Why do skin clinics ask so many questions?
Because most of what determines whether a treatment holds is not on your face. Medication, contraception, weight change, sleep and alcohol all change how skin behaves and how long a result lasts. A clinic that does not ask is not being relaxed about it — it is guessing, and charging you for the guess.
The uncomfortable version
Here is what actually happens in a lot of consultations.
Someone is asked a list of questions. They answer most of them. They leave out one or two — not deliberately, exactly, but because the question felt intrusive, or irrelevant, or slightly embarrassing.
A plan is then built on the answers given. It is a reasonable plan for the person described. It is not necessarily a reasonable plan for the person sitting there.
Six months later something has not held, and nobody knows why, because the variable that explains it was never in the room.
Nobody is at fault in that story. The client was not asked in a way that made it obvious why it mattered. So this page does that job once, publicly, in advance.
What each thing actually changes
Contraception
Hormonal contraception changes oil production, pigmentation behaviour and how skin responds to inflammation. Not in one direction, and not the same way for everyone.
If we do not know, we are reading your skin without knowing one of the largest inputs to it — and we may attribute something to a treatment, a product, or a season that is actually attributable to this.
We will not have an opinion about your method. That is between you and your doctor and it is genuinely not our business. We just cannot read the picture properly with a piece missing.
Weight medication and rapid weight change
This is the one people most often leave out, and it is the one most likely to make a plan wrong.
Facial fat is not distributed like body fat and it does not come back the same way. Significant or rapid weight loss changes the volume and shape of a face, sometimes considerably, and that change carries on while it is happening.
A plan built on today's face, for someone whose face is actively changing, is a plan built on a moving target. Knowing it is happening changes the timing, the sequence, and sometimes the recommendation to wait — which is cheaper for you than doing something twice.
There is no judgement attached to this. It is a straightforward clinical variable, in the same category as knowing whether someone has just had a baby.
Supplements and over-the-counter products
Some affect bleeding and bruising. Some affect how skin responds to being treated. Some are fine and we simply need to know they are in the picture before attributing something to them or ruling them out.
"Just vitamins" is not a null answer. It is an answer we need the detail of.
Skincare — actually all of it
Including the thing you tried once, the thing your sister gave you, and the thing you bought online with an ingredient list you cannot fully read.
Active ingredients change how skin responds to treatment. Some make a procedure inadvisable that week. This is the single most common cause of a reaction that could have been avoided by a sentence.
Sleep, alcohol, stress and sun
These are not lifestyle-lecture questions. They are the reason a result lasts eight months instead of eighteen, and they explain a great deal of what otherwise looks like a treatment underperforming.
We ask because if the answer is "I am sleeping four hours and drinking most nights", then spending money on your face this month is probably not the intervention with the best return — and we would rather say so than take the booking.
Medical history, and anything a doctor has told you
Some conditions change what is appropriate. Some rule things out entirely. Some mean the honest answer is that this belongs with your GP and not with us.
The four reasons people leave things out
Only one of them is fixed by asking a better question.
| It feels like a shortcut, and shortcuts feel like failure | Most of our clients are on something. Genuinely. It is unremarkable here |
| It did not seem relevant | This page exists for exactly this. Contraception affecting skin is not obvious unless somebody says so |
| Worry that we might refuse to treat | It changes the recommendation. It does not change the welcome |
| Worry about being judged | It is a clinical variable. We are not scoring anyone |
The third one is worth sitting with, because it is the most common and the most self-defeating.
Yes, some answers change what we recommend. That is the entire purpose of asking. A recommendation that would have been different if we had known the truth is not a recommendation — it is a coincidence. And the plans that go wrong are almost never the ones where somebody told us something difficult. They are the ones where nobody did.
What happens to what you tell us
Plainly, because this is usually the actual worry underneath.
- It goes in your record, which is Glow's, held under Australian privacy law
- It is used to make decisions about your skin. Nothing else
- We do not report it to anyone. Not your GP unless you ask us to, not your insurer, not anyone
- You can see it. Everything Glow holds about you is available to you on request, and increasingly just visible in your own portal
- You can correct it, and you can ask us to explain why we hold anything
We do not diagnose. If something you tell us, or something we see, suggests a medical question, we say so and it goes to your GP. That is a referral, not a diagnosis, and it is where our role ends rather than somewhere it expands.
The one-line version
We ask because the alternative is guessing, and you would be paying for the guess.
Every question on the form is there because leaving it out has, at some point, made someone's plan wrong. None of them is there to build a marketing profile, and none of them changes whether you are welcome.
If a question feels intrusive, say so and ask why we need it. If we cannot give you a straight answer about how it changes your plan, it should not be on the form.
A consultation is $150 and takes an hour, and most of that hour is this. It is not paperwork before the useful part — it is the useful part.