THE SKIN REPORT
SKININGREDIENTSROUTINE
READER RESULTS · BOTOX & FILLER
The jaw goes soft, the cheeks flatten, and the skin on top gets thinner every year. An injection only ever touches one of those.
By Erin Calloway · Last Updated September 2026 · 7 min read
My brother's wedding in April. Whoever took it was sitting down.
It's a photo from my brother's wedding in April. Whoever took it was sitting down, so it's looking up at me, and I've looked at it more times than I'd like to admit.
It's not that I look old in it. It's my jaw. It isn't holding the line it used to, and my cheek has gone flat in a way I didn't know had happened. I look tired. I wasn't tired. I'd been dancing.
So I booked a consultation. I'm forty six and I've never had anything done. Thursday at two: filler in the cheeks and under the eyes, Botox in the forehead while I was there.
I canceled it eleven days out. Nobody talked me out of it. It was seven things, one after the other, and the third one is the one I still tell people about.
The Madeca Best Duo
PDRN repair cream, then 30,000ppm TECA firming cream. Sixty seconds a night, in that order.
See the current offerDongkook, est. 1968 · Free express shipping · 30 day guarantee
The injector was good, by the way. None of this is a story about a bad clinic.
She agreed with me about the jaw, drew on my face with a white pencil to show where the filler would go, then put three small crosses on my forehead for the Botox. She was right about all of it.
Injectables Clinic
Consultation notes
Estimate about $3,000 · Botox review every 3 to 4 months · Filler every 6 to 12 months
and again. and again.
Then I asked her something I hadn't planned on asking, and her answer is reason one.
#1
I asked her what any of it would do for my skin. She said nothing.
The question was this. What's any of it going to do for my skin itself? The texture, the thinning, the way it's gone loose at the neck.
She didn't hesitate and she didn't try to sell me. She said: nothing. Filler goes underneath. Botox works on the muscle. Neither of them changes the skin on top.
I sat in the car afterwards with the engine off and worked out I'd been about to spend a serious amount of money fixing one of my two problems. And it wasn't the one I could see in the photo. That's why so many women walk out of a good clinic looking smooth and still looking tired. The crease is stopped, the space is filled, and the thinning hasn't been touched.
What I ended up using instead is the Madeca Best Duo, two Korean creams, and the first one, Active Renew, goes on the skin itself. The one layer nobody in that room was going to touch.
Five months on, my skin is different to touch. Not tighter exactly. Thicker. Nobody filled anything and nobody froze anything.
I was still going to keep the appointment, by the way. Then she printed the plan.
Week 1
Week 4I finally found something that works for my sensitive skin
“I've tried so many creams but they always broke me out or caused redness. This is the first one that actually calmed my skin down. After two weeks my acne marks are visibly fading and my skin feels so balanced”
Marie, 37
Week 1
Week 4My skin finally caught up with how I feel inside.
“8 weeks in and the fine lines around my mouth are noticeably softer. My skin looks firmer, more lifted. I wasn't expecting much, I'd been disappointed before. This one surprised me.”
Brenda, 43
of users noticed firmer, smoother skin within the first two weeks
Week 1
Week 3I canceled my Botox appointment
“Three months with this cream and I genuinely don't need it. The forehead lines I've had for years have softened significantly. My daughter noticed before I did. I'm not going back to anything else.”
Emma, 52
Week 1
Week 4The first cream that actually does what it says
“I was skeptical. I've tried everything. But by week four my skin felt different... firmer, smoother, more alive. The crow's feet I'd accepted as permanent are fading. At 47, I didn't think that was still possible.”
Sydney, 47
of users noticed calmer, more hydrated skin within the first week
Week 1
Week 3My skin barrier is finally healing
“I damaged my skin barrier from over-exfoliating. This cream brought it back to life. The redness is gone, my skin feels plump and healthy again. I genuinely can't imagine my routine without it now”
Dana, 29
Week 1
Week 4Worth every single penny
“I was skeptical about PDRN but after 4 weeks my skin looks younger and smoother than it has in years. My fine lines around my mouth are noticeably softer. My friends keep asking what I'm doing differently.”
Rachel, 32
What changed their skin in four weeks Both creams $39.99, thirty days to decide
#2
She printed the plan. The receptionist booked my follow up before I'd even stood up.
Cheeks, tear troughs, a little along the jaw, three areas of Botox. Two thousand four hundred for the filler. Six hundred for the Botox. I'd guessed about a thousand for the lot. I think most of us do.
But the number isn't what made me sit down. It was the receptionist, who was so nice, saying while she typed: and we'll see you in about three months for the Botox.
Botox is three to four months, forever. Filler's six to twelve. So it isn't three thousand dollars. It's three thousand dollars, then the reminder, the day off, the bruising you plan around, and most of that number again, for as long as you want to keep the face the appointment gave you.
Price the year, not the visit.
The Madeca Best Duo is one tube of Active Renew and one of Time Reverse, and it's $39.99 for the pair. Used every night, it lasts me about two months. For what the first appointment alone would have cost, I could run both creams for more than ten years, and there's no reminder in my phone.
I didn't cancel that day either. I went home and started reading, and that's where the third one came from.
What the clinic route actually costs, per round
A typical full round$1,800 to $3,500
Both creams, one of each$39.99
Typical US clinic ranges. Filler repeats every six to twelve months and Botox every three to four, so none of these happen once. Mine is the price for both creams and it isn't a subscription.
#3
I found this out at one in the morning, two weeks before a Thursday at two.
This is the one I still tell people about.
Somewhere after midnight I stopped reading about filler and started reading about what Korean clinics actually do, because the before and afters coming out of Seoul didn't look like filler to me. Same faces. Different skin.
It's the order that stopped me. Over there the first step isn't lift. It's repair. They rebuild the barrier before they ask the skin to do anything else, because firming damaged skin is building on sand.
The repair ingredient is PDRN, and Korean clinics inject it at a few hundred dollars a session. Dongkook, a pharmaceutical company that's been working with Centella since 1968, put it into a cream at 20,000ppm, and the number's printed right on the tube. Most PDRN creams won't tell you how much is in them. That's Active Renew. The firming cream, Time Reverse, is 30,000ppm TECA. Together they're the Madeca Best Duo.
So I ordered both that week. At night: face washed and still a little damp, a pea sized amount of Active Renew over my face and neck, then the same of Time Reverse on top. It feels thick coming out of the tube, then sinks in without anything greasy left behind.
The order matters. The first nine days I only had the firming one, and it did almost nothing. The week the repair one arrived is the week anything started happening.
But that still wasn't enough to make me cancel. The fourth one got closer.
Thursday, 1:07 AM
korean clinics??
The two creams, from women using them
The thing they do first. Repair, then firm. 20,000ppm PDRN, then 30,000ppm TECA
#4
There's a woman I've known for eleven years, and I knew in the first second.
I'm not going to describe her and she's never going to read this. The first time I saw her after she started, I knew. I didn't know what had been done. I knew something had, before she'd finished saying hello.
She looks fine. She's a good result. She just doesn't read as herself first any more. She reads as worked on, and then a beat later, as her.
It's walking into a room and having people do that half second of arithmetic about your face before they get to you. And it's almost never the first appointment that does it. The whole thing is built to be topped up, and the face you measure yourself against becomes the one from three months ago, not the one in the wedding photo.
Filler changes the shape of your face. That's its job. Time Reverse doesn't change the shape of anything. It works on how firm and smooth the skin looks. I press it in along the jaw and up the cheek, over Active Renew, and that's it. Nobody can see a cream from across a table. That's the whole point of the Madeca Best Duo: nothing added, nothing moved.
Not one person has asked me what I've had done. Two people have asked if I've been away somewhere. Nothing about my face moved. It just stopped looking tired.
THE CLINIC
Filler, 3 syringes
$2,400
Can't be undone without paying again to dissolve it.
THE TWO CREAMS
Repair + firming duo
$39.99
30 days, money back. Keep both creams.
Stop looking tired without looking done Nothing injected. Nothing that moves.
#5
Filler wears off. Botox wears off. The only question is what you're left standing on.
This one took me the longest to see, because nobody frames it as a downside.
Botox wears off in three or four months and the muscle comes back. Filler wears off in six to twelve and the volume goes with it. You don't end up where you started. You end up back where you started having spent the money.
So it doesn't fail. It expires. And the way you stop it expiring is to book again. I'm not calling that a scam. It's just what an injectable is. You're renting a result.
The Madeca Best Duo doesn't work like that. Active Renew rebuilds, Time Reverse firms on top of what it rebuilt, and every week adds to the one before. Skin that's been repaired doesn't un-repair itself the second you stop.
I ran out in June and the reorder took nine days. Nothing collapsed. It didn't go backwards, it just stopped getting better, then carried on when the package arrived.
One of them you keep. The other one you keep paying for.
The loop you'd be paying for
And back to step one
Stop anywhere in the loop and you're back where you started, minus what you paid. Repaired skin doesn't reset.
#6
There wasn't one line on that treatment plan for the thing I look at most.
I went back to the plan, and there wasn't a single line on it for my neck. Cheeks, tear troughs, jaw, forehead. Nothing below the chin, partly because there isn't much they can safely do there.
But it's the first place I notice it on myself, and on other people. You can have a completely smooth forehead and a neck that tells the whole story, and that gap is its own kind of tell. Same with your chest. Nobody's injecting any of it.
A cream doesn't have that problem. What's left on my fingers after my face goes straight down my neck and across my chest, Active Renew first, Time Reverse over it. One Madeca Best Duo covers all of it and still lasts about two months.
It's where I noticed the creams working first, and I think that's because it had the furthest to come.
The thing I'd have paid the most to fix is the thing nobody offered to touch. Which left one question. What if I did nothing, and the nothing did nothing?
What actually happened, week by week. And what didn't.
Face, neck and chest. Two steps a night. About two months per pair. Sixty six cents a day.
Nothing on this page is asking anyone to dissolve anything. If you've got filler in, it stays in and it wears off on its own. I'm not telling anybody to undo something they've paid for. The two creams work on the skin above it, which is a different job, and some of the women in the before and afters above are doing exactly that.
The question worth sitting with isn't whether to take out what you've already got. It's whether you book the next one.
Side by side, honestly
| Botox and filler | The two creams | |
|---|---|---|
| What it costs | $2,400 plus $600 for the Botox | $39.99 for both creams |
| How long it lasts | 6 to 12 months, Botox 3 to 4 | For as long as you use it |
| Downtime | Bruising, 2 to 7 days | None |
| What happens after | You rebook | You do not |
| If you hate it | Dissolving costs more | Thirty days, money back |
| What it changes | Volume and muscle underneath | The skin itself |
More from women using them
Together, and the order matters. Repair cream first, firming cream over the top. They're made by the same company to be layered. Using one on its own works, it just leaves half the job undone.
Calmer skin in the first week or two. Texture around week three to five. Firmness is the slow one and it lands closer to six to eight weeks. Anyone promising you a jawline in seven days is selling you another lap.
Polydeoxyribonucleotide, from salmon DNA. Korean dermatology clinics have used it for years and it's what they inject in the repair step. This is the topical version at 20,000ppm from Dongkook, a pharmaceutical company that's been going since 1968. It's a cosmetic, not a drug, and it isn't intended to treat any condition.
The firming cream's rich, which is why it's a night cream. Patch behind your ear for two nights if you're reactive. Both passed skin irritation testing. But skin is skin, and mine isn't yours.
Thirty days, money back, and you're not asked to post the creams back. One email and it's refunded.
What buyers actually wrote
4.8 out of 5 across 748 reviews, the critical ones still up
★★★★★madeca cream
“I bought this for my mom she has dry aging skin and I can say that it actually works well, her skin appears soft and it helped with fine lines and wrinkles”
Opal P. · Verified buyer · Time Reverse
★★★★★Love it!
“The cream is very pleasant to use, even better than the 345 cream. It is highly hydrating and has visibly reduced fine lines! Definitely recommend en will buy again!”
Chloe · Verified buyer · Time Reverse
★★★★★Oh my, I'm in love!
“I heard great things about this but, did not expect to like it so much! The cream has a rich, creamy texture that feels luxurious yet absorbs easily without leaving any greasy residue. My skin feels deeply hydrated and noticeably softer after use, and my complexion looks smoother. I've not yet seen a visible improvement in skin firmness or fine lines but, I am very exited to let it work some wonders on my skin.”
Wren F. · Verified buyer · PDRN Cream
#7
Thirty nine ninety nine and a month to find out, against something you can't undo.
Here's the honest reason I was willing to try any of this instead of keeping the appointment.
Thirty days, money back, and they don't ask you to post the creams back. No form, no return label, nobody asking you to explain yourself.
I'd been quoted three thousand dollars for something you can't undo without paying again to have it dissolved. The other option was the Madeca Best Duo, $39.99 for Active Renew and Time Reverse together, a month to find out, and nothing to lose but the month. That isn't a hard decision. That's just math.
I called that Monday, eleven days out, and canceled. The receptionist, still just as nice, asked if I wanted to rebook for later in the year. I said I'd call her.
That was five months ago. Somebody took a photo of me in July, sitting down, looking up at me, and I didn't ask to see it before it went anywhere.
I still haven't called her.
What I actually do at night. Takes a minute.
One tube of each. Expert Madeca Active Renew, 20,000ppm PDRN, for the repair step. Madeca Cream Time Reverse, 30,000ppm TECA, for the firming step. 50ml each.
$39.99 for the pair. Bought separately they're $64.98 ($34.99 and $29.99). We import direct instead of going through a US distributor.
About two months of nightly use, around sixty six cents a day. Less than a quarter of one syringe, and nothing to cancel.
Less than a quarter of one syringe. Not a subscription.
Erin Calloway is a composed narrator and the account above is an illustrative first person story, not the experience of a single named individual.
This page is an advertisement and the author is compensated. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or administered by Meta. Reviews are from verified customers of this product and are reproduced as written, trimmed for length only. Clinic prices are typical US ranges and vary by provider, product and volume used. Individual results vary. These products are cosmetics and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Speak to a qualified practitioner about any procedure.
