For many years now, laser skin resurfacing has been an effective alternative to chemical peels and microdermabrasion.
Innovations have centered mostly on using newer lasers with more skin-friendly properties.We have gone from CO2 lasers to Erbium lasers.Compared to CO2 lasers, Erbium lasers are easier on the skin, meaning that treated individuals have less pain and a shorter recovery time.
However, the newest innovation in laser skin treatments is not a new laser, but a new way of handling the laser. Fraxel laser treatment provides even more rejuvenating results with less pain and down-time.
Fraxel (a trademark name derived from Fractional Laser treatment) is innovative because, unlike other laser treatments, it doesn’t treat all of your skin at once. Traditional ablative laser skin resurfacing takes advantage of one aspect of lasers, their power, to completely vaporize the entire surface of your skin, leaving a younger layer of skin exposed, a layer that has been stimulated to produce collagen, filling in tiny wrinkles around the mouth and eyes. This is essentially equivalent to a REALLY bad sunburn, and it’s painful and takes time to heal.
Fraxel, on the other hand, takes advantage of another property of lasers: their precision. Fraxel doesn’t treat all your skin at once. Instead, it treats microscopic columns of your skin at a time, burning deep into the skin in just those areas, but leaving most of your skin intact. This works very well for stimulating collagen production, leading to the same or greater wrinkle reduction, but because the entire skin is not burned away it requires only a fraction of the healing time.
Fraxel shows excellent results not only on wrinkles and dry skin, but also on acne scars and skin discoloration, including age and liver spots. If you are interested in learning more about Fraxel treatment and finding a Fraxel doctor in your area, contact one of the doctors in this directory.
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