Beautiful, even skin makes you look healthy, happy, and youthful. A healthy lifestyle and skin creams can help to maintain beautiful skin, minimizing signs of aging, acne, and sun damage. Lifestyle choices and products can only go so far, though, with laser skin resurfacing becoming a more popular way to reduce fine lines, scarring, and age spots.
In What Ways Can Laser Skin Resurfacing Benefit My Skin?
Laser skin resurfacing is a non-surgical procedure that can help to reduce the appearance of sun spots, wrinkles, and irregular skin texture and tone. Hyperpigmentation, brown spots, sun damage, blemishes, and skin discoloration can be treated with laser skin resurfacing as well. This procedure is also known as lasabrasion, laser vaporization, or a laser peel. Patients may need to schedule one to two treatments at least three weeks apart to see the desired results.
How Does A Laser Skin Resurfacing Procedure Work?
Fractional CO2 Laser
Fractional CO2 lasers are able to decrease the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines, age spots, irregular pigment, and acne scars. This laser penetrates the skin with thousands of beams of light, either in short, pulses, known as ultrapulse, or with continuous beams of light. This is done in a way that results in minimal damage from heat. The lasers do damage the dermis, or the upper layer of skin, and cause it to flake off. Collagen production is stimulated. Smoother, even-toned skin is the result after a procedure with a fractional CO2 laser. Full recovery can take up to two weeks.
Fraxel Erbium Laser
The Fraxel erbium laser does not go as deep into the skin as the fractional CO2 laser and is not as invasive, which allows the Fraxel erbium laser treatments a faster recovery time and less side effects. The Fraxel erbium laser causes less burning to surrounding tissue, lessening the chances of swelling, redness, and bruising. It does still stimulate collagen production. Fraxel erbium lasers are a more popular choice for darker skin tones. This laser is able to minimize the appearance of surgical scars, irregular pigments, acne scars, enlarged pores, wrinkles, and fine lines.
What Are The Results Of A Laser Skin Resurfacing Treatment?
Both the fractional CO2 laser and the Fraxel erbium laser stimulate the skin to produce collagen. This causes your skin to continue to improve in texture, quality, and appearance as collagen is produced. There is very little downtime after a procedure, with only minor redness.
Laser skin resurfacing is a method of reducing the signs of age, acne, and sun damage by using a laser to damage the upper layer of skin and stimulate the production of collagen. Collagen plumps up the surface of the skin, minimizing lines, wrinkles, scars, and uneven skin texture. As the laser damages the top layer of skin, the appearance of scars and irregular skin tone are improved once skin heals.