In a recent edition of the Sunday Times Style magazine, there was an interesting article on the combination of microneedling treatments with other advanced skin therapies.
Journalist Katie Becker investigated microneedling as a treatment and what it can achieve, and also asked some prominent dermatologists and practitioners about the benefits of combining microneedling with other skin treatments.
I’ve always believed that combination treatments provide the best outcome for correcting problems such as pigmentation, line reduction, skin laxity and acne prone and acne scarred skins. That’s why as a clinic we have invested and continue to invest in advanced treatments that can be used alongside each other.
Gone are the days of standardised ‘one size fits all’ facials when it comes to treating skin, and with the advances made in equipment and techniques, we have never been in a better position to offer tailored treatments and technologies that work.
The trick is to put together the right combination of treatments to achieve the best outcome for our clients; in other words, a tailored treatment package that will deliver results.
We start by assessing your skin condition, taking into account what issues we can see that need to be addressed, and what you would like to achieve. We can then put together a personal skin improvement plan that is going to work specifically for you.
For those who may be unfamiliar with microneedling, or wondering whether it is the right treatment for them, here’s a short explanation of the treatment and how we use it to achieve results.
Microneedling has been around for many years, and one of the early pioneers was Dr Des Fernandes, an eminent plastic surgeon and founder of Environ skincare. He researched the effectiveness of using medical needles to puncture the skin at different depths to induce a response in the skin known as a healing cascade – a natural wound healing process that produces new, stronger collagen.
Rollers with fixed length needles were the first devices to be used in skin needling practice, and I used Dr Fernandes’s method for a number of years, until I became aware of a more advanced method of microneedling; the Meso Pen. This is a motorised pen-like medical device, which punctures the skin very quickly and accurately, creating many more punctures in the skin than using a manual rolling device. One of the benefits of the Meso pen is that, because the needles are automatically puncturing the skin, there is minimal pressure on the skin. This method produces excellent results with much less redness and downtime compared to a manual roller.
Another benefit of the Meso pen is that the needle length can be adjusted to suit the purposes of the treatment. There is even a single or mono needle cartridge, which can be used to tackle deeper lines such as glabellar (at the top of the nose between the eyes) forehead lines, crow’s feet and lip lines.
I started off this blog piece by saying that I am a firm believer in combination treatments, which is another reason I progressed from a manual roller to the Meso Pen, as I can introduce active serums into the treated areas to boost the skin’s appearance – Growth Factors, Peptides and Vitamins can be mixed together in a personalised cocktail and infused into the skin during the skin needling process for even better results.
Depending on the skin condition and age of my clients, I can bring in other non-invasive treatments to work alongside the Meso Pen, such as the Opera LED mask, which speeds up the healing process and stimulates collagen production further, our pH Formula skin resurfacing treatments (Light skin peels) and Radio Frequency skin tightening, all of which will enhance the results of the Meso Pen further.
I’ve been working with collagen stimulation therapy using a needling device for almost 8 years, and am still convinced that it is by far the most effective treatment for skin improvement with long lasting results.
