Looking in the mirror, you see the hands of time in every fine line, wrinkle, and age spot. These are signs of a life well lived, but they appeared sooner than you expected.
Skin laxity, dullness, and hyperpigmentation can really distract you from the natural beauty staring back at you in the mirror. While these signs of the times don’t make you any less gorgeous, they may make you feel more self-conscious.
At Regain Functional Medicine + Aesthetics, we can reverse the clock—at least on your skin. Services like laser skin resurfacing near Overland Park allow you to recapture your youthful complexion and admire your reflection a little more.
But before we discuss how these treatments work, we need to understand why our skin ages.
How Your Skin Ages
Throughout your life, you’ve basked in the sun, cried with laughter, cried from sorrow, and smiled brightly in pictures. These memories etch themselves into your skin, lovingly, though you don’t exactly welcome the marks.
You might think that the sole culprit for the changes in your complexion is simply the hourglass losing sand or the hands of a clock ticking away. That’s partially true, but we can also pinpoint other culprits too, like environmental factors and the decline of natural proteins in your body. Let’s explore exactly how your skin changes with the seasons.
Collagen and Elastin Decline
You simply can’t talk about skin health without mentioning collagen and elastin. Just like a building needs a strong foundation to stay upright, so does your skin. Collagen is the most abundant protein in your body and acts as your skin’s scaffolding. We mostly recognize its ability to keep your skin strong and supported. Collagen is also vital in cellular regeneration (the process of replacing damaged cells with new, healthy ones).
Elastin, on the other hand, keeps your skin flexible, giving it the ability to stretch and “snap back.” Together, these 2 proteins keep your skin looking supple and youthful. As you age, your body gradually produces less and less of these proteins, making you more susceptible to the signs of time. Other factors can also impact your body’s collagen and elastin.
You may not realize it, but the goal of skin rejuvenation treatments like laser skin resurfacing in Overland Park is to increase collagen and elastin production.
Sun Damage
In Overland Park, we love to spend all of our time in the sun during our warm summer days. Whether it’s drinks on the patio or canoeing at Shawnee Mission Park Marina, we love to get as much vitamin D as possible.
The problem is that the sun-kissed glow that you achieved may come with some drawbacks. With long periods of unprotected sun exposure, you may also notice hyperpigmentation, skin laxity, sun spots, and dullness from the harmful UVA and UVB rays.
These rays harm the production of collagen and elastin and even cause blood vessels to become more fragile, resulting in broken capillaries and vascular lesions. Unfortunately, this damage, known as photoaging, doesn’t always reveal and resolve itself as quickly as your typical sunburn. Instead, it can take years before you become aware of them.
Lifestyle Factors
Maybe you’ve been diligent with your skin care routine and sunscreen application. Still, you notice redness, hyperpigmentation, scarring, and a rough skin texture, making you consider treatments like laser skin resurfacing near Overland Park.
Your lifestyle choices can also contribute to declining collagen production. Your diet, especially high-glycemic foods and sugar, can damage your skin, weakening your collagen and resulting in acne or other skin conditions.
What Is Laser Skin Resurfacing?
This treatment can sound quite scary. Lasers on your skin don’t seem very appealing, especially given that the sun’s light rays age your skin. Well, in laser resurfacing, the specific wavelengths of light reverse that damage, restoring a healthy, glowing complexion. Laser skin resurfacing also speeds up the process of cellular regeneration. How does this light work for your skin and not against it? By stimulating collagen, of course.
Laser resurfacing targets the top layer of skin, removing it and all the dead skin cells with it. This process triggers new skin cell growth, ramps up collagen production, and even tightens your skin.
Laser Skin Resurfacing: Beyond the Face
Of course, this treatment improves your facial skin, but aging doesn’t just happen above the neck! You can also stimulate collagen and elastin production in the following areas:
- Hands
- Chest
- Neck
- Shoulders
CoolPeel Laser Resurfacing
Laser skin resurfacing near Overland Park is effective because we use the most advanced technology, such as CoolPeel. This ablative laser works differently than others because it delivers short pulses of light at high peak power and low energy levels. This process creates controlled injuries on your skin’s layers—not enough to cause lasting damage, but enough to stimulate collagen and elastin production, setting off your skin’s natural healing abilities.
CoolPeel works differently than other skin resurfacing treatments on the market because it reduces the amount of heat delivered to your skin. This prevents lasting thermal damage and also spares you from spending the next 7 days avoiding social situations. Instead, you can expect only 24 hours of downtime after each treatment.
What CoolPeel Treats
We recommend CoolPeel for laser skin tightening and toning. You can also diminish or erase the following:
- Fine lines
- Wrinkles
- Skin texture irregularities
- Acne scars
- Hyperpigmentation
- Enlarged pores
Motus AY
Although not precisely an option for laser skin resurfacing near Overland Park, the Motus AY is another light-based skin rejuvenation treatment. While most people recognize it for laser hair removal, it also works well to rid your skin of vascular and pigmented lesions.
Using Moveo technology (which is Latin for move), this broadband light (BBL) device emits visible and infrared light to painlessly and quickly stimulate collagen production and improve skin tone.
What Motus AY Treats
We use this technology in age spot removal, and it can treat the following:
- Unwanted hair
- Spider veins
- Broken capillaries
- Sun damage
Best Time to Get Laser and Light Skin Treatments
Even with downtime that only lasts 24 hours, we still advise you to stay out of the sun to avoid those harmful rays we talked about. Laser and light treatments can make your skin even more vulnerable to hyperpigmentation and collagen loss. That’s why most places advise waiting until the fall or winter to shine a light on sun damage.
We agree with that advice, but want to assure you that we offer laser skin resurfacing near Overland Park all year. After all, even in the harsh, snowy Kansas City winters, the sun keeps shining, doesn’t it? So while we recommend waiting until you’re not tempted by all the outdoor activities that the spring and summer have to offer, we won’t turn you away! Some patients may even benefit from the summer treatment if the Leawood sun is too much to handle, and the A/C calls their name instead.
Pair Your Laser and Light Treatment With…
Let’s take a moment to highlight our other treatments that we love for skin rejuvenation here at Regain. These options pair well with laser skin resurfacing and other devices that harness the power of light.
Microneedling
Just like how laser skin resurfacing creates controlled damage to stimulate collagen production, microneedling does too. However, this treatment doesn’t rely on light at all. Instead, this specialized tool is equipped with tiny needles that create microwounds in your skin. These wounds are too small for any human eye to notice, but large enough to set off your body’s natural healing response.
Our SkinPen microneedling can pair well with your laser skin resurfacing near Overland Park. But if there’s one thing we love here at Regain, it’s a little bit of heat. Using devices like Virtue RF microneedling or Morpheus8 Face and Neck, we take the tried-and-true practice of microneedling and incorporate radiofrequency (RF) energy to deliver heat deep into your dermis, where it stimulates collagen production and delivers enhanced improvements to skin tone and texture.
HydraFacial
You can’t find another facial quite like the HydraFacial. This 3-step process involves cleansing, extracting, and hydrating. The Hydrafacial pairs perfectly with just about any skin rejuvenating treatment, but especially with laser skin resurfacing. Plus, we’re able to saturate your skin with nourishing ingredients personalized to address your individual concerns.
Red Light Therapy
We just can’t get enough of the lights, can we? Red light therapy uses low levels of red light to stimulate your cell’s mitochondria—the powerhouse of the cell. Red light gives mitochondria a bit of a power boost, prompting them to stimulate collagen, increase circulation, and reduce inflammation. From hair restoration to stretch marks to sun damage, red light therapy can boost your confidence from head to toe.
Products to Pair With Laser Skin Resurfacing
At Regain, we sell medical-grade skin care products like Alastin and SkinCeuticals. We recommend following up your treatments and maintaining your results with retinols and vitamin C serums. We can help you determine the best products for your skin and explain how long to wait before using them after your treatment.
We also highly recommend using a waterproof sunscreen. Our staff loves the Alastin SPF 36, and we consider this a must after any treatment, but especially after laser skin resurfacing. When you visit our Leawood or Lawrence location, we can offer these products to you.
Let Us Light the Way to Better Skin
So maybe we aren’t actually turning back time, but we’re sure making it look like we did. With laser skin resurfacing near Overland Park, your skin will radiate and glow almost as brightly as the sun. To talk to our team about this treatment, you can request a consultation.
Eager to get started? Streamline the process with our treatment planning tool.
