Featuring Dr. Mandy Wong, BMSc., MD, Aesthetic Physician

Duration: 1 minute, 41 seconds Treating Sun Damaged Skin A lot of people think that sun damage is what you see on the surface of the skin, which are the brown spots and the broken capillaries that make your skin look mottled and not as even toned as you would like, but there's a lot of things that go on underneath the skin to add to the image of sun damage.

The effects of sun deeper in the skin cause loss of collagen and loss of elastin fibers and this will reduce the amount of volume that you see in the skin. This shows up as wrinkles and sagging skin.

Laser and light therapies are an effective treatment for sun damaged skin. Every time you wound the skin with one of these lasers, you cause the skin to regenerate, creating new collagen which is seen as an improvement in the wrinkles and the sagging.

Some of the treatments involve treating the superficial layers of the skin, or the epidermis, some treat the dermis, the lower part of the skin, and some treat underneath the skin, or the subcutaneous tissue.

When you treat the superficial or the epidermis – or the middle layer of the skin – called the dermis – you get an improvement in the pore size and fine lines. If you want to achieve a real lift in the skin, you need to go deeper in the subcutaneous tissues of the skin and there are ultrasound energies that enable this.

For the best results, you should really treat all layers of the skin – the epidermis, the dermis and below the skin. This will give you the most collagen production and, ultimately, the best results.

If you feel you have sun damaged skin and want to improve the appearance, you should speak to a local skincare specialist or someone very experienced in laser treatments.

Presenter: Dr. Mandy Wong, Family Doctor, Kelowna, BC

Local Practitioners: Family Doctor