• Video
  • Best Non-Invasive Procedures For Wrinkle Prevention
{{ showTranscript ? 'HIDE' : 'SHOW' }} TRANSCRIPT
Timing is dependent on the person. As we age, we go from an oval to a rectangle, and depending on the genetics of that person, their environmental changes from the sun and sun damage, you should start earlier than later. There's a number of things that we can do now that are minimally or noninvasive.

The first one starts with good skin care. We should, all of us, avoid the sun, use sunblock. The next step is to be associated with an office that has a medically trained aesthetician. A medically-trained aesthetician can do a lot more than your freestanding aestheticians. They work under the direction of a physician, thus they have more opportunities to learn from the physician and access to additional products.

Now if we talk about technologies. We're wanting to talk about collagen. Everything that we do is we want to be rich in collagen. If you look at little babies, they swirl up and they go like that and there's no wrinkles, yet their skin is thin because they have lots of collagen. In an adult, we start losing collagen. Smoking breaks down collagen faster than it forms, so that's why smokers have more wrinkles in general than nonsmokers. So if you look at men, we rarely get wrinkles on the side of our face. Why? We exfoliate every morning when we shave.

Now I don't suggest that all women shave every morning, but what I do suggest is they work with an aesthetician that can do microdermaplaning, that can go ahead and do microdermabrasions. Now we move up the technology ladder. The next thing that you would want to go ahead and do is maybe do some peels. Those peels have a downtime of a day or so, but when they heal, it brings back collagen.

Going up the ladder farther is some of the sublative type of treatments. The ones that we like to use in our office are by the ELOS and they are sublative or sublime, and that's the degree of penetration of radio frequency waves and heat, again, to stimulate collagen.

Then you go further up the ladder and you can go up to what's called the CO2 lasers or the core. That can be an ablative mode or it can be in a sub-ablative mode or fractionated. In the ablative mode, the laser is very accurate but think of it as the roller of a paint. You get the entire face. Whereas in the fractional, think of it like the ping pong paddle, where it has the irregularities. So what happens is it fractionates so only where the indentions in the ping pong paddle are will the laser go down and the normal skin is around it. Therefore you go ahead and heal faster with less downtime, but you don't get the full effect as if you did the roller or the full ablative.

So now depending on the patient's skin type, the amount of wrinkles, the amount of tightening they want, we customize that treatment. In our office, we're fortunate we have 10 different technologies. If your only tool is a scalpel, the whole world's a surgical procedure.

Best Non-Invasive Procedures For Wrinkle Prevention

Dr. Robert Hardesty advises consumers to begin maintaining their beauty early through non-invasive procedures such as chemical peels and CO2 lasers.