A beautiful you on your graduation day

Graduation day is the day you are the subject of pride in the eyes of your parents, teachers, and peers.  Since it is a once-in-a-lifetime event, everybody involved must be photograph-ready. If you didn’t order professional photos to be snapped as you accept your diploma, your friends and family are sure to be photographing you. So it’s important for you to look your best.

A graduating student should visit his or her dermatologist as early as two to three months before the event.  But since this involves case-to-case personalized treatment, you should be aware that the time might vary.

• Treating pimples – For severe cases of pimples you need to prepare two to four months before graduation.  “Severe” means pimples all over your face, back and chest, sparing only your eyelids and displaying a lot of wide, depressed scars, pits, and box-type scars as well.  It could also mean multiple cysts all over the face, chest and back with tunnels underneath the skin (sinus tracts) ending in a bump (papule or nodule) with pus coming out of it. Treatments show effectivity usually a month to three-and-half months after you start.  An exception is when you have keloidal acne (keloids forming when big acne cysts come out).  This type may take longer.  Usually we wait for acne to stop recurring before we start the treatment of keloid scars, which takes another several weeks to completely resolve. So do not wait for your acne to turn into keloids before starting your acne treatment program, as you will be waiting longer for it to resolve and you will spend more.  The key is prevention here!  You will surely be amazed with the results, provided you do not have side effects from the treatment.

• Freckles and pigmentation problems – Whether it’s freckles, melasma (pekas), or pigmentation secondary to insect bites, minor skin injuries, etc. (post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation), you need two to four months or even more. Resolution depends on how deep the pigmentation is, what type, and duration.  Some melasma improves fast, especially the epidermal type, while the dermal type is more difficult and needs an upgrade from plain topical medicines to oral capsules, injectibles, or even lasers.  A maintenance program is also necessary.  For freckles it’s basically the same, but in both cases avoidance to sun exposure is a must. For post-inflammatories, which are the easiest to treat, topicals will do.  For white spots (hypopigmentation), which is somewhat more complex, depending on the cause, treatment should be personalized.

• Non-surgical rejuvenation – When talking about anti-aging, the fastest treatments are filler injections and laser lifts.  With so many variants of fillers to choose from you can go for the cheaper ones and get the same results; the only difference is that with the original, the effect is longer lasting.   Fillers can be used for augmenting the noses of patients without a nose bridge, adding chin projections, adding volume to sunken cheeks (facial depressions) and many others. With the latest laser-lifting procedures, which are an improvement over Thermage or Thermalift, your worry about losing much of your facial fat is resolved.  With Soltera Platform, the latest technology in facial lifting, you avoid losing the much-needed fat that gives volume to your face and prevents deep skin depressions later on.  It works by introducing infrared light to sagging skin.  It targets only the epidermis while stimulating the dermis as well, allowing the skin to produce more collagen and preventing the loss of fat. This energy stimulates and multiplies collagen fibers naturally and works to boost collagen production. Collagen is a protein in our skin that plays a big role in how firm it is, but over time the body decreases its production, leading to sagging skin and wrinkles.

However, unlike radiofrequency treatments, the infrared light dispensed during a Soltera platform treatment does not penetrate the skin at the same depth. The infrared light passes through its surface and interacts with the layer beneath it.  The advantage of the Soltera Platform over therma-lifting techniques is that the skin and underlying fat are heated uniformly, avoiding differential heating of the fat; therefore, the risks of dents and atrophy of the skin is much less likely. This skin-tightening treatment may be an option for people who want to tighten the skin on their face, chin, neck, arms, and abdomen without the use of artificial collagen.

With dynamic wrinkles there is still no substitute for Botox.  It is still the best for this type of problem, but for needle-phobic patients, there is a transdermal patch now available that can reduce your wrinkles overnight, and it is definitely pain-free. So when you have reunions or special occasions to party, you can use this instant wrinkle removal.  It is best if used several days before the event.  For eye rejuvenation without surgery, patients can use plasma skin technology, which creates and delivers energy in the form of plasma transferred to the skin by a specially designed hand piece, creating an instantly rejuvenated upper eyelid and eyelid fold.

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For questions or inquiries call (0939) 917-1352, (0999) 883-4802, 263-4094, or email gc_beltran@yahoo.com.