Skin care myths

March 17th, 2022 by Dr. Hannah Sivak

Many exfoliation products out there contain glycolic acid.  Why? Because glycolic acid is “popular”. There is nothing special about glycolic acid. It’s a hydroxy acid like lactic acid (which I like better) but it has no specific problems. Another great hydroxy acid is ascorbic acid (vitamin C) but it’s unstable in contact with air, it will oxidize fairly quickly and go brown and “bad”. Why is glycolic acid so popular? The legend goes that it is smaller than other hydroxy acids so it “penetrates” better. There is no evidence that this is the case. Lactic acid molecular weight: 90 Glycolic acid molecular weight:  76 This slight difference would make no…