Nikki Sommer, a nurse with Key West Surgical Group, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning for Medical Matters.
There are a number of new technologies that have come to Key West Surgical Group recently.
Sommer said, “We’re so excited. We have the new Blaze MD Ultra. It is a non ablative fractional laser, and it creates tiny, little micro channels below the surface of the skin. It stimulates the body’s natural wound healing process. So it boosts the production of collagen and elastin, so it kind of enhances the two that we have. But those micro channels, if you’ve ever heard of radio frequency, micro needling, needles with radio frequency. It pierces the skin. That’s what it does. It creates a channel, and then you put a serum on. So this kind of does the same thing. It works great with the other two lasers we have. It works great in conjunction with micro needling, and we do put a serum on afterwards.”
It rejuvenates skin and can also help with hair and scalp revitalization.
Sommer said, “It also helps with crepiness in the skin. So that’s why a lot of people do it on the body. As we get older, weight loss, or if we have dehydrated skin, you have that crepiness look. This laser helps because it goes so deep to stimulate that collagen and elastin. I don’t want to say it’s going to make it tight, like a facelift, but it will make it more taught, but it will help decrease the appearance of that creepiness in your skin.”
It can also help with acne scars or melasma.
Sommer said, “Melasma is the condition we’ve talked about it before. It’s usually a hormonal condition in women, where they get the dark patches on their skin. A lot of times it happens on their face. A lot of women, they can’t go without makeup, because it can be really pronounced. So what I love about this laser in combination with the Pico, because the Pico treats melasma too. They work together. So, because it heats, there’s a roller on this, and the energy that it creates, it opens the channels, it helps slow down the production of melanin, and then the Pico breaks up the melanin. So they work together as a great combination from melasma.”
How long do the treatments take?
Sommer said, “If you don’t have the time to do, like a full treatment, where you can numb for 30 minutes. The treatment itself takes about 15 to 20. I kind of have a special treatment that I like to do. Like the full treatment would be that you come in, you numb for 30 minutes. We do the laser, depending on if you want it just on your face, your face and neck, anywhere else on the body. So figure between 15 and 30 minutes, depending how many areas we’re going to treat at one time. This also has a specific tip. So it has a roller tip where we roll all over the areas, and then if you have stubborn pigment, there’s what’s called a stamping tip, so I can target those darker areas individually. So based on what we’re treating, figure 15 to 30 minutes, then you we decide what serum we’re going to do. We have four different serums we can put on after so it depends what you’re treating, whether it’s aging skin, tightening those fine lines, those wrinkles, or if you’re treating melasma or sun damage or acne, we have four different treatments. We pick the treatment, we pick the serum. I put the serum on after the treatment, and then you get the CO2 lift pro mask, which is that gel mask that cools the skin down, hydrates it at 114% with each treatment, helps enhance the results of the laser treatment that we just did. That stays on for about 30 minutes, so roughly an hour, an hour and a half total, from in and out. If you’re in a hurry and you’ve got an event you want to go to in a week, we can do a shorter treatment where you don’t have to numb, it’s not as painful, and figure 15, 20 minutes. Then we can decide if we want to do the CO2 mask or not and you can even take that and do that home to get just a glow, like if you have an event. So we have a couple of different options to offer with this laser.”
What about downtime?
Sommer said, “What I love about the three lasers we have is there is really no downtime, meaning your face isn’t going to peel, you’re not going to look like you had a treatment done, where you’re going to have, your face is oozing and peeling for weeks. With this one you’re red for like, 24 to 48 hours, similar as the other two. What’s different about this one is that you’ll have a sandpaper feeling. I know this firsthand, because I did the laser on myself last Tuesday because I wanted to see what it felt like. So during the treatment, it didn’t really hurt. During the treatment, afterwards, you feel hot, like a sunburn. It’s like you went out in the sun too long and you have a burn. But the redness didn’t last. It was gone by that night. But you have, like a peppery, sandpaper feeling. Your face doesn’t look like sandpaper, but it feels dry and it feels like sandpaper when you touch it. When I looked really closely, all my dark spots, I have a lot of freckles and such. They had, like a little black peppery texture to them. You had to look really close. It’s not like my skin was flaking off uncontrollably. So that lasted about four or five days, and then it got really smooth as the sandpaper feeling went away. So it was very easy. I just did my normal routine, and nobody really knew I had anything done.”
How many treatments will there be?
Sommer said, “At least three to six treatments, depending on what we’re okay targeting. A lot of people, when they come in and counsel with me, they want a one and done treatment. I wish I could give you a one and done treatment. Even with the body’s healing response, you can’t stimulate it to get rid of all your pigment that you’ve accumulated over years, or fine lines and wrinkles that you haven’t treated at all. I can’t make them disappear with one treatment. So we always say we start with three. That’s the rule in esthetics. I didn’t make it up. Anything you try, anybody you talk to, if you do chemical peels, you’re going to need at least a series of three. So at least three. Another institution I spoke to that does laser, she said, a treatment for every decade of life. So that’s why I said between three and six, because my clients are usually between 30 and 60, even into their 70s. So figure a treatment per decade of life.”
How does the laser work on hair restoration?
Sommer said, “I’m really excited for this, because a lot of things when you talk about hair restoration, it’s usually injecting some type of needle into the scalp. It can be very painful. So this is really a painless treatment for hair restoration. What we do is we have a specific tip, and just like it opens the micro channels in your skin, it opens the micro channels in your scalp to stimulate the hair follicle. Post treatment, we put on KeraLase KeraFactor which helps to stimulate the body to produce to open up that hair follicle and regrow hair. It is bio identical, synthetic version of growth factors and proteins which are needed to regrow hair. So it’s pretty interesting, and it’s painless. That’s the big thing. I mean, you might feel like a twinge. That I can’t do all myself, but I would definitely try it, just if I get somebody to do it for me, I would try it just so I could see what it feels like. But it’s nowhere near as painful as when you have needles injected. A lot of times they inject PRP into your scalp, or they can micro needle your scalp, and it’s a little bit more painful. You have to numb. With this you don’t have to numb. You just have to come with clean hair. We separate it, and I go through targeting the areas where you suffered some hair loss, and we apply the serum on right after. If you did a combination treatment, we would go over with the lead star, with the laser, MD, and have it open those channels, and then we would go, we’d start with the Laze MD and have it open those channels and then we could go with either the PICO or the Elite IQ because now they have that open channel there. The laser can then target, if it’s pigment we’re targeting, it’s going to target it more effectively.”
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