There’s no shortage of sun here in southern California, but while you soak in its warmth and vitamin D, there’s also a price to be paid when it comes to your skin. From photoaging to the development of brown spots that mottle the surface of your skin — namely your face and hands — those rays of sunshine are often doing more harm than good.
Here at Ethos Medical Group, our goal is to help our patients look and feel great, both inside and out. To that end, we’ve equipped ourselves with the latest groundbreaking laser therapies to help fight back against the damage caused by exposure to the sun. And we’re gaining considerable ground.
If you’d like to explore how we can remedy brown spots and other signs of sun damage with our PicoSure® laser system, read on.
Beyond the tan
When you head out into the sun in the hopes of achieving that lightly bronzed glow you had when you were younger, we have bad news for you: Your melanin is hard pressed to keep up with this type of prolonged sun exposure.
When your skin is exposed to the sun, it produces a pigment called melanin, which absorbs the sun’s radiation, preventing it from damaging your body. When you were younger, your melanin responded in a uniform, team effort, which is what gave you that enviable tan. As you enter your 40s, and beyond, your melanin’s response is more beleaguered, and these cells cluster together, which is how you develop brown spots, or the aptly named sun spots.
This reaction is especially prevalent in people with lighter skin tones, since your melanin needs to work harder to shield you from the sun.
The breakdown
In addition to hyperpigmentation, the sun also prematurely ages your skin in a process known as photoaging. After a lifetime of prolonged exposure to the sun, the radiation begins to break down your skin cells, which leads to fine lines and wrinkles.
More specifically, the sun’s ultraviolet rays erode the support network in your skin that’s made up of the structural proteins elastin and collagen, leaving your skin less toned and less elastic.
Laser to the rescue
With our PicoSure laser system, we fight light with light. Using a unique wavelength of light, we’re able to target and break up areas of hyperpigmentation by converting the light into pressure. This pressure blasts apart your brown spots, leaving your body to flush away the debris naturally through your lymphatic system.
But the PicoSure laser system doesn’t stop there. The same pressure that we use to break apart blemishes also works to activate your cells. In a process called cell signaling, we initiate an enhanced inflammatory healing response, which leads to increased collagen and elastin production. This renewal of your structural support helps tighten and firm your skin from the inside out.
The road to better skin
The PicoSure laser system is completely noninvasive, which means you won’t have any downtime after your treatments. When you come in, we’ll take a look at the sun damage on your skin and come up with an appropriate timeline of treatments. Most of our patients undergo 3-5 sessions, which usually lasts less than 30 minutes each and have no downtime afterwards.
We space these treatments out by several weeks to allow time for your body to flush away the damaged cells, paving the way for rebuilding and repair. Your results are gradual as you progress through your treatments and your skin renews itself on a cellular level. After 4-8 weeks, you may notice appreciably smoother skin that’s more toned and even.
If you’d like to erase the signs of sun exposure with our groundbreaking laser technology, please give us a call to set up an appointment. Or you can use the online booking tool on this website to schedule a consultation.