The good news is that many of your beauty goals can be achieved without surgery. Fraxel laser or Ultherapy can help many patients look more youthful and feel more confident. Here are a few ways to know which procedure is best for you.
Beauty Goals: Look Younger Without Surgery
Lots of things happen to the skin on your face and in the surrounding area as you get older. The skin becomes thinner and wrinkles more easily. Years of sun exposure can lead to hyperpigmentation, or areas of dark spots. Scars can form over the years, and some people develop an uneven skin texture due to enlarged pores. As collagen breaks down, the skin becomes looser and saggier.
Both Fraxel and Ultherapy are nonsurgical options that help you look younger without the need for surgery. The two options are usually recommended to younger patients who are just beginning to notice certain signs of aging, whether those signs are drooping brows, sagging jowls or more visible lines and wrinkles. Your specific concerns will help you decide if one or the other is right.
Beauty Goals: Tighten Sagging Chins or Brows
Before Ultherapy, you had one option if you wanted to correct a sagging or drooping brow or chin area: surgery. Ultherapy is the only non-surgical treatment approved by the FDA for skin tightening in the chin, eyebrow and neck areas.
There are a few benefits to choosing Ultherapy instead of surgery. One major benefit is the difference in recovery time needed. After surgery, you can usually expect to need at least a week off to recover. If you wish, you can return to work right away after treatment with Ultherapy.
The Ultherapy treatment process usually takes considerably less time than surgery. Depending on the area you are having treated, the entire process can take less than an hour. Another benefit of Ultherapy over surgery for skin tightening is that the procedure doesn’t involve incisions and won’t leave any scarring.
If tightening your chin or brow area is one of your beauty goals, it helps to act quickly. The treatment is usually best for younger patients who don’t have significant sagging in either area just yet. If you have more pronounced or very considerable sagging, surgery might be the only way to fully correct it.
How does Ultherapy work? The treatment helps tighten skin by sending ultrasound energy to the dermal layer. Once there, the energy stimulates the production of collagen. The additional collagen helps to make skin firmer and plumper and also helps to smooth it out.
Beauty Goals: Minimize Scarring
One of the big differences between Fraxel and Ultherapy is the areas of the skin that they treat. While Ultherapy focuses on the dermis, the laser energy produced during a Fraxel treatment focuses on the external layer of skin. For that reason, it is often a good pick if your goal is to reduce the appearance of scarring on your face or another skin area.
During a non-ablative Fraxel treatment, the laser energy creates small injuries just beneath the surface of the skin. The injuries encourage the exfoliation of dead skin cells and the production of new cells, helping existing scars to fade away.
Beauty Goals: Smooth the Chest Area
Ultherapy isn’t just approved for tightening the chin and brow area. It’s also the only non-surgical treatment to have FDA approval for treating wrinkles on the chest or décolletage area.
Many people don’t think about protecting the skin on their chests from the sun’s rays or think to wear lotion or moisturizer in that area. As a result, the chest is often a giveaway area when it comes to revealing a person’s age. If you’ve been self-conscious about wearing low-cut tops or have been covering up your décolletage and don’t want to anymore, consider Ultherapy. Treatment in the chest area usually takes just 30 minutes.
Beauty Goals: Get Even Skin Tone
One of your body’s natural defenses against the sun’s UV rays is to produce extra melanin, or pigment. If you’ve ever gotten a suntan, you’ve seen this response in action. While some people develop an even tan, plenty of people develop splotches or spots, often known as age spots. As you get older and the effects of spending time in the sun over the years adds up, those spots get darker or more visible.
In some cases, you might develop uneven skin tone or dark spots thanks to a condition called melasma. Usually associated with pregnancy or with taking hormonal birth control, melasma causes spots to form on the forehead, cheeks and upper lips. It sometimes fades after pregnancy or if you stop taking birth control, but can sometimes hang around. No matter what, it can be an embarrassing thing to have.
Whether your hyperpigmentation is linked to hormones, sun exposure or a combination, Fraxel can help. The laser treatment encourages exfoliation of the darker skin cells, so that new, less pigmented cells take their place.
What are your beauty goals? No matter what they are, Mirror Mirror Beauty Boutique in Houston, Texas, has a treatment option that can help you achieve your goals. To learn more about either Ultherapy or Fraxel, or the other treatments we offer, call 281-810-9083 to schedule an appointment today.