It's well-known that the body can repair itself and given the advances in our understanding of how the body works, it's no surprise to find the beauty industry literally puts this principle into practice.
One of the latest devices employed to repair ageing, wrinkled or scarred skin uses needles to activate healing, in fact allowing the skin to heal itself as Tracy Spruit of Peaches Skin & Body Clinic explains:
"On the end of this little device is a bunch of needles that look a bit like the inside of a fibre optic cable. These needles go though the epidermis to the dermis to create little pin-points of bleeding and that's what we're after because it allows the skin to go into inflammatory response, wound healing, and the body then throws all this collagen and fibronectin at the wound. It sorts out the lines, wrinkles, scarring and even stretch marks can
be treated."
The needling device has been around for a couple of years. It measures just six centimetres long and in most cases sidesteps surgery because it tightens the skin. Moreover it's taking over from the long-established laser surgery since there's less downtime, a quicker healing process.
If post-surgery (cutting the skin and pulling it back) recovery means looking like one has gone a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson before the healing time frame of a month or two kicks in, and laser treatment post-operative recovery time takes weeks, needling can see the patient back to the old self (but new and improved) in a couple of days.
Who is most likely to benefit? Anyone with ageing skin but it can help heal acne scarring, and stretch marks. Tracy Spruit says the incidence of both teenage (hormonal) acne and adult acne (called rosacea) is on the increase.
"Needling isn't used on active acne which has to be brought under control before dealing with the scarring. But teenage acne is a big problem. It may be diet-related or it could be related to hormones but we are certainly seeing a rise in cases and it can be debilitating for a young person.
"What we're also seeing is a rise in the number of women in their thirties and forties who have scarring from acne and in the past ten years we have certainly seen an increase in rosacea."
For post-needling maintenance there is a take home roller. It doesn't pierce as deeply as the needles and is
essentially used for applying product and vitamin creams.