With so many choices for skincare treatments, trying to select just one can be overwhelming. There are more than a handful of skincare options, and each promises to be the best for your skincare needs. When you ask your friends and family for suggestions, each one recommends the product that worked for them or tells a horror story about how painful their procedure was. So how do you sort fact from fiction? Let's take a look at some of the most popular methods and how effective they are.

Chemical Peels
Also called facial peels, this procedure involves applying a chemical solution to the surface of the skin. It is generally only applied to the face, neck, or hands. The chemical solution ranges in strength from being mild to being harsh, depending on how aggressive a treatment is desired. Milder versions often contain acids from fruits and are called lunchtime peels since they are quick and have very little recovery time. Mild peels are great for giving the skin a healthy glow and can be repeated once per month, but do not produce significant results. Stronger solutions contain chemicals such as hyaluronic acid or trichloroacetic acid. Deep peels use a harsh chemical like phenol to penetrate the pores to give your skin more noticeable results. It can take between three and fourteen days to recover as the skin heals and deep peels should not be repeated more often than every six to twelve months.

Laser Procedures
There are many different laser procedures as the lasers come in various styles designed for specific needs. Lasers have two basic types. They are ablative, meaning they damage the surface of the skin, or are non-ablative, meaning the surface of the skin remains intact or undamaged. The difference in the two types of cosmetic-lasers determines how long the recovery time will be. While ablative lasers have longer recovery times, they also produce greater results.

Some of the various laser skincare procedures are:

• Hair removal
• Skin resurfacing and tightening
• Scar removal
• Pigment lesions (age spots, sun spots, melasma, etc.)
• Vascular lesions (spider veins or birthmarks)
• Tattoo removal
• Acne & acne scar removal

Serums, Creams, and Lotions
There are a great many bottled products that claim to care for your skin, rejuvenating it and improving the overall appearance. These are generally topical solutions, meaning they are applied to the surface of the skin. Since they do not penetrate deep into the skin, they can only produce superficial results that last temporarily. This makes most of them highly ineffective. Only collagen or vitamin infused serums used in conjunction with a microneedling process will be noticeably effective and longer lasting.

Exfoliating Through Microdermabrasion and Dermabrasion
Microdermabrasion is a treatment in which tiny exfoliating crystals are sprayed on the skin to buff away surface skin cells. It can be used on the face, neck, arms, hands, and chest areas. This treatment produces subtle results to make skin look fresh and smoother. It is not effective for scars, wrinkles, or stretchmarks. Recover time is somewhat short as is how long it lasts.

With dermabrasion, the device has an abrasive wheel that is applied to the skin. It rubs the skin to exfoliate on a deeper level, removing the outer layers. It is very effective at smoothing the skin, removing scars, wrinkles, and stretchmarks. Recovery time takes longer since it is abrasive, but results last longer.