Edmonton Anti Aging Treatments | ICON Laser Machine
Introduction to the Icon Laser
Hi everyone. Welcome to the Edmonton Dermatology YouTube channel. My name is Andrea and I’m the cosmetic lead nurse here at Edmonton Dermatology, talking about Edmonton anti aging treatments. I am a registered, licensed practical nurse or LPN here at the clinic. Today I’m going to be talking to you about the icon laser. So this machine actually has multiple different hand pieces that treat multiple areas and skin, different skin conditions of all skin types. So essentially the ICON laser is from Cynosure. Cynosure is a world renowned laser company. They have multiple different platforms. This one is actually very versatile. It has a lot of different handpieces that can treat, like I said, all kinds of different skin conditions on different skin types. So essentially it is mainly an IPL machine. So what is IPL? IPL stands for intense pulse light. Intense pulse light will use a spectrum of light.
The Max G Handpiece and Pigmentation Treatment
So very much just like the light that you see in the room. So using all the different colors of the rainbow is what I like to kind of use that analogy as to treat something in the skin. So like I said, there’s three different hand pieces. I’m going to go over each of those handpieces. Currently we have the Max G on our machine right now. So the Max G is a fantastic handpiece. This will actually treat pigmentation in the skin. It’ll treat redness as well. So if you’re one of those people that have those little brown spots kind of all over the face and they’re a little bit more on the surface, so a little more sun damage, this will actually help treat that. So when we deliver the pulse of the light into your skin, it goes and targets a specific part of the skin, so the pigment in your skin and it actually shakes it out of all your skin cells and then it essentially moves up towards the surface of your skin and crumbles right off.
Treatment Process and Aftercare
So it’s actually a great way to kind of rejuvenate your skin, especially after the summer when we’ve been having fun outside, even when we’re wearing our sunscreen sometimes we can still get little pigment spots that do show up and this is a great way to do that because this has such a great regularity of how much light it’s sending out. It actually can target blood vessels in the skin as well. So blood vessels have a tendency to create a bit of redness on our cheeks or around our nose and stuff like that. So sometimes we do end up with little blood vessels that kind of grow along here or if you have, you know, just a little bit of rosacea, you don’t have those big blood vessels in your cheeks yet. This is a great option as well because it will help kind of push out that extra redness from the skin and give you a more even skin tone.
Additional Handpieces and Their Functions
Okay, so as you can see, I’m going to bring this up nice and close here. That tip is actually pretty small so we can get kind of right close into the nose around the mouth. We don’t go too close under the eyes. Of course we wear eye shields for our patients just so that the light doesn’t get into the eyes because it is dangerous. So essentially it’s very, very nice. We can kind of move around. We can also use this on the body more as a spot treatment though because obviously you don’t want to use that tiny little handpiece all over the body. There’s a different handpiece that can help with pigmentation on the body instead. So this is definitely more for the face. Now I’m going to turn the machine on so you can see exactly what I mean by the pulse of light that comes out. Okay. So I’m just going to turn our system on here.
Laser Hair Removal and Collagen Treatments
So it’s going to give a few minutes to kind or a couple seconds to kinda warm up and get itself all happy, but I’ll show you exactly what I mean about how the light essentially pulses out. Now there are several other hand pieces which I’ll go over in a few minutes after I showed you how the pulse goes. Essentially different hand pieces treat different areas. We really like this one. This one’s a great one to either start out if you’ve never had a laser treatment or light treatment before or even as a maintenance treatment. So if you’re someone who’s had like a Fraxel or a pixel treatment or even a CO2 laser and you’re starting to get that little bit of pigmentation, this is a great maintenance treatment. Now for doing a full face with the Max G, we usually recommend three to four treatments or is the best three.
A Noticeable Difference In Three or Four Treatments
You will definitely notice a difference. You can stop at three if you want, but we’d still recommend four. It’s always better to really make sure that that pigment is out and those pigment cells have been reset. For downtime for this guy is about five days. So after we do the treatment, you do feel a little bit warm, your skin looks red it almost looks like you’ve had a really good run outside, you’re kind of warm feeling. The redness will kind of settle in, you know, two to three days and then you’ll notice that pigmentation will actually kind of start glowing to the surface. So like I said, it shakes that pigment under that skin and it’ll come right to the surface and it gets all crumbly. So it’s almost like coffee grounds in the skin. You can literally take your hand and just wipe it right on.
Very Little Downtime
Okay, so about five to seven days for downtime. Not too bad for this machine. You can still put makeup over top of your skin afterwards. We usually recommend moisturizer, sunscreen afterwards. That way we’re not introducing any new damage to the area because your skin is already compromised. Now usually, like I said, four treatments, we usually like to do ’em every four to six weeks apart. That’s because our skin naturally regenerates itself every four and six weeks. Okay? Oh, the machine’s getting cranky so as it’s still trying to do its testing and stuff like that, again, every four to six weeks we do a treatment. Usually these treatments last about a year because keep in mind if you are out in the sun during the summer, which of course we all love to do it’s one of those things where you may need another one or two treatments just to kind of really get that pigment out of your skin.
No Permanent Dark Spots with Treatments
We’re really trying to make sure that that pigment doesn’t sit and linger in your skin. That way you don’t get the permanent dark spots, which means you usually have to go with a heavier laser like the Fraxel or the CO2, which keep it stay tuned. We’ll be doing some videos about those treatments as well. So he’s still warming up there. Sorry, I had not put away the handpiece so it’s going to take a few more minutes ’cause I’m busy talking here. So essentially the IPL is a great way to kind of just give that skin rejuvenation. Who’s it good for? Any age really, any age, any skin type, so it’s safer. Skin types four and under. Usually when we start getting into the higher skin types like five and six, there is other treatments out there to kind of help with any extra pigmentation.
We Help With Skincare To Avoid Further Sun Damage
Plus we also always say use your skincare along with any treatment to make sure that we don’t cause any more pigmentation like sunscreen while we’re outside of the sun. Okay? So again, this is a great treatment to kind of just keep that your skin happy, healthy, even toned, brighter and lighter too. Okay? alright, so our machine is ready to go. So what we’re going to do is just put in our settings and I’m going to put something low because I’m actually not treating anybody. I’m just going to be showing you guys the type of light that comes out of this.
All right, so I have my thing ready and of course with anything, we always wear safety goggles because it can be harmful to our eyes. So us technicians have goggles that we can see through like, so for patients we usually do more blackout goggles. So these are ones that kind of cover right over their very similar to tanning goggles, but they are not the same and no tanning allowed. So essentially it just blocks out the light so that we can actually go ahead with the handpiece. Now we don’t direct the light into anybody’s eyes because of course that is dangerous. So we just make sure that we kind of tuck in a possible stick or a hand to kind of go close to the eye when we treat the area. Okay, so essentially the handpiece is ready. So I’m just going to shoot it into the room here or down onto the floor.
Very Safe Laser Treatment
There’s nobody else in this room, just myself. So we are safe to go ahead and try this, but you can see how bright the light is. Here we go there, that was it. So usually we direct that right onto the skin and we deliver the pulse. So I’m going to do one on myself here. Here we go, 1, 2, 3, 6. So just a bright light like so and just turn that system off for now and we always secure our handpiece. So not too bad, some bright light flash and away it goes. Now each time we actually put that onto the skin, there is a light delivered and we deliver that pulse into that small square like I had showed you. Okay, so as you can see here, we have a couple of different hand pieces like I had mentioned. So I got them all laid out on the bed here for everybody to see.
Laser Hair Removal Is Quick and Easy
I’m going to go into details about what each one of these do as promised. So we’ll start with this one first. So the max R, which is a great awesome handpiece. Look at that there. Nice big wide tip which is great for laser hair removal. So laser hair removal, especially on the legs, arms, bikinis, stuff like that. This targets brown, brown hair essentially so it doesn’t target light hair because the machine does need to be able to look for some sort of pigmentation of the hair follicle into the skin. So he’s a great one for that. And like I said, with that great big handpiece, that big space area there, we can treat large areas like the legs. Now usually, depending on the area that we are treating, it will take several treatments. So usually the face, it’ll take four to six, the legs will usually take six to eight because it is a larger area for that.
Minimal Downtime for Laser Hair Removal
Okay? Downtime for laser hair removal is very minimal and the discomfort from it is very minimal as well. The nice thing that all these hand pieces have, which I forgot to mention with the max G, is that the tips are actually cooled. Okay? So when it actually touches your skin, it is cold first, then we deliver that pulse of light, like I said, and I had shown you already, and then you get that cold sensation from the handpiece. So this entire gold piece actually goes cold. So it’s very, very comfortable. So this one, like I said, great for laser hair removal. Our next handpiece here is the max Y. So you can see that there max y. So again, look at the size of the handpiece. It’s much bigger than the max G but smaller than the max R. So the max Y here actually is used to treat lighter hair.
Lighten Dark Skin Pigmentation
So it also does laser hair removal, but it also treats pigmentation of the body. So remember I had said that the max G, you can use it as a spot treat on the body, but again with that tiny little hand piece from the max G, you can’t get a whole lot of area coverage. The max Y is actually really great for that. So it will treat pigmentation on the hands if you have brown spots on the hands or even on the arms as well. So the max Y is great for that and great for laser hair removal. So finer hair that has that pigmentation in it still. So again, not the light hair, just the dark hair. Okay, now coming over here we have the 1540. So this actually is a true laser handpiece for the icon machine. What I mean by true laser is this is not like the other three that I just showed you that are intense pulse lights.
This is actually a laser admitting device. So what it’ll do is actually send energy into the skin to alter the collagen. Again, it has that nice gold piece on there to try and cool the skin. This one does not, which I’ll get into in just a second. So when it sends energy to the skin, it’s actually going to the collagen of the skin where it’s going to heat it up and actually help with scarring. So this will treat scars, it’ll also help boost collagen growth, which means that it’ll actually help with fine lines and wrinkles as well. So we usually deliver that right onto the skin. The sensation from it is very, very minimal and the downtime from it is about seven days. So this is also an alternative to the Fraxel or the clear and brilliance or the pixel lasers.
Conclusion and Consultation Information
This will actually help regenerate collagen and it’s a great maintenance treatment for those other treatments as well. This one. So the difference between this handpiece and this handpiece, this is an XD. XD means it goes deeper into the skin. So we’re targeting more collagen further into the dermis, whereas XF is more into the upper dermis or the epidermis. So this will kind of help with those fine lines, whereas this will help with more deep wrinkles and scar tissue. Okay, again, the downtime for these are certainly more like seven days and you can combine it actually with the Max G. So we usually call that a super photo facial or the three for me treatment, which actually is a great way to continually do a generous rejuvenation of the skin. And again, usually depends on what we’re treating. It takes about four treatments, but if we’re doing scars, it’s usually six to eight treatments to try and help with that.
All right everyone, I hope that helped to answer a few questions about what exactly is an IPL, how does the treatment work and what the different hand pieces that you can actually use on the icon machine. If you have any questions, feel free to put them down below this video. And of course like the video subscribe as well. If you have any questions, we’re always happy here at Edmonton Dermatology Cosmetic Center to answer your questions. And we do offer complimentary consultations, so if you ever want to come in and learn about Edmonton anti-aging treatments, just give us a call like us on Facebook and Instagram and we have all of our information there. So hope you all enjoyed this video and again, subscribe to the video. Thanks so much.