Well, hello, hello, guys. You're listening to Beauty Bites with Dr. K., Secrets of a Plastic Surgeon,

and it's time for a five-minute Friday. And today we're going to Beauty Bites with Dr. K, Secrets of a Plastic Surgeon, and it's time for a

five-minute Friday. And today we're going to talk all about pregnancy. I've been getting a lot of

questions about pregnancy and skin changes. And I wanted to go over some of my top tips. We talked

about brides, we talked about moms, we talk about getting older.

Let's talk about hormonal changes. Pregnancy is extreme hormonal changes. And it can exacerbate

your current preexisting skin conditions. You can have pregnancy specific problems and you can have

hormone-based flare-ups. So it's very joyful.

I always feel like it's taken me 20 years to regain my original body after having had kids.

And it's kind of the truth. This little alien comes in and takes over your body and all these changes

start happening. Hormones will fluctuate, skin will

break out, you'll have periods where it's clearer and your hair is lustrous and you look amazing

and glowy, and then periods where you're just an oily breakout mess. So what can you expect from

pregnancy? One of the most important concerns people have is that of pigmentation. Hyperpigmentation is a normal and common condition of pregnancy.

Being pregnant increases the melanin production of your body causing skin to darken overall in certain areas.

This is also called melasma.

When melasma occurs, we want to jump on it proactively.

Melasma also knows the mask of pregnancy is a type of hyperpigmentation, causing you to have brown

dull patches on your face, sometimes on your hand, skin, or neck. The melasma is typically treated when you're not pregnant with hydroquinone, with various

skin lightning, bleaching agents, but being pregnant is a challenge because we need to be

really careful that none of the ingredients we use are going to be teratogenic or harmful to the

fetus.

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