New Year, New Skin with Halo
Why does our skin age?
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- Lentigines or brown spots from sun exposure
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- Rhytids or lines from sun exposure
Over time, these changes accumulate in the skin. Even though the skin is constantly turning over, the brown spots don’t clear on their own. The sun damaged collagen also doesn’t go away on its own. The body will degrade and replace normal collagen, but sun damaged collagen doesn’t get turned over by the body. Instead, it just builds up leading to fine lines, rough texture, and leathery feeling skin.
Renewing your skin with Halo Laser Resurfacing
We were one of the first clinics in the Seattle area and are the only office in Issaquah that offers Halo Laser Resurfacing. This exciting new laser technology combines an ablative laser that targets the top layer of skin and a non-ablative laser that targets collagen. By using laser energy to stimulate turnover of deeper layers of the skin we can get the body to replace the brown spots and damaged collagen that have been building up from sun damage.
Back in the stone age of laser rejuvenation this was done by burning off the entire top layer of skin with CO2 laser. The results were awesome, but the downtime was terrifying. Then, came fractionated resurfacing where the laser basically makes small holes in the skin, but leaves at least 60% of the skin intact. This leads to more rapid healing, but requires more treatments. The most common fractional lasers out there either target the top layer of skin or target the collagen below.
What makes Halo revolutionary is that it uses two lasers at the same time so that you can treat the top layer and collagen at the same time. The first laser helps to strip away brown spots and soften fine lines by removing small columns of skin which regenerate into brand new tissue over the course of the next week. The second laser coagulates collagen deeper underneath the surface. This damaged collagen ends up being replaced by new, normal collagen. With other lasers you have to choose which of these you want, but with Halo you get both.
Reduced Downtime with Halo
The most exciting feature is that combining these two lasers into one actually reduces downtime. Historically, the non-ablative lasers that treat collagen have had less downtime than ablative lasers that treat the top layer. However, with Halo we have found that poking holes in the top layer of skin with the ablative laser allows the collagen treated by the non-ablative laser to come to the surface more quickly, reducing the overall downtime.
This gallery shows one of our Medical Assistants who had treatment on New Year’s Day (ok, ok, the clinic was technically closed, but some of us were here doing laser treatments on each other). She is in her 50’s and has had several Halo treatments over the last 3+ years. These pictures are meant to show you what the downtime is like. Once more time passes, we will add pictures to show results. She worked the day after treatment. She could have worn makeup that day if she had wanted to, but she didn’t.
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- Before Treatment
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- 1 Day after Halo. She has some redness and swelling, but didn’t have pain and came to work
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- 4 Days after Halo. Swelling is long gone, redness is mostly gone. She has some grittiness from the damaged collagen rising to the surface
As you can see, the recovery from Halo treatment does not take very long. You don’t leave bloody, your skin is mostly intact. It is entirely possible to wear makeup the next day, if desired.
Start the New Year with New Skin from Halo
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