Transcript:

So this is a Thanksgiving blog.

I don't know about you, but I woke up this morning in the worst mood. I don't know what it was, if the fact that it was pouring in Seattle, driving rain and wind, and it's dark because we're a month from the solstice and everyone around here is just feeling like Ugh!

So I wasn't feeling very thankful and decided I need to kind of talk myself through this a little bit. And so I started thinking about all the things and there's a lot to be thankful for. I mean number one, we live in a country where our quality of life is better than 90% plus of the whole world. And we have a new president. Yay! I'm really happy about that personally, very thankful.

And then I started thinking, okay, what about the skin front. Ummm, what kinds of things am I thankful for?

I know that sounds kind of funny, but I work with skin all day. I am very thankful for a lot of the things that we can do for skin now. So I'm thinking, number one, aging.

It has never been a better time to have aging skin. I mean with all the topical creams that are getting better and better, products that are getting better and better.

With the lasers that we have now it's amazing. With the injectables that we have where if they're done well we can get a really natural look. You know there's just never been a better time to be heading into your 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's.

Or even in your 30's being able to prevent a lot of the signs of aging that my parent's generation just had to live with. And that's all happened in the last 10 or 15 years.

So I'm actually really thankful for that.

And I'm really thankful for our acne care. I mean acne used to be a disease that many teens not only had to just suffer through but many ended up with permanent scarring. And I still see many women who are in their 40's, 50's, 60's who have that permanent scarring where we're trying to correct that from the bad acne that they had when they were 16 years old or 20 years old.

Most of that acne we now we treat so well and so aggressively that our patients aren't going to have to deal with a lifetime of a face full of acne scars. And I'm really thankful for that.

And again there's so much we can do for scarring even if it occurs, that we can improve most patients with acne scarring anywhere from 50 - 80% usually. So I'm thankful for that. That's a good thing.

And then I think I'm really thankful for some of the advances that have been made in eczema and psoriasis. We used to have patients, and we still do have some who are just, I mean we're not talking about a little itchy patch here or there, we're talking about total body eczema or psoriasis that covers 80% of their body surface area. I mean, that's a very different disease than just a little patch on your elbow. I'm very thankful for some of the therapies that we have for those patients now. Many of our patients we really couldn't do anything or couldn't do much for them even 15 years ago. So that's been great.

And then I'm really thankful for some of the things that we don't have to deal with at all. Like leprosy. I will never forget getting off the airplane in New Dehli when I was 20 years old and walking down with my little rucksack. You know, umm... A path that was lined with lepers.

We call it Hansen's Disease now. It's still leprosy, still the same disease. And there's a leprosy clinic in almost every major city in this country. People don't know that, but we have one in Seattle. Most of the patients are from India, you know, parts of Asia, even Mexico. And I'm very thankful that we, and in many parts of the world, we don't need to worry about those diseases any more.

So this is my Thanksgiving, my Skin Thanksgiving blog and I'm very grateful.