As we age, the effects of sun damage and environmental pollutants take their toll on our skin, causing it to wrinkle, develop sun spots and look tired. Unwanted hair growth, skin laxity, warts, and scars from acne or surgical procedures can also affect our self-esteem.
Dr. Jamie Walraven of Ageless Wellness Center in Peachtree City has more than a decade of experience treating clients through laser skin resurfacing, which can reverse these effects and restore a healthy look.
Walraven recalls one client named Sarah, a 60-year-old married professional woman who felt much older than her age due to increased wrinkles around the corners of her mouth.
“Every time she put on lipstick, it bled up into the corners where the lines are,” Walraven says. “In her case we did some aggressive treatments on her whole face but particularly around her mouth. We went really deep with an ablative laser, which takes off top layers and remodels the skin.”
The downtime, or healing time, from laser treatments can vary from a just a day to 10 days, depending on depth, Walraven says. In Sarah’s case, it was about a week, during which she worked from home.
“It may look bad afterward, but it doesn’t feel awful,” Walraven says. “We always use topical numbing medication on our patients, but when we go deeper in certain areas around the mouth as with Sarah, we make injections like you would have at the dentist so it’s completely numb.”
Lip lines are made by facial expression and will eventually come back, Walraven says. But the results of a single laser treatment will last two or three years before having to be repeated.
Many women and even some men come to Ageless Wellness for hair removal, Walraven says. For women, the area of concern is usually the upper lip mustache area.
“We use a YAG laser which can be used for removing hair even on dark skin,” Walraven says.
Because treatment plans are customized according each client’s needs, pricing may vary.
Ageless Wellness Center is located at 1000 Commerce Drive, Suite 300, Peachtree City. To find out more about laser skin resurfacing or to make an appointment, call 678-364-8414.