When you are dealing with both superficial and deep acne scars, finding anything that works even remotely to improve them can be hard. Most over the counter creams and medications won’t work but promising results have been seen using medical microneedling.
What Are The Cause of Acne Scars?
Acne scars are the result of bacterial overgrowth that occurs in the skin follicles. This happens after the pores become blocked by excessive oils and a change in the keratin (the residual of old skin cells) production process. These conditions trigger an intense inflammatory response by the immune system. This can result in large pus filled pockets, the formation of nodules and cysts, which lead to scarring of varying degrees of severity.
Scarring occurs as the skin attempts to heal. The newly produced collagen becomes disorganized and thickens and because the epidermis anchors to underlying skin layers, the result is scarring. Although most acne treatments target the normal bacteria residing in your skin and pores, the “infections” and pore blockage are usually a secondary response to a potential underlying problem. To help control or stop the active acne process, you should always investigate the potential causes of acne outbreaks. Acne is usually not just about the skin.
How Does Microneedling Help with Acne Scars?
Acne scars caused the skin to thickened while they were formed, so we first need to brake up that thick scar tissue and then stimulate the collagen again to get that smooth skin back. Microneedling does just that by penetrate dermis with fine needles.
Microneedling is a non-invasive procedure that involves using a needling pen, that has 12 fine, very sharp medical quality needles. The up and down reciprocating needling action over the skin causes fine holes (micro wounds) up to 2.5 mm deep into the dermal layers of the skin. These micro injuries promote your skins own healing mechanisms to stimulate new collagen and elastin fibers. Skin texture is improved and the appearance of acne scars is reduced.
As you can tell by the skin needling before and after pictures above, this procedure is an excellent to improve skin tone and texture and get that smooth skin again. The great thing with microneedling is that we have the ability to treat so many different skin concerns with one device. For this particular skin concern, acne scars, we can treat at depths of 2-2.5 mm and produce remarkable results.
Another great thing with microneedling is that it does not damage the outer layer of the skin, so the down time is minimal, 12-24 hours. Compare this to laser resurfacing treatments for acne scarring where you would expect 7 days of downtime and 30 days of heal time.
Depending on the individual skin condition the skin sufficiently resurfaces after 1-3 medical microneedling procedures. We recommend a series of 3 to 6 treatments depending on the depth of your scars. To allow skin cell regeneration, one should wait at least 4-6 weeks between procedures. One last note, Microneedling can not be used on active acne, as that could spread and trigger more outbreaks.
Other Skin Conditions Microneedling Can Treat
Microneedling has been studied for many years and is a great treatment for many different concerns. If you want to shrink your pore size, fix tone and texture, lift and tighten skin, reduce wrinkles, or diminish stretch marks then you should give it a try. Microneedling crosses off many treatment categories and because it is not invasive it is a great treatment for all. It really uses the body’s own natural healing.
As aging continues, we recommend one refresher treatment every year.
So Is Micro Needling A Viable Treatment for Acne Scars?
To have acne scars can be very frustrating and sometimes embarrassing, but you do not have to live with that pitted skin forever. Microneedling can be the solution for those acne scars. It will not go away over night, but after a series of 3-6 treatments I can promise that your skin will definitely both look and feel better. Visit The Laser Image Company, your place for information and treatment.