Over 30 years ago, a cardiology specialist turned plastic surgeon recognised that more than a scalpel was needed to get the best result. He needed good skin.
Vitamin A is perhaps one of the most talked about skincare ingredients. It’s unsurprising, given the vitamin plays a major role in maintaining normal, healthy skin by controlling growth and differentiation of all our cells. Usually found in our skin in low concentrations, vitamin A is rapidly destroyed by exposure to light, which results in a deficiency of this important vitamin. This can result in wrinkles, thin skin and pre-cancerous lesions that can eventually develop into skin cancer.
Recognising the importance of all this, plastic surgeon Dr Des Fernandes went about researching a way people could replenish levels of vitamin A in the skin, and therefore produce the best results in surgery. He believed you needed to have a base level of healthy skin to achieve a decent facelift. So he started developing a cream for his patients to use after surgery (although today he recommends they use it for three months prior).
AVST: The changes in skin after five years of using Environ's vitamin A.
I began handing the cream out in little photographic film tubes – and before long, my waiting list became outrageously long. It was about nine months to get an appointment,” Dr. Fernandes explains. When people finally arrived to see me, they’d ask after the cream. I had to tell them, ‘I actually sell facelifts, not creams!’”
It was on this product that the Environ Skincare range was built. The innovative introduction of vitamin A into skincare formulations marked a new era in the treatment of sun-damaged skin. Although some cosmetic houses were using very low doses of vitamin A in their skincare products in the 1980s, Dr Fernandes was the first person to introduce vitamin A in high effective doses. Environ prefers to use Retinyl Palmitate and Acetate (the vitamin A esters), which do not cause photo-sensitivity and skin irritation like retinoic acid.
Today, vitamin A is still an integral part of the Environ range. Since its inception, the brand has expanded considerably beyond its humble beginnings, growing to include step-by-step products in the AVST range, which gradually introduce users to vitamin A in appropriate doses. So even people with the most sensitive of skin can benefit from the power of this super ingredient. Beyond that, the salon-only brand offers a B-Active range, which is designed for oily skin, Intensive products, which are targeted to more specific skin types, then the Ionzyme C-Quence range, which builds up vitamin A and C levels in a similar way to the AVST range, but on a more intensive and premium level. For even more concentrated doses of vitamin A, the brand has Retinol 1 and 2, which contain the highest doses of vitamin A in the range.
The effects of a combination of Environ DF Machine iontophoresis
and sonophoresis - 24 treatments.