The world of minimally invasive cosmetic procedures continues to grow each year as people explore their many uses in achieving improvement in the appearance of their skin without undergoing surgery.
Included in the top 5 minimally invasive cosmetic procedures is intense-pulsed light (IPL) therapy. There were more than 3.1 million of these combination laser treatments in the United States in 2023, which is an increase of 6% over 2022.
Here at Los Gatos Dermatology, our IPL laser is hard at work helping our patients to tackle a number of skin concerns. Under the direction of board-certified dermatologist Dr. Bruce Saal, our team relies on IPL for a number of different issues, four of which we review below.
IPL was first introduced in 1992 to clear away spider veins, which affect half of people over the age of 50. And it’s still doing great work in this area today.
With IPL, we deliver different wavelengths of light energy into the broken capillaries to break them apart. After your IPL treatments, your body naturally reabsorbs the remnants of the blood vessels, leaving clear skin in their wake.
Rest assured, if there’s any blood flowing through the spider veins, the amount is negligible and your blood will find healthier blood vessels for circulation.
It’s sunny here in California, so the odds are good that you have a few sun spots on your skin, especially as you age.
IPL treatment can make quick work of these discolorations as we direct intense pulses of light energy into the sun spots, where the pigment absorbs the energy as heat. This heat breaks apart the clumping melanin, which your body flushes away naturally.
While age spots and sun spots are good candidates for IPL, we also use this laser therapy for other discolorations, such as freckles and birthmarks.
You probably spend a lot of time and energy removing hair from areas where you’d rather just show skin. With our IPL laser therapy, we can remove unwanted body hair from most anywhere, including your:
Over the course of several IPL treatments, we target and destroy the follicles, leaving you with smooth, hair-free skin that you won’t have to wax, shave, or pluck for some time.
That tattoo you got when you were 20 was a good idea at the time. These days, you’d rather not have that ink on your skin. Rather than undergoing a painful tattoo removal surgery, we can use IPL to break apart the inks to fade the tattoo.
Like body hair removal, you need a series of IPL treatments, and the effectiveness of this approach depends on the color and age of your tattoo, but most of our clients are thrilled with the results.
Whatever your surface concern, we’re confident that our IPL technology can play a role in helping transform the skin you’re in.
If you’d like to explore how IPL can help with your cosmetic goals, please don’t hesitate to contact our office in Los Gatos, California, today to set up an appointment.
