Posted 10 February 2006 - 08:54 PM
Hello, Folks:
Catching up on the above questions here.
1. Roflcopter, thanks for the support. But Croaker is right... many companies with products that don't work provide 30 day money back guarantees. So a guarantee is no assurance that it will work, or work for you. I heard today of an acne lotion company that has a 30 day money back guarantee but measures that time from the day of order and routinely takes 3 weeks to deliver product that takes 4 weeks to show results. Clearly that company does not intend to refund any purchases. Thankfully, our experience with testers and customers has been that the Lumiport DermaSyle works well and that its effectiveness is demonstrated quickly.
2. The 30 day guarantee will be honored from the day you receive (not purchase) the DermaStyle and yes, if you just email us or call us telling us that you'd like to return it within that time period, but it doesn't arrive at our offices until after that period, we'll still happily refund your purchase price. If you're not happy with the product, we can at least make you happy with Lumiport and treat you nicely. The 30 days from receipt clarification should be added to our web site. We'll do that.
3. Croaker, putting the DermaStyle directly on your skin will produce a temporary, pink mark the size of the tip that lasts (for me) for a couple of hours. But the value of being able to put it on your skin directly with slight pressure is twofold: First, it's easier to keep it pointed at the problem area and second, the light pressue presses the circulating blood out of the immediate area. This is useful because the blood's dark color will tend to absorb the light you're trying to deliver to the area and shuttle that energy away from the site. Some research protocols in published studies on light therapy for acne call for direct application with light pressure specifically for that reason. But if the the temporarly mark annoys or concerns you, just lift the tip slightly off the surface of the skin.
4. Joe Blogs, regarding the frequencies and confidentiality. You're right, the manual does list the frequency ranges emitted by the DermaStyle. I've inquired about this and my understanding now is that stating the frequencies emitted with the product may be a legal requirement. If that's the case, I may have been acting too cautiously in declining to specify the frequencies for confidentiality reasons earlier in the thread. Thank you, Jessica, for defending our well-meaning but perhaps missplaced attempt to keep that information confidential. I'll try to learn more about this next week and clarify.
5. Spot treatment vs. Full Face treatment. The DermaStyle was designed to treat smaller areas at a time (say the size of a silver dollar or smaller). Light therapy for blemishes can be effective but only if you deliver sufficient intensity of light energy at the right frequency to the right location for a sufficient amount of time. This is typically measured in Joules/cm2. The DermaStyle at 1cm distance from the skin produces a lighted area of about 2cm in diameter or about 3.14 cm2. Raising the DermaStyle to 4cm off the skin increases the treatment area to about 9.5 cm2 but the output of the device does not change so the energy delivered per square centimeter is less than 1/2 at the closer distance. To achieve the same energy delivery to the larger area, you'd have to increase the duration of exposure by more than 2x. There's probably an ideal effective energy delivered/surface area for each person, and perhaps for groups of people or types of skin bemishes, but research is still ongoing to understand that ideal window with more certainty. Until then our suggestion is to use the DermaStyle once or twice a day per affected area for the pre-programmed 10 minute cycle. In that, we're defining "area" as an area about the size of your palm or smaller. Clearly, this still leaves a large variance in the energy delivered per defined surface area, but we're getting positive reports with people following that guidance.
Will it work if you have blemishes over your whole face? Perhaps. While not designed to treat large areas, we sold a DermaStyle to a girl 3 weeks ago who had moderate acne over her face and forehead. Our caution to her was "We're not sure that you'll find this helpful except in smaller areas because it would take too long to get enough light over the areas of your face that need it". To our surprise, when we saw her 2 weeks later, she was remarkably clearer and thanked us, through tears, for helping her with what had been a life-long problem. She's going to send us her diary of use and some pictures that we'll post on the site within the next few weeks.
Keep up the good questions, folks....
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