What is Skin Laxity? Help Your Skin Be Healthier
Hi, and welcome to Edmonton Dermatology YouTube channel. We’re so glad that you joined us today. My name is Karen and this is Andrea. Hello. She’s a registered LPN here at the clinic. And today we’re gonna be talking about skin laxity. So this is a topic that, you know, we wanna know more about and how we can help our skin to look younger. So I have a quote here from Iman. I don’t know if everybody knows who that is, but she’s definitely in the skin and fashion industry. And she’s quoted saying beauty is being comfortable and confident in your own skin.
And the difficult thing with a lot of people is they don’t feel confident in their own skin. As you get older, unfortunately a lot of ladies they get worried about, especially in this area, some really lax skin. So you can kind of pinch it and peel it. Unfortunately, neither of us can really show that to you in this video.
But essentially a lot of patients come to us and ask like, how can I fix this? Because they feel very self-conscious of it. So they’re wearing turtle necks even in the middle of the summer because they’re trying to hide this area or scarves, stuff like that.
Yeah. So why does skin become loose and saggy?
It’s because it’s loss of elasticity. So what happens is with time, unfortunately gravity isn’t really our friend, so it has a tendency to pull down in areas. So not only in the chin and neck, this tends to be the most popular area because it’s visible, but it can also happen on the body. So the skin and essentially it looses its elasticity. So instead of being able to snap back straight, it actually kind of loosens just like a rubber band that can no longer stretch.
Oh yeah, that’s a good way to describe it.
So what is collagen and elastin?
So, collagen and elastin are essentially our building blocks to our skin. So collagen is essentially holds up your skin and elastin allows it to stretch and move, just like I said, that rubber band. So when either of those are weakened, your skin loses its structure and its ability to, like I said, back and forth like a rubber band. So you end up with that crepeness. So it’s kind of very thin skin and it’s kind of loose and saggy and not very nice. Mm.
Okay. Can the skin laxity be prevented?
Kind of as long as you’re using good skincare, making sure you’re not going out in the sun ensuring that you’re hydrating your skin a lot, especially in the facial area, using products that are going to help plump your skin and keep it healthy. Sunscreen is a huge important part of that too because with sun damage and that can actually break down collagen and elastin a little bit quicker.
Okay. So what type of treatments are there to treat the skin laxity?
So there’s actually two different types that can help with that. One is called lasers, the other one is called radio frequency. So the difference between those two is laser actually uses RA laser light to heat up the collagen and elastin. Why do we want it to heat up? Because collagen, elastin actually love the heat because then your body sends nutrients and good stuff that it can actually feed off of and get stronger.
The other technology, like I said, is radio frequency. That one uses heat, it creates heat, so it doesn’t use light, it just creates essentially a warming effect in the skin. It kind of gets your skin’s temperature up to a higher amount than our normal body temperature and tries to maintain it for a certain amount of time. That way we’re creating this natural way of your body to send nutrients to the area that we’re heating up so that it can get that good feeding and have a feeding frenzy essentially. Oh wow. Yeah.
How did the treat, how do those treatments actually help tighten the skin?
So because we’re creating that heat in there it almost causes an inflammatory response. So your body is going, oh my gosh, there’s a lot of, there’s a whole bunch of warmth. There must be an infection.
So it actually sends nutrients like hyaluronic acid to the area. So that’s a natural thing that we have in our skin. Your collagen uses that and your elastin uses that to build up itself. So the more heats that we put into the skin, the more nutrients that will get sent there. And a lot of these treatments do need to be repeated so that we’re making sure the body is sending the nutrients at a consistent pace for the skin and then skincare falls into that as well. So skincare allows us to apply topically like hyaluronic acids and that to feed the skin consistently. Oh wow.
It’s actually interesting, I always learned so much.
So what areas on our bodies or faces, what, what areas can be treated?
Yeah, so you can actually do around the eyes with lasers and with radio frequency. Same thing with every other part of the body. So the lower face right in here, people get gels right along here, nobody looks at those. And then of course this part here, which I mean there’s some unsightly words that people use for that, but you can tighten that. Also the arms, you can do the stomach, the thighs lasers usually not in those areas. Mostly radio frequency ’cause they’re such large areas. So radio frequency is a little bit easier to treat in a large area. Oh wow. Okay.
And how many treatments does it take to start noticing a difference?
So again, that all depends on the type of technology that’s being used. So we can, if we use lasers, it’s usually three to four treatments. And again, it depends on the type of laser that we use. So the stronger, more oomph behind the laser, the more noticeable you’re going to see the results. The radial frequency, it depends on the area that you’re getting treated. So if you’re doing around the eyes, let’s say it usually takes about six treatments. If you’re doing the abdomen or thighs, it’s usually about 12 treatments because they’re such large areas. So yeah.
And do these treatments hurt?
Again, that’s depends on the type of treatment we’re doing. So lasers, because we’re sending laser light into the skin, it has a tendency to be a lot of heat all at once. So it can be a little bit uncomfortable.
Now of course there’s ways that we can counteract that. We have numbing creams, we have cold fans that we can use ice packs, stuff like that. Radio frequency is actually very comfortable. It almost feels like a nice warm massage and we have a tendency to have some people fall asleep on us when we’re doing their face ’cause it’s a nice massage that they’re getting. So yeah, it all depends on the technology that we use. Okay. So there are some effects.
So how long do these effects last?
So that again, is case dependent on the type of technology that we use and it’s also the care that you do at home. So that’s where skincare comes in very important with the treatments as well. So it’s always combining the two together is what’s going to get the long-term effect. Lasers have, because we’re sending more energy into the skin, we do have a tendency to have that longer effect for a longer period of time. Whereas radio frequency, it may be a little bit shorter than the laser, but again, because it’s not of a painful procedure, it’s actually very nice to do.
So that is something that of course we would implement with our consultations here at Edmonton Dermatology where we talk about the procedure and combining with the proper skincare so that you’re getting the full effect and you will see your results for a lot longer. Nice. Okay.
And what is the recovery time after treatment?
So again, case dependent. So with laser treatments it’s usually about a week, maybe two weeks, depends on the treatment that we do. With radio frequency, you leave here feeling actually really comfortable and you are very little redness and stuff like that. So there’s minimal, with the radio frequency laser, there’s a lot more downtime or healing time with the skin just because of the amount of heat that we throw in there.
Okay. Well thank you for all that great information. Awesome. Being into book mine, All right. Thanks so much everybody.
Thanks for joining us here on YouTube at Edmonton Dermatology. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel to always stay up to date, get all the latest information and tips on treating your skin and making yourself look younger for longer. So thanks so much. Thanks, bye. Bye.