The bad news: As much as we all love to soak up the sun, that bright beast is hyper-aging. Sun damage can occur every time you’re out in the sun without protection, and you may not even see the effects until years later or now since you’re interested in how to fix it.
UV radiation actually alters the DNA of your skin cells, causing fine lines, wrinkles, redness, brown spots and even cancer. 😱
The good news: You can stop the effects and even reverse sun damage, but it’s not as quick of a fix as most commercial brands will have you believe. A dab here and there of lightening serum may help the appearance and appear to smooth some lines, it may not address the deeper cellular impairments resulting from sun exposure, but there is hope. Here are our Top 3 in-clinic treatments to undo the damage.
3 IPL: for your dark spots
Hyperpigmentation is a common, usually harmless condition which occurs when an excess of melanin, the brown pigment that produces normal skin color, forms deposits in the skin. Hyperpigmentation can affect the skin color of people of any race. This happens because melanin absorbs the energy of the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays in order to protect the skin from overexposure. Then you end up with freckles, age spots and other darkened patches of skin, called ‘solar lentigines’.
Luckily, Photorejuvenation treatments with intense pulsed light (IPL) work quickly to remove these spots. The light-based treatment works by selectively destroying the melanocytes, leaving the surrounding area unharmed. The lesion darkens and crusts after treatment, and is naturally sloughed off the skin within two weeks. The results of IPL include a more even tone appearance, minimized rosacea, and sun-related skin damage – with minimal to no downtime.
2. Laser: for your redness
Redness or ‘Spider Veins’ on the face are due to a couple of factors:
- The fibroblasts (the skin cells that make collagen) produces less collagen, so the skin becomes thinner and the blood vessels become visible through the skin.
- The redness associate with a sunburn, is actually extra blood in the capillaries, which is why it turns white when you press on it (the blood stops flowing).
Redness could also be due to genetics, pregnancy, obesity or hormones, but either way, lasers will save the day. Laser treatment is the safest, most natural way to treat these unsightly spider veins. The laser is passed over the vein so that light energy can cauterize the damaged veins. The body naturally reabsorbs the pooled blood and redirects future blood flow to veins deeper below the skin. This isn’t your solution to not wear SPF though!
1. Microneedling: for an overhaul
If you’re still reading this and still thinking about hitting that tanning bed for your upcoming trip, how do these words sound to you – enlarged pores, discoloration, wrinkles, sallow skin, rosacea? You get it. But by stimulating collagen growth, you can reverse all of this, including the hyperpigmentation that comes with melasma.
Microneedling (also known as skin needling and collagen induction therapy) is a skin rejuvenation treatment that uses a pen-shaped device with fine needles to puncture the skin, creating controlled skin injury to stimulate its own healing process and naturally produce more collagen. Collagen is a protein that gives our skin its structure, and it works like a netting that holds skin cells together, giving the skin a smooth and youthful appearance. As microneedling isn’t a laser picking up color, it’s safe for all skin types from the palest to the darkest.
As if after all this, you needed a reminder to wear sunscreen with an SPF 30 minimum every time you leave your house (and the reapply every 2 hours that you are exposed to the sun), but here it is.
Wear sunscreen! It will save your skin.
