Oh, my God, I feel light-headed.
Have you ever met someone so dramatic?
Today, I am trying the Dermavel plasma pen.
It claims to painlessly remove
unwanted skin perfections and blemishes.
Among the listed imperfections are tattoos,
moles, skin tags, freckles,
warts, granulation, and nevi.
Although it claims to be safe and painless,
I honestly do not trust myself or this pen
to use on anything besides skin tags,
so that's what I'll be trying it on.
I go to the dermatologist
to get my skin tags removed,
but the Dermavel plasma pen claims
to take the dermatologist
and the cost of a visit out of the picture.
Obviously, if this is something that you want to use,
you should check with your doctor
to make sure they think it's OK.
I ran it by Dr. Karan Lal, who was skeptical
but said I could try it at my own risk
only on a true skin tag.
So I sent him a picture, and he confirmed
that what I thought was a tag skin was.
The kit comes with three coarse needles,
10 fine needles, and a needle guard.
So, the way the skin pen works at the simple level
is it's basically heating the tissue.
When it's heating the tissue,
it's breaking down the proteins of our skin.
That allows basically a wound to form,
and when a wound forms, like when we cut ourselves,
new skin and collagen has to regenerate.
So it's inducing basically a wound formation
that leads to collagen production.
Since it's my first time,
they suggest trying it on a fruit first,
so we're going to do some surgery on the banana.
I have a tremor. It's not dangerous,
but I have very shaky hands,
and I could never play Operation as a kid.
So we should have a really great time.
Or, you know, you should have a great time.
I don't know if I'm going to have a great time.
Also, I'm planning on eating this banana later,
so hopefully that's allowed.
Press and hold.
I don't hear noise or see sparks or anything,
and I was expecting something to happen,
but I don't know.
I'm going to throw this needle away.
Still tastes great.
So, I drew a circle around the skin tag
so I would not lose it,
because it's kind of hard to see.
OK, you're supposed to use gentle strokes
going back and forth.
OK. Level one. Holding this.
Oh, I'm scared.
[gasps]
Oh!
[gasps]
It kind of hurts.
Oh, I'm dripping in sweat.
[breathing heavily]
That's crazy. Oh, my God.
It's making noise.
Whew!
Why are my eyes watering?
Oh, my God, I feel light-headed.
Have you ever met someone so dramatic?
OK, we're going to give it another go around,
because I think it's still there.
And, I don't know. It does sting, for sure.
Whew!
I don't know, is it working?
OK, I'm getting the heebie-jeebies.
I think I need to be done.
Ow. Yeah, it definitely stings.
And it looks inflamed to me.
I don't honestly think it looks any different
otherwise besides being inflamed.
So, I would not recommend the plasma pen
or do-it-yourself plasma pens for at-home use
or even in-office use for a lot of people.
So, looking at the pictures and the videos,
before, you can see a
skin-colored pedunculated papule.
Essentially what that means, you see a little
skin-colored little mushroom with a stalk.
You can see right after you treat it
that there is some evidence of redness
and crusting, and that's normal
because you heated that tissue.
In the day-after video and picture,
you can see that the tissue has completely become black,
meaning the tissue has coagulated,
and that means that the tissue
is basically undergoing necrosis.
So it is impending falling off.
Even though I personally don't recommend this
to be done in the office or at home.
So, while you may see that there are
claims of the plasma pen saving you money
because you can do a lot of these things at home,
in reality, if you end up with
hyperpigmentation or scarring,
which is a very well-known side effect
even if it's done by an esthetician
or a physician in the office,
you could end up with a larger problem.
I definitely do not think the plasma pen is safe.