Your friends swear by it, and celebs extol its virtues. It’s a mildly-invasive procedure that takes under an hour, but has noticeable, long-lasting benefits. It can enhance the look and feel of your skin and help soften scars, stretch marks, wrinkles, minimize hair loss, and more. What is microneedling, and how does it benefit your skin?
How Microneedling Works
Microneedling is a simple treatment that exploits the body’s natural healing processes to improve your skin and address other conditions. A licensed technician performing the treatment will numb the area first with a topical numbing agent that will sit on your skin for about 30 minutes. Then, using the handpiece with tiny, thin needles, they will move over the area in a crosshatch pattern, making miniscule holes in just the epidermis to cause micro-injuries to your skin.
Your body reacts by turning its healing power into overdrive and sending more blood flow to the area; it produces more elastin and collagen to heal the skin, turning dead skin cells over faster for smoother, younger skin that’s firmer and more glowy—even after just one session. The entire procedure lasts between thirty minutes to an hour, depending upon how much skin you need to treat, and recovery is relatively quick. Most people can put makeup on the area the next day, but skin can sometimes be swollen and red for up to five days, something that can be alleviated with an ice pack.
Microneedling is also beautifully versatile. It can tackle issues on virtually any area of your body. While most people opt to use it on their face, many also see great improvements in the skin on their back, neck, legs and other trouble spots where their skin is damaged, or needs treatment.
Related: How to Fix Sun Damaged Skin
Where Microneedling Works Best
Microneedling is especially helpful for a number of skin challenges, both medical and cosmetic. These include:
- Hyperhidrosis: Also known as “excessive sweating,” this condition responds favorably to microneedling, which destroys sweat glands to eliminate sweating in that area.
- Alopecia Areata: For alopecia areata, or autoimmune disease induced hair loss, microneedles stimulate growth at the hair follicle level by sending more blood flow with collagen and encouraging the follicles to grow thicker hair. Additionally, microneedling for hair loss helps medications better assimilate into the scalp.
- Wrinkles and Fine Lines: When tiny wounds heal, the new collagen and elastin give your skin structure and strength to help soften wrinkles and fine lines. Vivace Microneedling is specifically designed for this function, which also helps distribute moisturizers and anti-aging lotions as well.
Related: Vivace Microneedling: Everything You Need to Know
- Loose or Crepey Skin: Increased collagen and elastin help rebuild thin and wrinkly skin.
- Stretch Marks: Stimulating collagen production helps minimize the appearance of stretch marks too.
- Acne: Microneedling opens pores to help them deliver topical creams and ointments more effectively to your dermis to help decrease acne.
- Mild Burn or Acne Scars: Although it can’t help with raised scars, microneedling is highly effective at helping reduce mild burn or acne scars with added collagen and elastin.
- Big Pores: By plumping up the collagen close to your pores, microneedling causes pores to virtually disappear.
- Rosacea: This condition causes a breakdown of collagen. Microneedling can help replace the collagen, reducing redness and irritation.
- Skin Discoloration and Uneven Tone: To target hyperpigmentation and age spots, fresh skin cells and collagen restore youthfulness and smooth the tone of your skin.
While it usually takes a few treatments to get optimal results, the results last a long time. We recommend scheduling appointments between three to eight weeks apart, and continuing for three to six months. Once you start the cycle, your skin will consistently renew itself, and you can return annually to keep the cycle going.
Time to Try Microneedling!
There are so many benefits to microneedling. Want to see how it can help you? Call our office today for a free consultation. We love seeing the instant results that microneedling can produce—and the sustained results that continually renew themselves. We look forward to helping you get your skin in great shape!
