As the summer gets on the way and we head to the beach two issues frequently become exposed, that pesky unwanted hair and the stretchmarks that look so much brighter and bigger in the sun light! Have no fear, incredible advances in aesthetic technology are here to save the beach day.
Hair removal:
Lets face it, we live in a hairless society. Millions of dollars are spent on removing body hair every year. In the past not only was this an expensive but also a painful process.
Old technology for hair removal that is still used today includes waxing, plucking, chemical hair removal, and electrolysis. All of these provide temporary results and are painful.
Laser hair removal became available for commercial use in 1997 and was a game changer. It offered more permanent results with ability of treating large areas of the body, but the concentrated beam of light had a tendency to deliver too high of a dose of energy to the area of hair follicle damaging surrounding pigment in the skin. Treatments took too long and were painful. Bulky plastic body wraps with strong numbing creams were the norm.
In 2006 Intense Pulse Light( IPL) technology was introduced and quickly gained popularity due to offering relatively fewer side effects and causing less pain during procedure. IPL is different from Laser in that the light is more scattered. This beam scatter has less attraction to skin pigment thus being safer for clients with darker skin and much less painful.
Current IPL technology as the one used by OWM Spa Downtown uses an incredibly fast processor that allows for rapid application of the IPL called “running the applicator” to a large surface area, treating in minutes what used to take an hour.
This current system also utilizes a hyper-cooled crystal that chills the skin while the hair follicle is heated, essentially rendering the process painless. This is a huge leap forward from the systems just several years older that required external ineffective cooling with fans and required pre-numbing with numbing creams.
Stretch marks:
Stretch marks are a result of isolated areas of skin damage.
Extreme skin growth or shrinkage can cause stretch marks. Common causes of skin stretching include pregnancy, rapid growth during puberty, rapid weight gain, rapid increase in muscle bulk as seen with body builders, and either oral or topical steroid use. As the body grows, the connecting fibers in the dermis slowly stretch to accommodate slow growth. However, rapid growth leads to sudden stretching. This causes the dermis to tear, allowing deeper layers of skin to show through. This can form stretch marks and contributes to the way they look.
One of the best treatments available for stretch marks is ablative nanofractional skin resurfacing. This technology utilizes tiny pins that safely deliver heat (via NanoFractional RF™) through the stretch mark’s surface. This creates tiny micro-dermal wounds, which the body then works to heal naturally. This process is what repairs the damaged stretch mark dermis, stimulating new formation of its two key components, collagen and elastin. And because the wounds are so small, the treatment is much more comfortable than lasers or chemical peels. The result is reduction in the depth and width of the stretch mark.
