It’s Laser Season: 9 Ways Lasers and Light-based Treatments Can Improve Your Skin This Fall and Winter

The air is getting cooler, pumpkin patches are opening, fall festivals are fully underway. This means laser season is officially upon us! What exactly is laser season? Laser season is the magical time of year when it is BEST to get laser and light-based treatments. Laser and light treatments require you to protect the treatment areas from sunlight. Therefore the cooler weather and waning sunshine of fall and winter provide the perfect time to get these treatments. Here are 9 ways that laser and light-based treatments can improve your skin this fall and winter.

Fine Lines & Wrinkles

Fine lines and wrinkles are one of the most common changes we experience as we age. But that doesn’t mean we have to live with them! Laser treatments such as Halo and CoolPeel (to name only a few!) are great ways to help encourage the body to produce collagen and elastin to soften fine lines and wrinkles. Both collagen and elastin help smooth and firm skin. Collagen is known for helping to improve skin strength, whereas elastin helps skin remain flexible and able to retain its shape.

Both of these treatments can be done any time of year, but are best performed in the fall and winter when patients are not exposed to as much sunlight. (To be more specific, treatment areas should not receive any significant sun exposure 3-4 weeks prior to either treatment and for about a week following a CoolPeel and a solid month following a Halo treatment.)

Sun Damage

Sun damage is one of those things that creeps up over time. Most of us don’t notice we’ve incurred any damage from our daily living and outdoor activities until it’s really noticeable. Sun damage most often appears as changes to skin pigmentation such as unwanted freckles and/or brown spots, a loss of skin tone, or even diffuse redness and broken capillaries. If you’ve noticed these changes in your skin, you might be wondering if there’s anything you can do about it. The answer is YES. We have several different treatments that are great for sun damaged skin, two of our favorites are Halo and BBL FotoFacial (advanced IPL).

Age Spots

Age spots are usually an unwanted side effect from sun damage. With targeted light-based technology such as BBL FotoFacial (advanced IPL), we can lighten or completely remove age spots with a series of treatments. (For any age spots not able to be cleared with BBL FotoFacials, we will target with a full-ablation spot treatment with the 2940nm laser immediately prior to a CoolPeel or Halo treatment.)

The light energy delivered by the BBL will gently heat the upper layers of your skin. The heat absorbed by the targeted areas will stimulate your skin cells to regenerate new collagen. This process will restore your skin’s natural beauty, blending its natural colors and making it smoother, vibrant, and younger-looking.

Unwanted Hair

If you choose to remove hair from certain areas of your body, you’ve probably spent a lot of time shaving or waxing! But when you choose laser hair removal, you can say goodbye to all the time and money spent on hair removal supplies. At Dermacare of Hampton Roads we have 4 different laser hair removal devices. They all have different strengths and allow us to niche down and really get specific when it comes to treating each patient’s unique situation. The latest (and possibly greatest) addition to our laser hair removal devices is the Sciton BareHR laser. It offers advanced laser hair removal that is extremely fast and a lot more comfortable than other hair removal lasers on the market!

Laser hair removal is a perfect treatment for laser season because you’ll be wearing pants more often and won’t have to say no to any beach days and sun exposure to those target areas!

Skin Texture

Smooth skin texture is one of those things many of us take for granted. But when it starts to go… it can be hard for some of us to deal with. (Especially for the makeup queens in the audience!) One day your foundation is magazine-model smooth, and the next it’s cracked and warbled and kind of sandpapery.

Don’t panic! Laser and light-based treatments such as Laser CoolPeel, Halo, and BBL FotoFacial can improve skin’s texture by helping increase production of collagen and elastin. Specifically, CoolPeel targets the top layer of skin, vaporizing microchannels in the skin, and stimulating new collagen and elastin. Halo’s non-ablative laser basically tells your body to amp up its production of collagen and elastin, which helps minimize wrinkles and the appearance of crepey skin. Both of these treatments will help restore a more youthful texture to the skin!

Facial Redness

If you suffer from rosacea, redness, or flushing, you know just how inconvenient these symptoms can be. The good news is that you can reduce redness (in some cases, quite drastically) with laser and light-based treatments. One of the best light-based treatments available to treat redness and rosacea is the BBL FotoFacial.

BBL FotoFacial (advanced IPL) is a noninvasive treatment with virtually no downtime. It has a specific setting to treat reds in the skin and can be applied almost anywhere on the body.

Scars

Treating scars can be tricky, but not impossible. We have several treatments available to treat all kinds of scars. The two best laser season treatments being Laser CoolPeel and Halo. Both of these treatments are great fits for acne scars as well. (We tend to alternate CoolPeel with Vivace because it gives such great results when dealing with scars!)

Skin Laxity

If you suffer from saggy, loose skin, you’re not alone. Whether it’s on your face or body, loose skin can put a real dent in your confidence. At Dermacare, we don’t have a magic wand to stop the clock on the aging process—but we can certainly help stall it! Two of the best methods for treating skin laxity are Exilis Ultra (okay, okay this one isn’t a laser, but you can’t have a sunburn if you want to get it!) and BBL SkinTyte. Both offer long-lasting results and are best performed in the fall and winter (a.k.a. laser season) when sun exposure is minimal.

Tattoo Removal

Despite what your overly-concerned family member might have told you when you showed off your fresh tattoo, ink isn’t forever. You CAN remove unwanted tattoos with laser tattoo removal. At Dermacare of Hampton Roads, we specialize in laser tattoo removal. Every case is different (because no two tattoos are the same), but in most cases, we can remove or significantly reduce the appearance of an unwanted tattoo.

Get the most out of laser season! Call us today at 757-547-7546 to make your appointment, or click HERE to book an online consultation.