Invest in your future self today with microneedling treatments at MacMed Spa, Salon and Medical in Milford, MA. Microneedling benefits can even show up in as little as one session, giving you an immediate result while you wait for the more permanent effects that multiple sessions give. The professional, licensed staff at MacMed Spa offers you the latest treatments to take care of your skin, hair, and nails, including microneedling treatments.
Maximizing Your Microneedling Benefits
How many sessions you need to maximize your microneedling benefits depends on what you’re receiving treatment for. Many patients see immediate results with only one session, but this is short term and limited to a surface change because of increased blood flow to the area. To get the full benefits of the treatment, you should get at least 4 to 6 sessions. This gives the skin enough time to make real progress with renewing itself and creating enough collagen and elastin to give long-lasting results.
For harder to treat issues like deep scarring, you may need up to eight sessions. Keep in mind too that when treating larger areas for issues like scarring, you may want multiple sessions to split up the time.
What Is Microneedling?
Microneedling, also known as derma rolling, uses a roller or pen with tiny needles to make shallow pricks on your skin. These micro-fine needles make holes only at the surface level, creating just enough damage to need healing, but not enough to cause any harm. This in turn tells the skin to make more collagen and elastin to fill in these holes. It’s similar to how lifting weights makes the tiny tears in your muscles that are necessary to make them grow stronger. The only difference is you’ll never pull a muscle with microneedling!
Collagen and elastin are what give your skin elasticity and its youthful appearance, but our body’s production of it decreases as we age. Stimulating its production means your skin looks younger through natural means. Microneedling is great if you don’t want to get treatments like botox or surgery to tighten or plump up your skin. Microneedling not only promotes collagen and elastin but also allows the skin to more easily absorb any other treatments given afterwards. This is why it’s often paired with facials that will give even better anti-aging results.
How Long Does Microneedling Take?
How Long Is Each Session?
Each session length depends on how large of an area you are getting the microneedling done on. If you’re having the treatment done on your entire face, it should take between 20 to 30 minutes. A small area like your cheeks for acne scars could take only 10 to 15 minutes. However, it will take significantly longer – up to two hours – if you’re treating a large area like the hips for something like stretch marks or chest and neck for uneven skin tone.
Altogether, your session will likely last an hour or less. Most of the time will be spent relaxing while waiting for creams or facials to soak in, not the actual microneedling part. Remember, numbing creams often need to stay on the skin for 20 to 30 minutes to take full effect, though they are not always necessary.
How Often Should I Get Treatments?
Sessions should be spaced out every 4 to 6 weeks. Healing from each treatment is just as important as the treatments themselves, so make sure to allow time in between sessions to get the full benefit. Sometimes if you’re only having a small area treated for a minor issue, you may be able to have treatments closer together, between 2 to 3 weeks apart.
How Long Until I See Maximum Benefits?
For most people, the entire process will take at least four months, but possibly up to eight months. Time for your skin to rest between sessions is very important as it takes time for your skin to create new cells. If you’re treating something like a large area of scars, it could even take up to a year, but the benefits are well worth it.
Do I Need Follow-Up Sessions?
Our skin is constantly changing just as we are always aging. It’s important to stay consistent with microneedling treatments just as you would any other treatment. However, most likely you’ll only need follow-up sessions two or three times a year to maintain your initial benefits.
What Are Microneedling’s Benefits?
Microneedling will plump up your skin, give you a rosy glow, and even renew hair growth. In fact, there’s little that it seems it can’t do. You can do it on any part of your skin, but it’s most commonly used on the face, where your renewed, youthful looks will be most noticeable. All of these benefits are increased when used in conjunction with serums, infusions, or medications like for acne treatment or hair growth.
Areas Where You Could See Improvement
Acne
Microneedling can be used to treat acne. While it doesn’t directly clear up acne, it can unclog pores, which reduces pore size and gets rid of any excess oil. This gives a two-for-one benefit of minimizing large pores and making it harder for acne to occur. The increased blood flow to the skin also ensures fresh nutrients can move into the area, cleaning out common breakout areas, and keeping the skin healthy.
Scars
Another problem that acne causes is scarring. Scars reduce the amount of collagen in the skin, so promoting its growth by microneedling over old scars can help reduce their size or even get rid of them altogether. Likewise, stretch marks are also actually scars and can be treated the same way. Since it’s such an effective treatment for stretch marks, it’s often used on other parts of the body besides the face.
Loose Skin and Wrinkles
Collagen creates a structure for under our skin, meaning the less we have, the more our skin sags. By increasing collagen, microneedling can firm up loose skin. All that extra collagen can fill in fine lines, wrinkles, and smooth uneven skin texture too, making crow’s feet a thing of the past.
Hair Growth
Hair follicles can be stimulated by the micro-needles, making new hair growth or restoring old growth on your scalp. This is because it firms up the area surrounding the follicles, ensuring a strong place for hair to grow. It’s also because that stimulation increases stem cell growth at the hair follicles, telling the hair to start growing again.
Uneven Skin Tone
Uneven skin tone is caused by many different things like sun exposure, shifting hormones, and age. Microneedling can repair the skin regardless of how any age spots or hyperpigmentation happened. It stimulates new cell growth, replacing your old skin cells with fresh new ones.
What To Expect During a Microneedling Session?
Regardless of where you get microneedling done on your body, you can expect the same general process each time.
Pain-Free
The needles used vary in diameter, but they are micro-fine and barely noticeable. Microneedling shouldn’t cause anything more than a mild discomfort at most. That said, sometimes you’ll have a numbing cream put on your face before treatment just in case.
Fresh Face
Your face needs to be clean to make sure there’s no chance for bacteria to get inside your skin and cause infection. It’s also important to not have any active acne breakouts or open sores on your face, since this can spread bacteria across your skin.
Derma Rollers
The dermatologist or aesthetician will methodically roll over your face or wherever else you’re receiving treatment, usually in both a vertical and horizontal direction.
After Care
Possibly the best part of the treatment is the very end, when your skin is most ready to absorb any topical treatments. The practitioner will provide an infusion or creams that will soothe your skin and increase the rejuvenating benefits.
You might experience some redness and inflammation after the treatment, but it shouldn’t be very noticeable or last more than a couple of days. If you’re worried about how it might look, know that you can still wear makeup after the treatment, or schedule it before you have time away from work and other social commitments.
Other Things to Know
What Are Other Options to Rejuvenate Skin?
There are many ways you can tighten your skin or reduce pores or scarring, but these include much more involved, invasive procedures like botox, lasers, or fillers. These also require longer recovery times, unlike microneedling which has essentially none. Microneedling is a great option for you if you’re not comfortable with other treatments. If you’re already using topical treatments, microneedling benefits you even more because of the increased absorption it gives your skin.
Are There Any Adverse Effects?
Microneedling has been shown to have no real adverse effects. You may experience mild redness or inflammation, but only noticeably for a few hours. If you’re getting a session with larger needles, the redness could last for a few days, but nothing significant. Any inflammation you have should appear as nothing more than a lovely plumpness.
Remember that microneedling simply encourages your body to do what it’s always done. Aging might slow down the production of collagen and elastin, but with microneedling you can bring those levels back up again.
Am I a Good Candidate?
Most everyone is a good candidate for microneedling as long as you are at least twenty years old, not pregnant, diabetic, or on blood thinners. Microneedling helps to reduce scar visibility, but not for raised or keloid scars. Always talk to your doctor, dermatologist, or aesthetician performing your treatment if you have any concerns or questions.
Rediscover Your Youth
Microneedling can offer so many amazing benefits, from renewing hair growth and restoring sagging skin to smoothing fine lines. It only takes a few sessions to reap so many benefits, and even fewer to maintain them. Our team of professionals is licensed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and we have an aesthetician on staff who is licensed to perform microneedling. Whether you’re looking to restore your skin or get a head start on the effects of aging, MacMed Spa is here for you.
MacMed Spa can help you turn back the clock with all our treatments with microneedling benefits to get you looking like your youthful self again. Our staff is here to meet all your skincare needs using the best and newest treatments available. Contact MacMed Spa, Salon and Medical in Milford, MA to learn more about our many treatments today!