- Hi all my cosmetic friends out there.
I'm going to be answering some posts today
from our Facebook page.
And we have one from R.J. Hogan, who
asks about her skin pigmentation.
She's got some pigmentation on her face and shoulders,
and just had eight Revlite laser treatments.
I'll tell you about that in a minute.
And she hasn't had much results.
She's also wondering if Fraxel or carbon dioxide laser
would be better.
So to answer the question,
basically we have to talk a little bit about
lasers and how they work.
Lasers are machines that help to pick up
targets in the skin, for example,
pigment, capillaries, or say even a tattoo.
And they're designed to pick up their target
and leave the rest of the normal skin alone.
So, much better than the alternative
of something like, say liquid nitrogen
which just blasts the entire skin.
The way they work is through a process
called selective photothermolysis,
and basically what that means is you have to
get the right laser wavelength, the settings,
the energy, the depth, and all these factors.
Things like pulse width, how long the laser's fired for,
and when you get all these factors right,
it can pick up a certain target in the skin,
and leave the normal skin alone.
It's quite amazing that way,
because you can be very, very specific
to what you target in the skin.
So, it's like this, if you have a car park
with black and white cars, and it's a sunny day,
the black cars are going to get hotter
a lot quicker than the white cars.
The white cars
will reflect light and heat
a lot better than the black cars.
Lasers are able to do that,
except obviously it's a much more specific,
it's a lot more specific than saying
cars in a sunny car park.
In regards to
R.J. Hogan's question, basically as to why the treatment,
the Revlite laser didn't work,
I cannot tell her without seeing her skin,
but the Revlite laser is a laser which can be used
in a number of ways.
Sometimes it's used on a very low setting,
for what we call they call laser skin toning,
and that's a very, very low setting.
So actual fact, you actually can't rid of much
pigmentation very quickly that way,
especially if you have something like sun spots or freckles
because the laser settings are too low
and it's really designed for improving the
textural quality of the skin.
Assuming the type of pigmentation that she has
is freckles or sun damage,
something like the Fraxel laser or carbon dioxide laser
could be helpful.
The Fraxel laser is a laser which resurfaces the skin
by heating up columns of water
in the skin in a fractionated way,
so in other words, doesn't treat the whole skin
but is excellent for treating freckles
and for general skin tone and texture.
Fraxel laser is good.
There's a little bit of down time associated with it,
about five to seven days, usually.
And after that, the skin looks quite fresh.
The CO2 laser, on the other hand, is
another really strong laser.
Which is actually one of the strongest lasers we have.
It is attracted to water in the skin very highly,
and literally is so highly attracted to water
that it takes a layer of skin off.
So you actually lose the top layers of your skin,
and the skin regenerates after about a couple of weeks,
so it's a lot of down time associated with that.
And usually on the body, it's not recommended.
On the face, you can have it,
but we usually reserve this laser
for patients with more wrinkling,
or quite severe sun damage.
Other lasers that could help as well,
this will also depend on your skin type
and the pigmentation problem.
Lasers like the Q-switched ruby laser,
which is designed to target pigment
and very effective for pigment on the face.
And you can also use the Revlite laser,
but possibly at higher settings
to help remove the pigmentation.
I hope that answers your question, R.J. Hogan,
and I'll be putting some more Facebook posts up
asking you for more questions that I can answer,
and hope to talk to you again in the future.