Medical Microneedling
WHAT IS MICRONEEDLING
Microneedling is a nonsurgical treatment that penetrates your skin’s surface with tiny needles to improve its appearance. It may sound a little medieval, but most skin rejuvenation treatments, whether laser or a chemical peel, manipulate a wound-healing response to create a structural and cosmetic benefit. The procedure can help smooth lines and wrinkles, even skin tone (including stubborn melasma), refine enlarged pores, tighten skin, and fade scars and stretch marks.
HOW DOES MICRONEEDLING WORK
By creating microscopic punctures in the skin, microneedling creates thousands of tiny injuries. This triggers a healing response that releases a cascade of growth factors, which in turn boosts production of the body’s own collagen (the protein fibers that keep skin smooth and supple).
It’s a form of fractional treatment, which means only a fraction of the skin’s surface is affected. This means that recovery time is relatively short.
RF MICRONEEDLING
Radiofrequency microneedling (RF microneedling) is a noninvasive skin rejuvenation treatment that enhances collagen-inducing microneedling with the simultaneous delivery of radiofrequency energy. It improves skin texture and tone—addressing fine lines and wrinkles, laxity, hyperpigmentation, and acne scars.
The treatment works by creating controlled microdamage in order to provoke a wound-healing response. Due to aging and environmental damage (particularly sun damage), the structural proteins of skin deplete and get replaced at a slower rate. RF microneedling kick-starts the biological processes for new creation of those proteins (namely, collagen and elastin). “It stimulates a repair response that replaces damaged elastic tissue and collagen with new collagen and elastic tissue,” explains Dr. Emil Tanghetti, a dermatologist in Sacramento, California.
Is microneedling RF better than microneedling treatments alone?
Yes, RF microneedling produces more dramatic results than traditional microneedling treatments because combining the two technologies boosts their effectiveness. Microneedles allow precise delivery of radiofrequency energy into the dermis, where collagen-producing cells reside, and the radiofrequency energy increases the level of controlled damage the microneedles inflict.
