Wrinkles

Wrinkles occur as a result of both internal or intrinsic and external or extrinsic factors.

Intrinsically, we are all products of our genetics. If we were blessed with youthful looking parents and type of skin that resists sun damage, we will probably look younger, longer than someone who was not.

But as we age, for all of us, the production of certain compounds, including collagen, which are plentiful when we are young, declines. As a result, our skin becomes:

• Less elastic
• Less firm
• More lax

Folds in the skins, created when we make expressions, laugh or cry, become engraved on our faces as these compounds decline and become wrinkles.

Extrinsic factors we have more control over to a certain extent, but for many of us, the damage was done long before we worried about what our skin would look like in our 40s or 50s. These include:

• Unprotected exposure to the sun
• Air pollution
• Smoking
• Stress

In time, the effects of these factors show up as:

• Mottling
• Pigmented spots, age spots, liver spots
• Thickening of skin
• Inflammation or redness
• Wrinkles
• Growth of dark hairs in unwanted places

Today, wrinkles and the related effects of aging can be minimized and your appearance improved with IPL (Intense Pulsed Light) and lasers. Our treatments attack the problem in two ways.

The first way actually stimulates your body to produce more collagen, which makes your skin look firmer and smoother. Wrinkles become less apparent. This happens gradually over time. The effect is subtle and if you don't tell them, even your friends won't know you've had any thing done. All they'll say is how great you're looking.

The second way is to attack the pigment in the problems on the skin. Age spots, inflammation or redness, non-cancerous lesions are heated so that the compounds in the skin which produce the colour, break down.

The byproducts of the breakdown are then removed by your own body's waste disposal system and the spots gradually fade away over a period of days and weeks.