Ingredient Beauty BenefitsStretch marks
The streaked marks left where skin has been stretched.
Start here
- What it is
Skin stretching fast enough to tear the dermis, leaving lines. Pregnancy is the most common setting.
- Why it happens
They come with sudden growth, rapid weight gain, pregnancy or steroid use. They start red (striae rubrae) and turn white over time (striae albae).
- Where to start
Preventing them and treating ones already there are different questions. And the red stage and the white stage are handled differently — there is more to work with while they are red.
There are no numbers and no citations in this box. What has been established, and how far, is below.
The first thing to separate with stretch marks is prevention from treatment. They are different questions, and the evidence behind them differs in thickness.
Prevention — this is where the creams applied during pregnancy sit. The market is large; the Cochrane review included one trial of 100 women.
Treatment — dealing with marks that already exist, mostly through procedures. Here the colour matters.
- Red stretch marks (striae rubra) — the early stage, while the vessels are still live. Vascular laser and carboxytherapy aim at this stage.
- White stretch marks (striae alba) — the colour has gone with time, and they are far harder to reverse.
A stretch mark is a tear in the dermis. It is not a problem of the stratum corneum or of pigment but of broken structure, which puts this concern further from 'make it go away' than most others on this site. What the trials measure is usually how much it faded, not whether it disappeared.
Stretch mark creams (pregnancy prevention)
An ingredient class — not a single line on an ingredient list
The Cochrane review included one trial of 100 women, testing a cream containing Centella asiatica, alpha tocopherol and collagen-elastin hydrolysates. In a larger 2013 placebo-controlled trial, overall incidence was 33.3% in the control group and 37.6% in the cream group — not significantly different, and numerically higher with the cream.
Clinical procedures related to this concern
Procedures are not listed alongside topical ingredients. They are not something you use at home.
- Moderate evidenceVascular laser (pulsed dye laser)Device-based
- Moderate evidenceCarboxytherapy (carbon dioxide injection)Injection
Surgery related to this concern
Surgery is not the same as a procedure. Most of it cannot be undone, and this site does not yet grade evidence for this layer — these are not measured with the same ruler as the lists above. Reversibility is shown in place of a grade.
- AbdominoplastyCannot be undone