Summer is just around the corner. We’ve all been trapped inside because of harsh winter weather, or sheltering at home during the pandemic. It’s taking a toll on both our mental health and our skin. Wouldn’t it be great to get a refreshing skin treatment before summer arrives, so we can enjoy ourselves properly?
We know you take great care of your skin. But even the best skin care regimen and treatments can’t prevent or beat certain imperfections like scars, skin laxity, sunspots, and stretch marks. There was a time when you just had to grin and bear those unsightly imperfections, but not anymore.
Today’s laser treatments are so refined that they can help decrease the appearance of scars, tighten skin, lighten or erase sunspots, and smooth out stretch marks. Plus, the process is so subtle that you can even have natural-looking treatments on your face!
Let’s take a look at what causes skin imperfections and how laser treatments can help replenish and refresh your tired skin.
Scars
Scar tissue is formed as a natural bodily response to injury. Although scars may be cosmetically unattractive, they are not harmful and do not need to be removed for medical reasons. However, sometimes scars can be physically painful or limiting, or they may affect you psychologically. These are all reasonable reasons to have them treated.
How Can Laser Skin Treatments Help With Scars?
Laser treatments are excellent for treating scars leftover from burns, acne, injuries, or surgery. How it works: Laser light penetrates the outer layers of your skin, removing old damaged layers and stimulating new, healthy skin cell growth. When the old layers are removed, healthy skin will grow over the area, creating a new scar that is more like the skin around it. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, laser treatment is not a cure for scars and does not remove them completely, but it sure can help make scars less noticeable.
Laser treatment can also decrease pain or itchiness associated with scars, reduce the appearance of scars, and improve the skin’s range of motion around the scar. Laser treatment is best suited for superficial scars, whereas deep scars or scars that restrict your movement will respond better to more intensive treatment options.
Skin Tightening
What causes loose skin? Even if you have the best skin care regimen in the world, skin laxity will still occur as you age. It can start as early as age 30 because elastin and collagen production begins to slow down. These two proteins help your skin stay plump, firm, and toned, so once they go, so does the tightness of your skin.
How Can Laser Skin Treatment Help Tighten Skin?
Laser treatment is a form of non-surgical skin tightening that focuses energy on the layers of the skin to stimulate collagen and elastin production. Lasers also heat the collagen in the skin causing it to constrict and make the skin look and feel tighter and firmer.
Sunspots
Those flat, round, or oval shapes on your skin are called sunspots. The medical term for them is lentigo, but you may also know them as age spots or liver spots. From person to person, they can range in color anywhere from light brown to black. They are caused by sun damage to your skin, which is why you might find them on areas of the body that have frequent sun exposure, like your face, shoulders, and hands.
What Can Laser Skin Treatment Do For Sunspots?
Laser therapy is excellent for treating pigmented skin lesions like sunspots. The dark pigmented spots readily absorb the laser light, while the unpigmented skin doesn’t absorb the light as easily. This means that the dark pigmented cells absorb all of the light’s energy and then peel off a few days later.
Stretch Marks
Stretch marks are typically found on the abdomen, upper arm, buttocks, hips, and thighs. They start out red, purple, pink, or brown in color but then over time, they fade to a lighter color. Stretch marks change the texture of your skin and leave indentations like rippled lines. They’re quite common, but many people don’t realize that stretch marks are actually scars.
When your skin rapidly stretches or shrinks, its fibers tear, and as they heal, scars are formed. Stretch marks are also referred to as “striae” because they look like streaks on your skin. It’s common for pregnant women, children with intense growth spurts, people who undergo breast enlargements, people who use topical steroids, or individuals with certain genetic disorders to get stretch marks.
How Can Laser Skin Treatment Help Clear Away Stretch Marks?
Lasers are often used as a skin treatment to remove stretch marks. The concentrated rays of light aimed at the stretch marks stimulate new growth and smooth out the scars. Laser treatment tends to work better on newer stretch marks than older ones. If your stretch marks are still red or pink that means that there are probably still working blood vessels in the skin. This can help the healing process and make the treatment more effective.
Older, white marks are more difficult to treat because they lack the blood vessels necessary for collagen production. Laser treatments are not recommended for the removal of stretch marks if you have darker skin because you could end up with hyperpigmentation or dark spots on your skin.
A New Way to Think About Laser Treatments
Instead of thinking of laser treatments as painful procedures to remove hair, it’s time to shift your perspective and appreciate them for what they are: an additional skin treatment to add to your skincare regimen.
At Neighborhood Wellness Clinic, we offer advanced Threeforme™️ Laser to our valued patients. This Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) therapy delivers skin rejuvenation, including scar removal, blemish reduction, skin tightening, erasing of stretch marks, sun spot removal, and more. If you’re ready to get a jumpstart on healthy summer skin, contact us for an appointment today!
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