I can't believe it. 2012 is coming to a close. This year we aired another 95 episodes, covering skincare tips and news! Stay tuned for my year end review and one big prediction! Hello, I'm Dr. Neal Schultz And welcome to DermTV! First and foremost, happy holidays and happy new year! At this time, I have a lot to be thankful for. And one of those things is you, the DermTV community. Thank you for continuing to support DermTV, whether that's by watching videos, liking them, sharing them, and even asking questions, which turn into such great topics for future episodes. So what happened in 2012? At the end of 2011, I said you could expect new products to fade and reduce brown discolorations, whose active bleaching ingredients are peptides and botanical extracts instead of hydroquinone and those products are now available and work great. On the other hand, unfortunately nothing has changed in the elusive scramble to find ingredients to reduce reds. We’re still not there and a year later, there are still no hero products on the horizon. Next, for more lustrous, radiant and glowing skin, as predicted, glycolics were again recognized as the gold standard in chemical exfoliants and continue to grow in popularity. And last, for contour corrections, I said non-invasive body contouring and skin tightening would take center stage. They did and work well. So that’s how my 2012 predictions turned out. So what were the big stories in 2012? I actually think they were the consequences of tanning salons, the melanoma epidemic and treatments, and sunless tanners. So first, the melanoma epidemic in white females age 15 to 3 keeps increasing and has been directly attributed to tanning salon use. This has best been seen through the retelling of the many personal stories of young women who regularly used tanning beds, who then developed melanoma. Those women were told that the UV in the salons was safe and even beneficial. Some of those women’s melanoma’s spread. Some have already died from their disease. As a result of that, more and more states have instituted regulations relating to tanning salon use and specifically the age to access salons without written parental consent. Some good news for this year, real progress was made in releasing drugs that effectively treat metastatic melanoma, so even if the melanoma has spread, there are now reasonable chances to beat this dreaded and formerly fatal disease. Next, studies demonstrated the actual addictive basis of repeated UV tanning, whether from salons or the sun. And last, a single news report called into question the safety of topically applied artificial sunless tanners. The bottom line is that for those who still need to sport a tan, sunless tanners still remain the safest tan available. So the big take-away is that UV radiation and its many ramifications was the big winner of 2012. But that makes so much sense. Because in addition to skin cancer, which of course is the main issue, it causes premature photo aging and so many of the skin issues that make us look older and less attractive. So in 2013, just like I hope in 2012, every day, use a sunscreen and don’t go to a tanning salon. And if you want one quick prediction? It's that you're going to see the availability of topical Botox. Yup. That's Botox without the needles. Pretty neat! See you in the future!