this product is optional, but it’s especially helpful for acne prone skin. Niacinamide is a topical form of a B Vitamin, and it has several wonderful benefits. It’s best known for balancing the skin’s oil production, and thus preventing acne. In addition, it can make pores smaller, make dark circles less intense, and reduce hyperpigmentation.

Awesome as these benefits are, none of them are specific to boosting collagen, improving elasticity, or tightening the skin. So why include them in a list about gastric sleeve skincare? Because no matter our age, so many of us deal with breakouts, especially when we try to incorporate other beneficial skincare ingredients (like the others listed in this post) into our daily routine.

While I’m not especially acne-prone, but I still swear by niacinamide. Sunscreen used to make me breakout, but niacinamide fixed that problem entirely. Where I used to get hormonal breakouts on my chin, it’s now extremely rare for me to get a pimple at all.

This is the product I use:

So if fear of breakouts and excess oil is keeping you from using sunscreen or otherwise upping your skincare game, give niacinamide a try. It has few side effects, with wonderful benefits.

SAGGING SKIN AFTER GASTRIC SLEEVE ISN’T INEVITABLE

So there you have it! The top 8 steps you can take to protect the skin on your face and neck before gastric sleeve surgery. While some loose skin after intense weight loss is inevitable, there is a great deal you can do to enhance the tone, brightness, tightness, and texture of your skin. Keep that collagen production up, and you’ll keep sag at bay!

And come back soon for more whole body skin care advice! We’ll be talking diet, body-wash, lotions, exfoliation, and more!

What products have you found helpful throughout your gastric sleeve journey? I’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments.