Pregnancy Skincare: The Safe Ingredients & The Hard No’s According to Experts

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Dr Emma Craythorne (1:00)

Here's what's coming up in today's episode.

Dr Ellie Rashid (1:02)

So should we just go through each ingredient and say whether we use it in pregnancy or not? So should we start with Azelaic Acid?

Dr Emma Craythorne (1:08)

And so for topical retinoids?

Dr Ellie Rashid (1:10)

But actually the only one that's got an evidence base to say that it's harmless for a newborn baby is.

Dr Emma Craythorne (1:17)

This is the one that is a real no. Hello and welcome to the After Hours Skin Clinic. I'm Dr. Emma Craythorne.

Dr Ellie Rashid (1:26)

And I'm Dr. Ellie Rashid. And we're both Consultant Dermatologists here in Central London.

Dr Emma Craythorne (1:31)

But this is our favourite clinic where we unpack the evidence and challenge the trends and answer the questions you always wanted to ask your dermatologist.

Dr Ellie Rashid (1:40)

And if you don't have one, you do now. So we're going to run through ingredients that people use in their topical skincare that are safe in pregnancy because I had a patient in clinic who was pregnant. It was her first pregnancy and she's always suffered with mild acne and was really worried about this getting worse when she were to stop her skincare routine. So she had a skincare routine that she had on lock and it was working really great. And then in pregnancy, she wanted to understand what she could use, what she couldn't use and what to do if things flared up. So she thought it would be really helpful if we did a podcast episode on it that other pregnant women could refer to.

Dr Emma Craythorne (2:19)

There is a whole lot of misinformation about what you can and can't use on your skin. Actually just generally, even aside from pregnancy.

What?

All the skin specialists out there telling you what you can and can't do in your skin in pregnancy. So I think that is really called for. But also even yourself whenever you're pregnant. Well, I'll speak for myself. You get really anxious about absolutely everything.

You know, every single thing that you might do might potentially harm your unborn child. Plus as well, everybody's telling you all the things that you potentially are doing might harm your unborn child. You can't do this kind of exercise. You can't do that kind of exercise. You can't eat that kind of food. You can't drink that kind of drink. You can't stay up too late. You can't walk that way. You can't put this on your skin. There's a whole load of things that just makes you feel nervous. If there's almost a reactionary thing, then okay, I'm just not going to do anything. Even that then makes you anxious and stressed, which actually you shouldn't be whenever you're pregnant because that will transfer to your baby as well.

Dr Ellie Rashid (3:28)

Yeah. It is so tricky, isn't it? Also if you've had negative experiences in the past. One thing hopefully to relieve people's anxiety around skincare is to have an information packed podcast like ours where we can tell people what is completely safe to use and it's got good evidence for being harmless and what ingredients we should avoid.

Dr Emma Craythorne (3:50)

It's also thinking about it's quite difficult even to make a statement about this is entirely harmless in pregnancy because practices do change and science does change, but at this particular moment in time, what we will say is based on evidence and based on good practice about what is safe in pregnancy.