subject: Want A Younger Skin? Go For Photorejuvenation! [print this page] Our skin, unluckily, doesn't stay the same all through our whole life. And the changes it goes through are anything but flattering: the skin grows thinner, its texture becomes more and more irregular, creases appear and expand, and often whole areas are discolored and turn brown. Of the many systems developed to fight this degeneration, none have proven more effective than photorejuvenation, or laser skin resurfacing - a technology based around what might seem a counterintuitive principle. It works by stimulating the formation of new collagen underneath the epidermis, and the development of new epithelial growth on the surface, through the elimination of outer skin layers , which are vaporized by laser-generated heat.
Once the exterior injuries caused by the laser are recovered (which can take vastly different periods of time, depending essentially on how deep and serious the inflicted thermal damage was) the skin's appearance and texture show a visible and definite improvement. Yet once more, how deep and evident this enhancement is depends essentially on how deep in the epidermis the treatment was applied; it appears that more intense treatments, by removing a greater quantity of epithelial tissue, also stimulate a more intensive production of collagen. Unfortunately, this also comes with longer recovery times, so the situation becomes balanced between what goal we're aiming at, how deep we need to treat, and what recovery times we're prepared to accept.
Due to such issues, for a long period deep laser resurfacing was strictly categorized as an operating room procedure, since the depth of the injury, no matter how masterfully controlled, was significant. While it must be admitted that such method often led to extraordinary results, it is just as true that it often came with unacceptable levels of pain and exceedingly long recovery times, which patients are now loathe to cope with. The paradigm has thus shifted towards a series of less invasive skin treatments, around 4 to 6 over a few months, involving far shorter recovery times (only a few days). Such practice has taken the name of MLP, or MicroLaser Peeling.
That is not all, however: recently, a new development has come in the form of a different technique, which is based on limiting the actual percentage of skin that is burnt by the laser beam. By limiting the damage in this fashion, deeper layers of the skin can be reached, which translates to a strongly increased stimulation of new collagen production, leading to skin thickening and rejuvenation, while keeping both the trauma and the subsequent pain under very acceptable thresholds. Such method has been defined as Fractional Treatments.
There is, however, one point on which both experts of the MLP technique and of the Fractional Treatments technique find themselves in total agreement, and that is that laser treatments are simply a part of skin care, and shouldn't be seen as a miracle cure. The skin takes a long time to age, and it is not realistic to believe that it can be brought back to perfect state by half an hour of treatment - not, anyways, once and for all or for a long time. Laser treatments must thus be accompanied by other procedures, such as traditional microdermabrasion and chemical peels, to support the process of keeping the skin healthy in a long-term perspective.
