Healthcast 654 - SkinCare II: Treatment of aging skin –You can turn back the clock!

See all the Healthcasts at https://www.biobalancehealth.com/healthcast-blog

Last time I talked about the ways you can keep your skin healthy and the products I have found that medical grade products are effective to keep skin looking young and healthy.  My last Healthcast/Blog was about what you can do at home to improve your skin and look younger.

This week we are going to talk about how to get the treatment you need to improve your skin if it is damaged and aging at the medical spa, and you may not have been able to be out of the sun or been able to follow the lifestyle changes I recommended that are necessary to avoid skin and sun damage.  The problem is bigger, and the treatments are more drastic, and expensive.

When you have finally decided to do something to help your skin look younger, you must   do an introspective survey of your face and prioritize the problems that you see, placing what bothers you the most as your first priority.  I think writing this on a list and taking it to your consultation is the best way to proceed. When nothing is getting better with your own self-care, It is then time to get a consult from an expert who can tell you what you need to reverse your skin problems. Bring your list to the office consultation and decide on how much you can spend a month/or a year, on your own “renovation”.

What to know when you have your consultation:

When you have your consultation, you should be aware that there are at least 3 different treatments to treat any problem that you have. They have different levels of effectiveness and cost.  At our spa you will be able to choose between three levels of treatment, but often, the consultant will weigh in on what the best procedure is for you.

The least expensive treatments take the longest time to reach your goal and are usually the least effective. There is generally a medium level treatment, which is a little more expensive and more effective than the least expensive but will take more time to get the results, and finally the most dramatic results and faster outcomes cost the most.  If you need fast results and can afford the procedures, then tell your consultant at the beginning of your interview.  On the other hand, if you have a limited budget but have an open time frame then tell her that too. This will help you get to the desired treatment fastest and make your consultation the most profitable for you.

In case this doesn’t make sense, here is an example:  The treatment of age spots or brown spots has three possible solutions. The least expensive treatment is achieved by the use of topical serums at home and a series of facials in the spa. The outcome takes time and is not as effective as the other two options.  The medium level of treatment (medium cost and effectiveness) is a VI or TCA Peel that has more immediate results and has some down time, but is less expensive than the most effective treatment, and more effective than the least expensive. The Laser IPL or Pixel treatments are the most expensive outside the operating room, they have some pain involved, but it takes only a couple treatments to rid yourself of the brown age spots that are on your face and decollate. In addition to the excellent results, these two treatments also tighten skin, and diminish wrinkles, while they remove the precancerous skin spots that make us look old.  This is the highest price treatment but is faster and more complete than other available treatments.

Choosing the Treatment that is right for you: Your Goal, Time to get to Goal, Effectiveness of treatment, Downtime, Pain, and Cost.

I think it is best to inform your Skin Consultant about how much time you have before you reach your skin goal, if you can have some downtime or not, and how much money do you want to invest in your skin “re-birth”. In terms of choice of treatments at a med spa, you will get what you pay for.  On our BiobalanceSkin.com website we have the three or four options for each skin problem (wrinkles, brown spots, sagging skin, eye lid droop, poor texture) that our patients present with.  I like that method of comparing treatments for each skin care problem.

It should be transparent as to what your choices are, and what you get from a particular series of treatments. You should make your opinions known as to your priorities. That means what bothers you most about your skin. Think about it before your consultation and give her a list of priorities in writing which will keep her on track.

BTW, none of these treatments work if you don’t follow the instructions given to you for aftercare and follow-up treatments. Ask about before and after care at your consultation.

For example, If a patient has chosen a pixel laser resurfacing to remove her brown spots, and after 2 weeks all of her brown spots have come to the surface and peeled off, and she doesn’t use effective skin care products and doesn’t wear sunscreen and stay out of the sun for the appropriate time, then there is no guarantee that her results will remain excellent. You must take control of your own self-care because it is 50% of the treatment, and 50% of the outcome of our treatment.  Please don’t use products from Walgreens if we told you to use something else after or before the treatment!

Price of each treatment series is usually critical to decision making…..each of us has a budget. However, you should understand that the least expensive treatments generally have a lower cost to the spa and are least expensive.  For example, what follows is a comparison between the three choices for improving texture and tone of facial skin are as follows:

Least expensive: a series of Hydro-facials (30-45 minutes) one per month for three months, and three months of products, followed by a 3-month maintenance:  This is the least expensive and doesn’t transform skin texture and tone as much, and doesn’t last as long as other available methods of treatment.  If you have very little damage, are young and healthy, or you just want to maintain what you have, this is ideal for your needs. There is no downtime.

Medium price: For example, Micro-needling treatments, are a medium cost and effectiveness treatment. This treatment uses a pen that contains a tiny needle that makes tiny “holes” in the skin’s dermis all over the facial skin, neck and decollate, which then stimulates collagen production over the next 4-6 weeks, tightening and lifting the skin.  In general, this treatment is done in a series to achieve the results you are looking for.  2-4 treatments done every 4-6 weeks is the typical number of treatments needed.  Maintenance requires a few of these treatments a year. Down time is minimal, there is a redness that occurs for 24-36 hours and peeling of the superficial dead skin for up to a week, but it is not severe and can be covered with makeup.

Micro needling is ideal for younger patients to prevent the sagging and loose skin that comes with aging.  It also makes the skin look fresh and glowing. Micro needling offers an Add-On of PRP to be applied and “injected” with the needles into facial skin to stimulate collagen production faster and more efficiently. Of course, this increases the price of the treatment.

Highest price: The highest price treatments are generally appropriate for older patients, or impatient patients: those women who have a timeline for improving their skin ( a wedding or event), and those who have the most sun damage. You also get extra goodies when you get Laser Pixel treatments. The Pixel resurfacing not only improves texture and tightness of skin, nut it also removes brown spots and helps fill in wrinkles!  Lots of extras which makes the price worth it! There are several choices for the top-of-the-line procedures to improve texture and tightness and they are not all lasers.

One non-laser treatment is called Aqua Gold treatment which has three choices for what is injected and three prices. It uses a small disposable applicator that has many short gold needles to deliver a serum by “stamping it into the skin”.  The injectables are hyaluronic acid injected below the epidermis and which combines the micro-needling technique with filler (very expensive) and Botox (very expensive) with an option to add activated platelets (a blood draw, spinning with an expensive activating compound). This treatment is expensive, but it is immediately effective, and the change is great.  There is no real downtime, and the changes are immediate. A series of these treatments can revolutionize the quality of your skin.

The last component of getting the most out of your facial treatments includes buying the right products to help you maintain the beautiful results you have achieved through any of the above treatments.  It is a waste of your money to buy inferior products that may reverse the improvements you have paid for.   This is essential for preserving the improvements you have received from any of the esthetic treatments discussed in this blog.

Now if you think you need a facelift, you should see an injector consultant to ask if she can help with a much less expensive injection of Botox, filler, or both.  Another treatment which is done without needles is the EmFace which uses magnetic energy to stimulate lift and muscle tone to literally do what a facelift does without a knife.

Facelifts total cost is $75,000-$150,000 and has down time of months, and includes drains, and pain.  A series of EmFace series of treatments (4) is about $3500, without pain and without downtime.  When faced with surgery, always look for another way to do the same thing!

Now you know what is ahead of you when you talk to a Skin Care Expert about how to achieve your beauty goals.