Photoaging, skin damage from sun, can show up in multiple ways. Ultraviolet energy, principally ultraviolet A, causes cellular damage and inflammation in the skin. The effects show on your skin as fine lines, large pores, and wrinkles due to loss of collagen and elastin; brown spots (solar lentigines); visible vessels; and generalized chronic redness or brown (actinic bronzing on the face) (poikiloderma on the neck).
At Timeless Laser & Skin Care, we have several specialized tools to address photoaging and sun damage:
IPL (Intelligent Pulsed Light) is a broad-spectrum light treatment which targets brown spots. Common areas treated are face, neck, chest, and hands. Topical numbing makes the treatment comfortable. A mild heat and redness follow the treatment, but patients can return to activity immediately. Pigmented spots become darker at first, rising to the surface of the skin, then turn ashy and flake off. Multiple treatments, most commonly a series of three, are required for the best effect.
Laser Genesis uses thousands of pulses of laser energy and targets the superficial dermis, gently heating this layer. The heat stimulates collagen and elastin formation and calms inflammation. The treatment is comfortable, causing a warm flushed feeling, and patients can return to activity immediately. A series of treatments is needed, and results in reduced pore size, smoothing of fine lines, and a fading of background redness.
The Excel V laser, a unique tool which can switch between two therapeutic wavelengths, can be used to treat spider veins and facial veins, isolated pigmented lesions, and generalized redness.
Individual veins, which can require magnification to see, are treated with pulsed laser light from the Excel V. The patient experiences a snap-like sensation, like the snapping of a rubber band, but numbing is not necessary. Treated veins become bright red temporarily, then disappear over time. Treated veins are gone for good, but where veins are dense, return treatments may be needed to remove all the veins from the target area.
Skin which is exposed to light repetitively develops an inflammatory condition of chronic redness, called poikiloderma. Although this resembles a sunburn, it is not painful, and never fades. The 532nm wavelength of the Excel V laser can be used to treat the whole area of redness, causing dramatic fading of the color over a series of treatments.
Ultraviolet light damage is one of the most pervasive and bothersome aesthetic challenges of aging skin. The laser and light-based therapies that we employ at Timeless are genuinely rejuvenating, returning youthful tone and vigor to sun-damaged skin.