You notice lines on your face that weren’t there yesterday. Or someone asks you if you’re feeling OK because you’ve been looking tired lately. You check yourself out in the mirror and you hardly recognize yourself. Who IS that old person peering back at you?
While it’s inevitable that we all get older, maybe you’re not ready to LOOK older. However, you’re also not ready for plastic surgery. Spas and wellness centers have a variety of treatments at our disposal that can address wrinkles, uneven skin tone or whatever is making you look older than you should. You can recapture the fresh look you had when you were younger – without going under the knife.
FACIALS
If your complexion looks dull and lifeless, dead skin cells or sluggish circulation may be to blame. Even if you wash your face regularly, debris and slow skin turnover rates can result in a fatigued appearance. Clear your pores of blemish-triggering debris with a facial geared to your particular skin type – dry, oily, normal, combination or sensitive – combined with a massage designed to perk up facial blood flow. The effect is immediate and there is absolutely no down time involved. Combined with a few extra hours’ sleep for a few nights, a facial may be all you need to revive a youthful appearance.
MICRODERMABRASION
For breakouts, uneven skin tone and large pores, microdermabrasion treatment can be just the ticket. Trained estheticians use a special tool to apply a fine layer of aluminum oxide, sodium chloride or sodium bicarbonate crystals to your skin, and then gently buff the crystals away, sweeping away debris and dead skin in the process. Afterward, you’re left with smooth, more evenly toned skin with little or no down time.
It’s true that many department stores or even drug store and grocery stores sell microdermabrasion treatments to use at home. However, the chemicals included in home microdermabrasion treatments are less concentrated than the formulations available to professionals. As a result, a spa treatment can often produce more satisfactory results with microdermabrasion than you can on your own.
CHEMICAL PEELS
Chemical peels are designed to remove the top layer of skin, which often reveals clearer skin with fewer or no wrinkles. Estheticians use their training and experience to choose a light peel of glycolic or salicylic acid, a medium peel of trichloroacetic acid or a deep peel of Retin A followed by phenol – depending on the condition of your skin. Depending on whether you receive a light, medium or deep peel, you may require anywhere from a few hours to several days of down time after receiving a chemical peel.
Creams and lotions containing alpha hydroxy acids and similar compounds designed for home use often promise to activate skin renewal by sloughing off dead skin. These products use a similar process as that of a chemical peel. However, the concentration of active ingredients in products designed for home use is lower and often less effective than chemical peels that are available to professionals.
YOU, ONLY BETTER
None of the treatments described here is designed to replace a facelift. If you have serious skin sagging or deep wrinkles, a facelift may be your only option if you’re determined to regain the looks you had 15 or 20 years ago. However, if you’ve just begun to show the signs of aging, any one of these procedures could allow us to help you to turn back the clock five or even 10 years.