The Southlake Plastic Surgery & Medspa Guide to Laser Body Treatments
We all have some area on our skin we wish we could improve. Though there are amazing skincare products out there, like the Southlake Plastic Surgery line, some issues require extra encouragement to go away.
Age and life experience take a toll on your skin. Whether you’re trying to minimize a C-section scar, tighten sagging skin after a dramatic weight loss, or eliminate the damage years of sunbathing caused, laser technology at Southlake Plastic Surgery & Medspa can help you.
Laser skin facials in Southlake→
Our laser specialists have exceptional experience and training in helping patients treat their biggest insecurities with beams of powerful light. Keep reading to learn how laser body treatments at our Southlake, TX office have the power to restore confidence in your skin.
We can use a range of laser body treatments to treat your most bothersome concerns
Sagging Skin
Let’s face it—everyone’s after that perfectly taut, smooth skin we see in magazines and on social media. But what do those young models have that you don’t? The answer is collagen, and lots of it.
Before you give up in your pursuit of tightening up loose, sagging skin on different areas of your body, you should know there are several treatment options at Southlake Plastic Surgery & Medspa!
What causes sagging skin?
You’re born with tons of collagen and elastin, the fibers that maintain the skin’s structure. However, as time marches on, your body’s stores of these “beauty proteins” depletes as production slows down. This causes the skin to “deflate” and appear saggy, with lines, folds, and the dreaded “crepey” look.
UV sun damage, weight loss, smoking, and pregnancy can also cause loose or sagging skin on the face and body.
Non-surgical treatment options
At Southlake, we help countless patients treat sagging skin with our non-invasive medspa treatment options. During your free consultation with our laser specialists, we carefully evaluate the skin in the desired areas for improvement. Depending on the severity of the laxity, we create a unique treatment plan tailored toward giving you the results you want.
This plan might include the following in-office treatments:
What area(s) are most effectively treated with non-surgical methods?
The most common body areas we treat for sagging skin include:
- Face
- Neck
- Chest
- Knees
- Abdomen
- Upper Arms
By gently heating deep into the dermis with laser energy, we signal the body’s healing response, prompting collagen production. Over time, your collagen layer is restored and your skin appears tighter and more youthful.
After your initial treatment plan, we recommend regular maintenance treatments once or twice a year to keep your skin’s collagen and elastin foundation strong.
Need more dramatic results? You have surgical options at Southlake!
Don’t forget, our medspa practice is overseen by one of the top plastic surgeons in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Dr. Mark Mason!
Besides being highly experienced and respected plastic surgeons, Dr. Mason and Dr. Dinah Wan help hundreds of patients each year address their sagging skin with surgical intervention.
While surgery typically involves general anesthesia, scarring, and a lengthier recovery than our non-invasive medspa treatments, it provides much more dramatic results. Patients who have lost a significant amount of weight or have another condition that causes extreme skin laxity may require:
Stretch Marks
Your skin has an amazing ability to stretch and grow with you. Sometimes, however, because of rapid growth or change, the skin develops lines we call stretch marks. Whether you have them from pregnancy, puberty, or weight fluctuations, everyone has had a stretch mark or two.
What causes stretch marks?
Stretch marks are parallel bands on the skin, often a slightly different texture than the surrounding skin. They can range in color from transparent or “shiny” to dark purple, blue, or even bright pink.
Since we all must grow, stretch marks are a natural part of life that can appear just about anywhere on the skin. However, women may notice severe stretch marks on their breasts or hips from puberty, and on their breasts and abdomen after pregnancy. Those who have undergone extreme weight fluctuations likely notice stretch marks on their arms, abdomen, buttocks, and thighs.
Stretch marks might cause you to shy away from certain clothing, avoid situations where your skin is on display, or feel uncomfortable in your own skin. Over-the-counter creams may fade the marks, but they are ineffective at removing them entirely.
If you’re sick of hiding behind your clothing, come to Southlake! We can help.
Which medspa laser treatments can help address stretch marks?
Our amazing laser body specialists at Southlake Plastic Surgery & Medspa have experience helping patients tackle their stretch marks. During your initial consultation, your specialist will evaluate the state of your stretch marks and create a custom treatment plan to rid your skin of them.
Our best non-invasive treatments for stretch marks include:
How do laser treatments for stretch marks work?
Stretch marks are very difficult to treat. Lasers make an amazing non-surgical treatment option because of their ability to disrupt and remodel the skin’s framework.
Certain treatments, like MicroLaserPeel and ProFractional, focus an ablative laser beam on the stretch marks and gently remove outer layers of damaged skin, revealing fresher, clearer skin beneath.
All light-based treatments, including Photofacials and SkinTyte, also gently heat deep into the skin’s layers, triggering the body’s natural healing response and boosting collagen production. Over time, this treats areas of indention in the stretch marks and smoothes skin.
A Mommy Makeover can be the best surgical treatment for pregnancy-induced stretch marks
If you want to eliminate your stretch-mark affected skin following the birth of your children, especially if you carried multiple babies, consider treating yourself to a Mommy Makeover.
Our Mommy Makeovers include several plastic surgeries and can be tailored to suit your unique concerns. A tummy tuck procedure involves removal of the excess abdominal skin, taking away the skin with the heaviest stretch marks. Similarly, a breast lift allows our surgeons to remove excess skin, often with stretch marks, and reshape the breasts for a much more flattering appearance.
We can also perform a lower body lift to address excess stretch-marked skin on the thighs and buttocks.
Sun Damage
We all know a sun worshipper. They always look like they’ve just returned from a 10-day beach vacation and frequent tanning beds through the winter to hold on to their summer tan. That great tan, though? That’s pure damage.
We’re sure we don’t have to tell you about the obvious risk of too much UV exposure, the big “C” word—Cancer. In fact, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation, most melanomas (the deadly form of skin cancer) “are caused by the sun. In fact, one UK study found that about 86 percent of melanomas can be attributed to exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun.”
While you should schedule a yearly skin cancer screening with your dermatologist, we also recommend seeing a medical aesthetics professional to treat and remove the other consequences of sun exposure.
What does the sun do to skin?
You learned about the light spectrum in school, right? Well, we’re about to lay a real-world application of this knowledge on you.
Light energy on the invisible spectrum (think X-Rays or UV rays) penetrates the skin with ionizing radiation. As you would expect, this radiation is not a good thing. It forces your skin to take one for the team, ramping up its production of melanin, a brown pigment. After the initial burn, you’re left with a tan because your skin has made itself thicker to protect your internal organs from the radiation.
Besides skin cancer, too much UV exposure also causes:
- Wrinkles
- Hyperpigmentation (dark spots)
- Sun spots
- Freckles
- Skin laxity
How do med spa laser treatments address sun damage?
Unlike the damaging effects of the invisible spectrum of light, the visible spectrum offers amazing benefits to the skin!
For example, blue LED light affects the sebaceous glands, slowing their production of the oils that clog pores and lead to acne. It also targets and kills acne-causing bacteria, treating breakouts and preventing future ones. Green light calms the skin and fades dark pigmentation acne can leave behind.
Red LED light therapy is known to heal the skin. Its waves stimulate collagen production and can even reverse some damage caused by the sun, including wrinkles and sun spots. The addition of yellow LED light further supports the skin’s healing abilities and reduces redness and inflammation.
Our visible light-based treatments combine the full broad spectrum of light waves to maximize the benefits. We commonly treat the faces, necks, chests, arms, and hands of men and women with visible sun damage. These treatments that eliminate sun damage on the face and body include:
Scars
Isn’t the skin’s healing ability amazing? Your skin can heal itself after being burned, cut open, scraped, or taking other damage from illness, the environment, or conditions like acne.
Often, this damage comes with a price as a permanent scar. But why does this happen? And what we can do to minimize the appearance of a scar? Allow us to guide you!
What causes a scar?
A scar occurs when the deep layer of skin, called the dermis, is damaged. To mend this damage, your skin produces and sends more collagen to this area to mend the damage.
While most cuts or scrapes result in flat, skin-colored scars that fade over time, other events, like C-section, surgery, severe acne, or major trauma, can leave lasting scars that cause people with them to feel self-conscious about their skin.
Believe it or not, scars are as unique as the people they appear on. Though no two are exactly alike, we can sort scars into several broad categories.
Raised, or hypertrophic scars occur when the body produces too much collagen to heal the damage. These scars are dark and can be itchy or painful. Young and dark-skinned people are most likely to experience hypertrophic scars. These scars can form after a burn, piercing, acne, surgery, or other trauma.
If you experienced severe acne or chickenpox, you might have pitted or atrophic scars. These scars appear sunken and are sometimes called “ice pick scars.” Pitted scars are the result of lesions, like cystic acne, that caused damage to the dermis.
Finally, the cause of a surgical scar is obvious. With surgery, however, your skin isn’t left entirely to its own devices to heal—stitching techniques and other options like sutures and skin glues have come a long way, especially for plastic surgery or surgeries on visible areas.
Though there are precautions many surgeons, like Drs. Mason and Wan, take to minimize visible scars, there is no way to have a C-Section or plastic surgery without a scar.
Surgical scar treatments in Southlake→
How do laser treatments address scars?
Like we discussed with stretch marks (another type of scar), some laser devices offer an ablative wavelength that can remove damaged tissue, encourage new collagen production, and reveal the fresh, better structured skin below. Devices that use broad-spectrum light, like BBL, use the collagen stimulating power of visible LED light to even the skin tone and fill in depressed scars.
First, we will consult with you on the scar(s) you’d like to treat. Depending on the type of scar and its unique features, we will create a treatment plan that might include one or more sessions with our:
During your treatment, your Southlake laser specialist will focus the light pulses or beam of light on the scar. During and immediately after the laser scar treatment, you may experience a “rubber band snap” sensation and some redness or swelling. This is normal, and even expected, as your skin goes through the healing process.
The recovery from a laser scar treatment largely depends on the size of the treatment area(s) and the depth of the treatment. You will probably have a scab or peeling skin. It’s extremely important that you do not pick at it or remove any of the dead skin yourself. Results of scar treatments are not instant, patients notice improvement several weeks after their treatment with results maximizing after several months.
Though you should already take extra steps to protect scars, especially surgical scars, from sun exposure, it is even more important to practice safe sun for at least 4 to 6 weeks after a laser scar treatment, as the new skin is especially sensitive.
Trust the experts at Southlake Plastic Surgery to help you feel your best with laser body treatments!
If you’re looking for the best laser body treatment near you, look no further than Southlake Plastic and Med Spa in Southlake, Texas. We love helping and patients explore their options and keeping them comfortable in order to achieve the best results!
We’ve been recognized through many honors and awards and are certified by the American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities, a gold standard in accreditation. Dr. Mark Mason himself has been practicing in the Dallas-Fort Worth region for over ten years, and he’s received multiple accolades for being a top plastic surgeon.
Our administrative and medical staff have achieved a rating of 4.86 out of 1,706 ratings on Real Patient Ratings by continually showing our care for patients with amazing bedside manner and results.
We’re happy to address any and all questions about the laser body treatments we offer. Please contact us today to learn more and be on the way to a brighter, more confident you.
