Any Foreseeable Advances in Technology to Thicken Skin?

There are treatments available to help build collagen in the skin, improving skin tone and texture. Depending on the area of concern some options may be Morpheus8 or Skin Pen (with or without plasma). The best place to begin is a visit to a board certified plastic surgeon's office near you for a consultation.

For unique cases where a variety of modalities could be used to treat the condition, I would suggest an in-person or virtual consultation to develop a custom and effective treatment plan. It is difficult to precisely define the best option without collecting the same information. I suggest reaching out to an expert for a consultation with surgical and non-surgical methods to get a comprehensive option. Best, Dr. Emer.

When you speak of thickening the skin, you are referring to thickening the dermis, the support layer of the skin. This is made of collagen and elastin, a modified collagen. The body continually makes new collagen and elastin until about 25 years of age and then quits unless it is stimulated to do so. After that, we gradually lose both. Sun damage anything's like smoking speed the loss. Thus far, there are only two things that cause the body to make new collagen, injury and tretinoin (Retin-A) or its derivatives. Once either are withdrawn, further collagen production ceases. Controlled injury can be created by certain lasers, leveling peels, radiofrequency, and microneedling. Any further progress will have to develop a way to supercharge the body's own processes. This, right now, seems relatively far off. The last major advance was Fraxel laser and microneedling to stimulate collagen and Obagi's ELASTIderm (still patented) to convert some of the new collagen to elastin.