Lots of factors contribute to damaged, dull, worn-looking skin, including sun exposure, aging, and acne. Fortunately, today there are a variety of nonsurgical treatments that can restore healthy-looking skin, so you feel more confident and attractive.
In fact, more than 16 million Americans turn to these treatments every year to repair skin damage and rejuvenate aging, worn-out skin. Microneedling is one of the more recent innovations to skin rejuvenation — and one that’s proven to be very popular among both women and men.
Microneedling works by addressing the underlying causes of skin damage and age-related skin changes, helping skin look and feel firmer.
At Metroderm DC: Medical, Laser, and Aesthetic Dermatology Center, we use the most advanced microneedling technology to help our patients achieve beautiful results. Here’s how microneedling works — and how it could help you.
Healthy, firm, youthful skin depends a lot on collagen and elastin, two proteins that form strong, resilient networks to support skin. These fibers give skin its firmness, and they also perform key roles in healing skin that’s damaged due to acne or cuts.
Unfortunately, as you age, your skin produces less collagen and elastin, which means your skin is a lot more prone to sagging and wrinkling. Sometimes, collagen and elastin form tough scar tissue in areas of damage.
While the extra layers of tough collagen are your body’s way of protecting itself against future damage, the end result — scars — can leave you feeling self-conscious.
Microneedling works by creating a series of tiny puncture wounds in your skin, causing controlled damage in the deeper layers. This damage signals your skin that it needs to repair itself, in turn triggering ramped-up production of collagen and elastin.
After microneedling, these natural healing processes replace damaged tissue with healthy collagen to diminish the appearance of scars, while also helping skin look and feel firmer and more youthful.
In addition to treating scars, wrinkles, and fine lines, microneedling can also be an effective treatment for:
The microneedling techniques our team uses ensure your treatment is customized for your concerns.
We can enhance the beneficial effects of microneedling with an additional platelet-rich plasma (PRP) treatment used at the same time as microneedling. We make PRP from a purified sample of your blood (hence, the social media-friendly name, “vampire facelift”).
PRP contains concentrated platelets, special components of blood that aid in healing. The tiny puncture wounds from the microneedling session allow the PRP to penetrate your skin, providing an additional layer of healing responses for optimal results.
Microneedling can also help other skin products, like serums and moisturizers, penetrate better.
We offer microneedling on its own and with PRP enhancement, depending on your skin’s needs and your treatment goals.
Microneedling might seem to work like magic to restore healthier, smoother, more youthful-looking skin, but the technique itself is based 100% in skin science. If you’d like to learn more about microneedling at our Washington, DC, practice, call the office or use our online form and request an appointment today.
