Everyone's skin is different.

No – the basic structure of everyone’s skin is the same.

However, just like some people have diabetes mellitus and others have dodgy knees, lots of people have a huge variety of skin problems. The more accurate thing to say is: everyone has different skin problems, different personal preferences and different expectations of treatments and products. Some people don’t have any skin problems at all (or they don’t really care either way and that’s totally fine). If a moisturiser ‘works’ for one person but doesn’t for another, it’s either because they have differing skin problems that require different management or different personal preferences or different expectations for that moisturiser.

But it’s not because their basic skin structure is different; every human being has a dermis and an epidermis composed of the same types of cells and molecules. What that means is that Active Ingredient X which supposedly, for example, improves pigmentation, should improve pigmentation in every single person who has the same type of pigmentation (for example, melasma). Also, everyone’s skin changes in a similar way as we age. But skin problems can be hugely variable and can be due to internal problems or be affected by external factors (like sun exposure and smoking).

People are also hugely variable in the way they use a specific treatment and in compliance. In my clinical practice, every single patient with melasma responds to the same treatment when they use the treatment as prescribed for the correct amount of time. I have not had a single patient fail treatment – that’s how prescription medicines should function.

The same applies to a whole host of other types of medications; everyone with high blood pressure due to the same underlying problem gets a reduction in blood pressure from the same drug.⠀

If everyone was a snowflake, we would need to literally create a new drug for every single person. The reason why one treatment works really well for one person and not for another is not because the two people are different, it’s because their diagnosis is different or they use the treatment differently or one of them doesn’t use the treatment at all.