The sun took years or even decades to damage your skin. Luckily, it doesn’t take years to erase that damage.
At Enrich Family Practice in Odessa, Texas, our nurse practitioners Maria Cole, APRN, FNP-C, and Kelly Wenger, APRN, FNP-C, and aesthetic team revive your skin with the Icon™ laser from CynoSure®. A series of one to three 30-minute treatments is all you need to look younger, healthier, and wrinkle-free.
Warm, soothing sunlight felt good on your skin years ago, but it also damaged your skin’s structure. The ultraviolet (UV) A and B rays broke down the supportive collagen strands, weakened the elastin that made your skin pliable, and even damaged the DNA in your skin cells. You lose about 1% of your collagen each year, after the age of 30.
Sun-damaged skin reacts by producing increased amounts of elastin, but the elastin isn’t normal. The excess abnormal elastin produces enzymes called metalloproteinases, which are supposed to help your skin rebuild itself with collagen. Instead, they degrade the collagen so that your skin rebuilds itself incorrectly, resulting in:
Up to 90% of “skin aging” is actually just damage caused by the sun. Other sources of damage include high-energy blue light from electronic devices as well as infrared light.
The wrong kind of light exposure broke down your skin for years, but the right kind of light helps you repair it. The Icon uses both intense pulsed light (IPL) and laser energy to eliminate a full range of sun damage, including sun spots and visible veins.
A pass of the IPL feature of the Icon targets the increased melanin in facial lesions and dysfunctional veins and capillaries, such as:
The IPL energy breaks down the extra melanin and the lesions flake off after a couple of weeks. The IPL instantly evaporates visible red veins around your nose and other areas of your face so that your skin looks clearer directly after your treatment.
In the second step of your Icon treatment, your Enrich Family Practice professional uses laser energy to create micro-wounds in the deeper layers of your skin. This controlled wounding process signals your body’s repair system. It flushes away old strands of abnormal collagen and elastin, slowly and steadily rebuilding your skin with fresh and healthy collagen and elastin.
Once your skin has rebuilt itself — which may take several months — you look like you never had sun damage in the first place. The lines, marks, and creases are drastically reduced by your Icon treatment as your skin’s natural ability to repair and rebuild itself is drastically increased.
Of course, you’ll want to keep your skin healthy and vibrant by protecting it with a sunscreen that has an SPF of 30 or more, as well as by wearing hats and other protective clothing.
Erase your sun damage with the Icon by calling us at 432-200-9087 or using our online message form.
