If you are a darker skin beauty you have been using hydroquinone base products to fade hyperpigmentation spots caused by scars or adult acne, or if you are recovering from plastic surgery, or if you want to fade post-surgery scars as quickly as possible, you might want to consider talking to your dermatologist or plastic surgeon about a product like Botanical Skin Brightener from Naturopathica.
I’ve already highlighted in the past the dangers and concerns around hydroquinone. It’s true that hydroquinone usually reduces or removes hyperpigmentation very effectively.

Weaker formulations of hydroquinone are available over the counter, while stronger concentrations can only be prescribed by your plastic surgeon or cosmetic dermatologist.

On the down side, darker skins are very susceptible to dark spots, unevenness, ashiness and hyperpigmentation. On the up side, darker skins contain more melanin and are thicker than fairer complexions. This difference in melanin prevents premature aging in most darker skin complexions. That said, free radicals are oblivious to colour and they surely don’t care about levels of melanin. Free radicals will cause wrinkles in lighter complexions while plaguing darker complexions with uneven pigmentations and loss of youthfulness.

A few months ago, I was at the gym talking to Alicia, a gorgeous Canadian of Guyanese descent, about the aggravation of scars and darker skins. We are fairly close in skin complexion and we were discussing the hyperpigmentation or hypopigmentation caused by scars. She asked me if my scars took a long time to heal. I agreed with her observation and told her about a scar I had on my right hand that took over a decade to disappear. The reality is that if you have a darker complexion, your scars take a much long time to heal than fairer complexions.

Until recently, I never really felt compelled to buy any products to correct the hyperpigmentation that followed scars or acne. Other than the severe case I mention in the previous paragraph, most of my scars faded away within one or two years. When I got seriously burnt after my first laser hair removal treatment a few years ago, I realized I really didn’t want to live 12 or 24 months with those kind of scars and hyperpigmentation.