Way back when I was in high school, I remember laying out in the sun chatting with my girlfriends and dreaming of a deep dark tan. I never used baby oil with iodine like some people. My oil of choice was Hawaiian Tropic's dark tanning oil promising the dark tan of an island girl. I don't even think an SPF was listed on the bottle. Meanwhile, my dad would cut out articles from the newspaper about how dangerous the sun's rays were. At this time, about 1985, the world was just beginning to get educated on sunburns, sunscreen and melanoma.
I never did get that island tan. What I got were freckles. Lots of freckles. I thought if I kept tanning, one day all the freckles would connect and I would be tan. Freckles are cute when you are young but as you get older they change. They are called brown spots or age spots and they get bigger and blotchy. Not very glamorous! Of course now I am working to get rid of them.
One of the best ways to get rid of brown spots and wrinkles caused by the sun is by having an IPL Photo Facial. IPL means intense pulsed light. During an IPL Photo Facial, a hand-held device is used to deliver a bright blast of light at very high energy levels to the skin. The intense light is delivered to deeper parts of the skin, the dermis, leaving the surface, the epidermis, untouched. Therefore, there is no recovery time.
The IPL works best on contrasting tones so fair skinned people with brown spots usually achieve better results than olive and dark skinned people. About 4 days after an IPL, the brown spots will turn dark and flake off. The result is no more spot or a very lightened one. The darkened spots will have completely flaked off by 10-12 days after a photo facial. A nice bonus to the photo facial is that it will stimulate collagen which is a great boost to the skin helping it to look younger. The effects of a photo facial can be seen for up to 1 year if a sunscreen with an SPF of at least 15 is used.
For best results, 4-6 treatments are recommended 3-4 weeks apart. Treatments take about 30 minutes. The average cost is $300-$600 per area. The pain is minimal. Some compare the feeling to being snapped by a rubber band. Not near as painful as those sunburns we used to get. GlamourJunkie says "no pain, no gain."
