Scarring Reduction

2008-01-05 Word Count: 488 Category: Beauty

Hydroxy acids, such as salicylic acid and glycolic acid, are widely used as exfoliating agents and for skin peels. They remove dead skin cells and also loosen and slowly reduce or dissolve skin lesions such as surgical scars, keloid scars, age spots, moles, skin tags, burn scars, acne scars, stretch marks, and sun damage marks.
The secret of hydroxy acid's actions is that your healthy, flawless skin has a high resistance to such acids. On the other hand, most skin injuries have less structural integrity and are more easily broken down by the acids. The continued use of such acids over periods of a month or longer slowly minimizes and even eliminates most skin lesions. This is essentially a modification of normal skin peel techniques where a very strong hydroxy acid (or other peeling agents such as TCA or phenol) are applied as skin peels. These methods work very well under ideal circumstances. However, hydroxy acids can be very irritating if the subsequent regenerative reaction of the skin is inadequate to fully heal the acid-treated skin. If there is too little skin rebuilding, then the peeling substance can cause further scarring or inflammation.
Skin Abrasion Also Accelerates Scar Reduction
Methods that mildly abrade skin such as microdermabrasion and subcision (needling) also are helpful in speeding scar reduction in concert with Hydroxy Acids. Some old scars are really hard and persistent and physical breakdown allows the hydroxy acids to start reducing the scars. For raised or flat scars, microdermabrasion serves well. For depressed scars, such as pitted acne scars, subcision with needles is often used by estheticians to break up the deeply buried scar tissue.
Skin Remodeling - A Solution for Reducing Scars
The elimination or reduction of scars, lesions, and stretch marks from the skin depends on a mechanism called "skin remodeling". The skin is designed to cure wounds quickly to prevent blood loss and infection. Scars are made from a rapidly formed "collagen glue" that the body gathers into an injured area for protection and strength. In perfect skin healing, the damaged skin is rapidly closed, then the healed area is slowly rejuvenated to remove the original collagen scars and blend the skin area into surrounding skin. Scar collagen is eliminated and replaced with a combination of skin cells and invisible collagen fibers. This skin remodeling can continue in a skin area for 10 years. In children the remodeling rate is elevated and scars are usually rapidly eliminated from damaged skin areas. But as we reach adulthood, this rate diminishes and small scars can remain for years. One way to accelerate remodeling is to induce a small amount of regulated skin damage with a needle, laser, or other procedures, and then let the body's heal processes rebuild the skin area. A second procedure is to use skin healing accelerators that increase the body's biological healing processes to obtain an even better final result.

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