How do Lasers Minimize Wrinkles & Fine Lines?

Sometimes, all the exfoliants and moisturizers in the world can’t help you minimize the look of wrinkles and fine lines. In these cases, there are options to help you improve the appearance of your skin. Laser treatments offer non-invasive and minimally-invasive options that can help your skin look more youthful. Lasers can help smooth out fine lines and wrinkles that make you look older. Let’s discuss how lasers help with wrinkles and fine lines and why laser aesthetic treatments may be right for you.

Laser treatments can help promote your natural healing process to minimize the look of wrinkles and fine lines.

What is Laser Skin Resurfacing?

Laser skin resurfacing is a common aesthetic treatment for wrinkles and fine lines. These treatments can target specific areas where you have wrinkles or you can use them for the whole face and other parts of your body. Many women get laser skin resurfacing to help get a more youthful appearance with fewer lines and wrinkles.  

What are Lasers?

First, what is a laser? The word “laser” is actually an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Since that’s a bit of a mouth full, most of us just say “laser.” Lasers are essentially concentrated light and heat that we can control and use for many different things. You might think of lasers when you think of security systems in spy movies, but they are helpful for many different uses, including a variety of medical applications. Lasers produce light and heat that we can manipulate and customize for different purposes. 

Using Lasers for Aesthetic Treatments

One popular way we use lasers today is for aesthetic treatments for the skin. These treatments use light and heat to help correct many skin conditions and blemishes. Lasers are becoming more and more popular for aesthetic applications. Laser skin treatments can help with discoloration, scarring, and facial veins as well as wrinkles and fine lines. Our providers use Cynosure® laser technology for aesthetic treatments. If you’re interested in laser resurfacing for wrinkles and fine lines, our team can set up a consultation to discuss your options. 

Do You Have Fine Lines & Wrinkles?

When you look in the mirror, you might notice lines in your face. Typically you’ll find them in places where your skin creases when you make facial expressions. For instance, you might notice crows feet near your eyes, laugh lines around your mouth, and forehead wrinkles above your eyebrows. It’s important to know the difference between fine lines and wrinkles. This can help you understand how lasers affect the appearance of both wrinkles and fine lines. 

Fine lines are in the top layers of your skin. They’re typically less noticeable than wrinkles, and many women only notice them when they look at their skin close up in the mirror. Build up of dead skin cells, dirt, and oil can hide in these lines and make them appear worse and more noticeable. Over time, fine lines can also turn into wrinkles. 

Wrinkles, by contrast, generally form in deeper layers of the skin, all the way down to the very support structure of your face. As we age, these deep layers can start to lose some of their shape and elasticity, which can lead to wrinkles. Wrinkles appear deeper than fine lines and usually more noticeable. Like fine lines, wrinkles can form around areas that contract with your expressions. However, they can also appear practically anywhere on your skin. 

How Laser Resurfacing Helps Reduce the Appearance of Fine Lines & Wrinkles

Fortunately, laser resurfacing treatments can help both fine lines near the surface of your skin as well as mild to moderate wrinkles in the deeper layers of your skin. These aesthetic treatments help smooth out lines and wrinkles with light and heat. Laser resurfacing creates minor, controlled injuries to the skin to help encourage your body’s natural healing process. This might sound scary because we use the word “injuries,” but you can think of it kind of like exercising. When exercising, you cause small injuries to your muscles so they heal stronger than before. Skin resurfacing uses a similar principle to help enhance the look of your skin. 

There are two main components of treating wrinkles with lasers: getting rid of dead skin cells and stimulating collagen and elastin production. 

Lasers Help with Slough Off Dead Skin Cells

Lasers allow the operator to target certain areas of the skin and vaporize dead skin cells near the surface. These laser treatments remove the first layer of the skin, which is often full of dead and damaged skin cells that can make your skin look dull and emphasize the appearance of lines and wrinkles. 

Much like a deep exfoliator, laser treatments can help slough off dead skin cells to help promote skin cell turnover. This helps bring newer, often healthier skin cells to the surface, which can help improve skin texture and minimize the look of lines and wrinkles. 

Lasers Stimulate Collagen and Elastin Production in the Deeper Layers of the Skin

Also, laser treatments can get deep into the subdermal layers of the skin. Heat from the lasers can help encourage collagen and elastin production, which can also help with the appearance or lines and wrinkles. Collagen and elastin are proteins that do many different things in our bodies. In the face, these proteins help provide the support and structure in our skin. With age, collagen and elastin production slows down. Some estimate that after age 30, we lose an average of 1% of collagen production each year. This can lead to sagging and wrinkles. 

However, heat from laser resurfacing treatments can help stimulate production of these important wrinkle-fighting proteins. 

When Can You Start Laser Rejuvenation Treatments?

If and when you start with laser skin resurfacing treatments really depends on many different factors that are unique to you. Therefore, it’s best to discuss the particulars with one of our treatment providers. However, there are no general age guidelines for laser treatments. In fact, because laser treatments can help with everything from scarring to discoloration, some people even start laser treatments during childhood. 

However, when it comes to wrinkles and fine lines, most people don’t start treatments for these concerns until they start showing up on the skin. For many people, this is after age 30 when we start to lose collagen. Some people start laser aesthetic treatments for fine lines in their 30s and others wait until later when they have more noticeable lines and wrinkles in later years. It’s important to keep in mind that laser treatments may not be a good option if you want to reduce the appearance of deep wrinkles. For deep wrinkles, other treatments, such as aesthetic injectables, might be a better option. 

Cynosure Laser Treatments & Aesthetic Solutions from HerKare

If you’re sick of seeing lines and wrinkles in the mirror each morning, our team at HerKare can help. We are here to empower women to feel their best, which we know may include enhancing their beauty with aesthetic treatments. Our team offers a wide range of aesthetic treatments, from Botox injections to Cynosure laser skin resurfacing and more. Make an appointment today for an aesthetic consultation and to discuss your options with our providers.