Laser Treatment for Sun Damaged Skin

Derma-medical treatments have received a huge boost recently because of the incredible advances in laser technology and related fields.  As you probably already know, a lot of irregularities in the skin are caused because of damage from the sun.  Fortunately laser treatments are a good way to help remedy sun damaged skin.

The damage often seen on the skin because of the sun is often brown age spots.  This is a problem known in more technical terms as hyperpigmentation.  This problem is not fatal or anything like that, but it is unpleasant to the eyes and thus most people want to remove it when they get it.

Skin that is damaged from the sun is also prone to lose collagen much faster, and collagen is the stuff that makes your skin appear young and healthy.  And furthermore when your skin loses collagen, this then leads to those small little lines and wrinkles and can even appear on young people because of sun damage.

One of the things that a laser treatment does is help give an overall more even skin tone and also a smoother texture to the skin.  This treatment also helps reduce the fine lines and wrinkles that I mentioned earlier that can be caused by ongoing skin discoloration.

Patients mostly undergo laser treatments on their face, although sun damage can appear elsewhere as well.  If you have skin discoloration and skin damage on your chest, shoulders, or back then you can also be treated with laser treatment therapy.

What You Can Do For Sun Damaged Skin

Laser treatments use light to heal.   They also use plasma to heal as well as heat energy.  These 3 things are used to penetrate the skin and tissue.  Depending on the problem and particular laser treatment, sometimes one of the three is used and sometimes all three are used.  The tools used will emit a very highly concentrated beam of the energy.  Then these beams will get into the skin tissue and eradicate the old and damaged cells and help the growth of the brand-new skin cells to replace the unwanted ones.  When this happens, the skin will appear young and with better texture than before, thus removing any discoloration from sun damaged skin.

There are basically two different types of laser treatments available for helping with sun damaged skin.  One is known as non-ablative and the other is ablative.  Both CO2 as well as Erbrium are examples of ablative techniques which more or less burn the surface of the skin off in order to expose the healthy and fresh cells which are underneath.  A non-ablative technique, for example Nd: YAG laser, is much less aggressive.  This method does not burn the surface of the skin or damage any surrounding skin parts.

Even after these treatments are done, collagen should continue to grow and new cells should continue to form as well.  When this happens, the skin should appear much more youthful and glowing.

When talking about non-ablative and ablative forms of laser treatments for sun damaged skin, just keep in mind that there is a very wide variety of treatments available under these two forms of treatment.  And between them you can find a treatment that can help correct quite a large range of different skin conditions.  Which treatment you perform will greatly depend on the amount of sun damage of the skin as well as the type of skin.  There are a bunch of other variables as well, and a discussion with a dermatologist should help in the decision.

If you are considering this treatment, here is a video to give you an idea of the how the procedure will go.  It shows a treatment procedure for a patient interested in reducing pigmentation: