Whether you've been worshiping the sun's rays at the beach since birth, or been a life-long stickler when it comes to applying SPF every day, let's face it: Sun happens. And with it come sunspots, freckles, and hyperpigmentation.

Sun, heat, hormones, and inflammation can all cause your skin to produce an overabundance of melanin, the main culprit behind skin discoloration. And once the process starts, it's hard to get it to stop. In fact, your skin quickly becomes trained to continue to produce more and more melanin every time it's exposed to these triggers.

Fortunately, there are treatments that can help stop the process in its tracks and eradicate their unsightly side effects-but you'll only find them at your dermatologist's office (sorry, drugstore devotees). The most common and effective procedures to treat pigmentation are chemical peels, micro-needling, Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) Therapy, and Fractional Laser Resurfacing, each of which can be customized with one or more of the following high-active ingredients to effectively target.

Whatever treatment option you choose or ingredient cocktail you incorporate in you regiment, remember that the only way to prevent hyperpigmentation is to AVOID the sun and to use sunscreen every day.