Do you want a bright and radiant complexion?

IPL is the first medical cosmetic treatment I ever had. It did wonders for my complexion, toning down my pink cheeks, shrinking my broken capillaries and erasing my sun damage.

I remember doing a clinic with dermatologist Dr. Rosenthal when I was an intern. He pointed out to the patient all of the telangiectasias (broken capillaries) that I had on my cheeks.

How glad I am that I don’t have those any more.

Before IPL treatment

BEFORE

This isn’t me but it gives you a good idea of the kind of results you can get with an IPL photofacial.

After IPL treatment

AFTER

See how much brighter her skin looks? The sun damage on her upper lip was creating such a shadow that it almost looked like a mustache. After the treatment, her skin looks clear and radiant.

This article is reprinted from Advanced Rejuvenation’s newsletter of January 21, 2009. If you would like to subscribe, click here.

Dr. Rose Jeans
Advanced Rejuvenation Medical Spa

Here’s why you need a reputable medical spa

When I saw this article, I was pretty shocked.

 

This reporter went to a clinic in England that didn’t have a doctor or nurse. She had an IPL treatment to get rid of brown sun damage. The red marks are burns.

What happened to her is this: her treatment was done at too high a setting for her skin tone. She mentions that she was tanned when she went for the treatment. The tan means she has more melanin in her skin, which means that her skin will absorb more energy from the pulses of light — that’s why it hurt so much and why she got burned.

She would also have been at increased risk of burns if the spa she went to had older equipment — places like this sometimes buy used medical spa equipment that is several years old. Newer IPL technology controls the pulse of energy delivered in each shot of light so that even darker skin tones are very unlikely to be burned.

 

Lesson #1: Make sure your treatments are done by properly trained people.

 

The reporter (as the patient) was reporting severe enough pain that she was asking the operator to pause frequently. The operator should have recognized that the treatment was much more painful than normal and turned down the energy level. The operator also should have recognized that the patient was tanned and so would need lower energy levels.

 

Lesson #2: Don’t persist with a treatment that is much more painful than you expected it to be.

 

The treatment was very painful. The reporter knew to expect the sensation of an elastic band snapping, which is how we all describe it, but this was much worse. She thought she would “tough it out” to get the results she wanted. Severe pain with a pulsed light treatment is a warning sign that the skin is absorbing a lot of energy. And that means burns could occur.

 

The good news for this woman was that she saw a dermatologist the next day and got treatment that healed her burns without scarring.

 

She went on to have IPL treatments in the dermatologist’s clinic that didn’t hurt and achieved a beautiful complexion.

Please make sure you are dealing with experienced, well-trained people when you seek out medical cosmetic treatments. If things don’t feel right, go somewhere else.

(This blogpost is reprinted from our newsletter of December 5, 2008. To subscribe to the newsletter, contact us at info@RestoringNaturalBeauty.com.)

Dr. Rose Jeans
Advanced Rejuvenation Medical Spa

The changes in Catherine’s face

These images were taken on our medical camera system, the left image before we did any treatments on Catherine, and the right 2 days ago.

Do you see how the redness has really come out of her skin? The Vivier Redness Relief skincare products and the IPL treatments did that.

You can also see how her brown sun spots are fewer, smaller and lighter. The IPLs did that too. Catherine would need a few more IPLs to erase the brown spots completely.

Catherine’s skin looks smoother and more dewy. This is also called radiance. Radiance comes from the skincare products and the Pixel laser treatments.

Catherine’s face has slimmed down with her 15 pound weight loss but her cheeks haven’t flattened out. That’s because I injected some Teosyal dermal filler along her cheekbones to lift and volumize her cheeks. Putting filler in the cheeks helps to reduce the lines that bracket the mouth (nasolabial folds and marionette lines) and lifts jowls.

The frown lines on Catherine’s forehead were smoothed out with BOTOX® Cosmetic. She also got a bit of a brow lift with the botox but you can’t see it in this picture.

Catherine’s lips are plumped up just enough to smooth out the vertical lines using Teosyal KISS, a product I really like.

Another important point about Catherine’s face is that she continued her running during the makeover period and competed in a couple of races without getting tanned. Catherine was really diligent about applying her sunscreen.

Isn’t it exciting to see what a transformation can occur in just a 1-month period?

Before and after UV images

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are Catherine’s UV photos, the before on the left and today’s photo right. Yes, I know she looks a bit moribund but that is because ultraviolet light picks up different things from regular visible light.

If you watch crime shows like CSI, you know that UV light sees deeper into the skin, revealing sun damage that may not be visible on the surface. That’s what the brown spots are on Catherine’s skin.

You can see that we’ve reduced the size and number of brown spots with one month of treatments. The primary treatment responsible for this change is the IPL or Intense Pulsed Light treatment. The fractionated laser, the Pixel, also plays a role.

The skincare products helped too. Catherine was able to tolerate the Vitamin C serum with hydroquinone called SeeQuin by Vivier.

This is what Catherine’s skin looks like below the surface. Pretty good, eh? Wait until you see what it looks like in daylight. Stay tuned for the next article.

Catherine’s progress

Catherine is making amazing progress with her makeover. She has received a number of treatments at Advanced Rejuvenation Medical Spa, including peels on her hands and chest, Pixel laser, BOTOX® Cosmetic, Teosyal dermal filler, Accent radiofrequency and IPL.

I want to keep her behind the curtain from now on so you get the full impact of everything at the end. I can tell you she is making amazing progress, getting fitter, losing weight and looking great.

Today I’m just going to give you a little bit of a teaser.

I get a lot of questions about the IPL treatment and what you look like afterwards so I’m going to show you a series of pictures of Catherine that will help answer the questions.

Above is Catherine’s cheek before the IPL. Lots of redness and brown spots of sun damage, right?

The second image shows her cheek immediately after the IPL. On my monitor, the redness in her skin is reduced. The little broken capillary on the edge of her nostril is standing out a little more because the background is paler but some of the branches of the capillary are shut down. The capillaries on her cheek (in the midst of that brown pigment) are shut down also.

The pigment hasn’t started to darken yet. This process can take 24 hours after the IPL.

The third image was taken a week after the IPL. If you look at the patch of brown pigment in her cheek, you’ll see flecks of dark brown. This is the darkening of the pigment that I have mentioned previously. The flecks would have been larger a few days previously and are getting smaller day by day to finally disappear at the 10 – 14 day mark.

Her face is at a slightly different angle here but you can also see that the broken capillary on the edge of her nostril has shut down further.

One IPL doesn’t get rid of all of the sun spots or brown pigment. The pigment is located at various depths in the skin. The flash of intense pulsed light will travel down through the depths of the skin until it hits pigment and gets absorbed so the more superficial pigment gets treated first.

With each subsequent IPL treatment, we work down through the skin to get pigment located at deeper and deeper layers. It usually takes 5 – 8 IPLs to get rid of visible brown pigment.

Skin analysis: Physical treatments

Now we’re going to start talking about the fun stuff, the treatments that show big results within days.

Don’t get me wrong, good skincare products are important, so important that there really isn’t much point in doing more expensive or invasive treatments if you don’t have the bedrock of a good skincare routine.

However, skincare shows gradual results over weeks, months and years and we only have a month to make a big change for Catherine.

The first treatment we are going to give Catherine is an Accent facial. Accent uses energy in the form of radiofrequency waves to stimulate the skin to make collagen, recontour bulges and smooth out cellulite on the body.

On the same day, we will give Catherine her first IPL facial to help get rid of the sun damage and the redness in her skin. Catherine will have darkening of the sun spots within about 24 hours after the treatment. The spots will get smaller and smaller over 10 – 14 days, leaving her skin more even-toned.

The thing I really  like about the IPL is that it knocks back the redness right away. It can take a few treatments to get rid of broken capillaries but the diffuse redness of rosacea and the red inflammation of acne are noticeably reduced right after the treatment.

Catherine will also have the Pixel laser. If you’re thinking about the lasers of a few years ago that burned off the surface of the skin, think again. Pixel is a fractionated laser, meaning that it delivers the laser in tiny little dots, leaving 80% of the skin untouched.

The tiny dots of laser stimulate new skin cell formation and collagen formation in the skin. The ring of untouched healthy skin around each dot of laser helps the lasered skin heal quickly.

The Pixel treatment will erase fine lines, improve the tautness and restore radiance to Catherine’s skin.

I’ve linked each treatment to an article on my blog that includes before and after pictures, in case you want to have a preview of what these treatments will do.

In the next post, I will talk about the injectibles, that is botox and fillers, that we will be using for Catherine.

5 Hollywood secrets for staying young

I saw a program on Star! over the weekend called Staying Young in Hollywood. Dr. Stephen Mulholland of SpaMedica listed the top 5 secrets that Hollywood stars use to stay young.

1. Avoid sun exposure
   UV rays hasten the breakdown of collagen in the skin leading to wrinkles, rough skin texture and sagging skin (not to mention skin cancer).
2. Use medical-grade skincare products
   The skin is a good barrier and stops most products from penetrating. Medical-grade skincare products have been formulated to penetrate the skin tocreate the results you want and they have the research to prove it.
3. Use BOTOX® Cosmetic
   This really is the simplest and safest way to prevent and treat wrinkles caused by muscle contraction.
4. Use dermal fillers
   Dermal fillers can replace lost volume in the face, fill in a wrinkle and plump up your lips. Formulations like Teosyal are more purified and longer-lasting than earlier products.
5. Have IPL treatments
   Intense pulsed light treatments erase sun damage, broken capillaries and redness leaving the skin looking smoother and more even-toned.

And there is one more thing that Dr. Mulholland didn’t include in his top 5…

• Avoid cigarette smoke
  Smoking wreaks havoc on your skin, speeding up the destruction of collagen and giving you a grayish cast. Smoking can also stain your skin and hair yellow — not a pretty sight!

Are your hands giving your age away?

 I have met some wonderful vivacious women whose faces looked 10 or more years younger than their actual age but whose hands totally gave the game away.

The features that make us judge hands as being older include the brown discoloration of sun spots (some people call these age spots or liver spots), a dull rough skin texture, thinning of the skin and loss of tissue in the hands giving a skeletal experience.

A manicure helps to keep our hands looking younger but if you think your hands are giving away your age then you need the treatments below.

1. Chemical peels
   Medium-depth chemical peels help your hands by reducing sun spots, stimulating collagen formation and improving texture.
2. Uncross-linked hyaluronic acid injections
   Pure, uncross-linked hyaluronic acid adds 1000x its weight in moisture to your skin resulting in a plumper and more hydrated appearance.
3. Intense pulsed light (IPL)
   Shots of light target pigment in the skin, eradicating sun spots.
4. Pixel fractionated laser
   The Pixel laser stimulates new skin cell and collagen formation, resulting in thickening of the skin and improvement in texture and the appearance of sun damage.
5. Sculptra
   Sculptra injections stimulate the skin to make collagen, thickening and tightening the skin. Fat transplantations can do the same thing if you don’t mind a more surgical approach.

Dr. Rose Jeans
Advanced Rejuvenation Medical Spa

P.S. To read my analysis and recommendations for Faye Dunaway’s hands, please click here.

How to reverse signs of aging in the face

Dr. Rose discusses the signs that show age in our faces and the treatments that can reverse these signs.

The recipient of the 10 Years Younger … in Burlington! will receive a number of different treatments that will work together to smooth out lines and wrinkles, erase unwanted brown and red pigmentation and improve the texture of the skin.