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TCBC. A question that I have is that if it takes up to 3 months for the MAZ to completely heal, then I'm assuming the treatments would need to be months apart, assuming that more than one treatment would be safe in the first place.
where did you read its three months? that poster? i need to take another look at it.
i do remember it saying that they need to do more studies to determine optimal treatment parameters. which is a fancy way of saying they're still researching how long spacing needs to be and how high settings per density they can go, and stuff like that.
i don't know. to be honest i'm personally kind of getting jaded with all the lasers. not cause i dont believe in them. but im starting to work out the time and money its going to take for me to get treatments in 6 months. my skins still dry and sensitive from accutane. i still need to find a doctor. and now fraxel changed all the names, so im a little leery . . .
if i could go back in time. i'd just have moved to the beach and grown a beard. swimming in salt water every day would have brought the acne way down. and the beard would have covered and protected it until it naturally went away on its own. instead i feel like all these "medical interventions" topicals, IPL, accutane, just made things more complicated.
Hello,
I'm new at this site. I had my first fraxel treatment this past Friday. My whole face was pink like I just got a tan but my upper cheeks on both sides looked really bruised. It looked like when you get burned by an iron. It started to peel and the rest of my face is okay so it doesn't look too bad. I wanted to know is this normal? I thought maybe i irritated my cheeks when I was trying to take off the blue dye. i thought maybe the nurse and I scrubbed it too hard. Before i left I asked the nurse if my cheeks were bruised from the fraxel or was it just the blue dye on my face that was making it look like it was a bruise. She said it was the blue dye but when i got home i realized that it was bruised. Before I had my treatment My derm had told me that it would be a little pink and swollen. She didn;t say anything about looking all bruised up. Anywayz so my question is is this normal or do you guys think maybe i scrubbed the blue dye too hard??? please get back to me with an answer ASAP.
I should be getting my second treatment around june 15 but i can't take off of work that week because my boss will be on vacation so i would have to go on Saturday and be back at work on Monday. But if i'm going to get all bruised up again then i just want to wait till July to do my second treatment so I can atleast take a day off.
I had my first fraxel treatment last Monday. My face is still pretty pink/reddish. My question though- is in regard to the massive amount of small pink/red bumps all over my cheeks now. I've never had this problem before and it wasn't mentioned to me as a potential side effect. Has anyone else had this problem...
AIM:[Removed]
I would appreciate anyone's response. I've checked so many sites on the internet & I can't find anything about it. I'm freaking out. And of course the office where I had the treatment isn't open today. sigh.
Hello,I'm new at this site. I had my first fraxel treatment this past Friday. My whole face was pink like I just got a tan but my upper cheeks on both sides looked really bruised. It looked like when you get burned by an iron. It started to peel and the rest of my face is okay so it doesn't look too bad. I wanted to know is this normal? I thought maybe i irritated my cheeks when I was trying to take off the blue dye. i thought maybe the nurse and I scrubbed it too hard. Before i left I asked the nurse if my cheeks were bruised from the fraxel or was it just the blue dye on my face that was making it look like it was a bruise. She said it was the blue dye but when i got home i realized that it was bruised. Before I had my treatment My derm had told me that it would be a little pink and swollen. She didn;t say anything about looking all bruised up. Anywayz so my question is is this normal or do you guys think maybe i scrubbed the blue dye too hard??? please get back to me with an answer ASAP.
I should be getting my second treatment around june 15 but i can't take off of work that week because my boss will be on vacation so i would have to go on Saturday and be back at work on Monday. But if i'm going to get all bruised up again then i just want to wait till July to do my second treatment so I can atleast take a day off.
Faith82,
It is my understanding that bruising is a very common side effect. I've read about it on several different sites and it was in the information my dr. gave to me. Also, in reference to you and the blue dye- I was told not to scrub my face at all... just use gentle cleanser & lather, rinse... so if you did scrub, I'm sure it contributed to the bruising ... I hope this helps.
I have been doing alot of research on fraxel laser, and have seen some before/after photos from dr's offices. To my dissappointment, it seems that this procedure is mostly hype as to the effectiveness in treating acne scars. The pictures posted up in the fraxel.com website seem to be highly misleading as i suspect they are only the few instances where the most signficant improvement in patient's outcome has been shown. call it biased advertisement. I recommend going to your local dr.'s office where they do fraxel treatments and asking to see some photos. I have yet to see any substantial improvements from the photos i've seen in my dr's office. Just a forethought, the pictures you see on reliant technology's fraxel laser can be misleading--showing only the few instances of patients who's outcome were positive compared to the numerous dissappointments other patients who've had it done showed.
Exactly. Even this person said she had two Dermabrasions and Two Laser resurfacing's done by renoun Dr's and she ended up with a worste condition and the only thing that is making her look better in her case is the Silicone Droplet 4th photo from the bottom which I think was already posted here or somewhere else not sure.
http://www.lamfacialplastics.com/index.php...52&Itemid=9
My point is maybe some light Micro's and or checmical Peels and only light and maybe some Liquid Augmentation of some sort will help a bit until some new technology comes out.
In My opinion is will most likely Medical Nanotechnology. TIny little Robots with either chemicals or some sort of Biological ingrediant to precisely repair damamged skin.
THis is not Scinece Fiction and this technology is about 10 years away.
THat is our hope. Lasers are good for some thing but to remove Scarring, in my opinion is is only temporary and seems to just cause further scarring as a lot of people as myself have seen after a couple of years off the laser.
have you noticed people like FLoridaguy etc who have done fraxel have also had to plump up with some time of liquid augmentation as in his case Sculptra. I have done sculptra and have to admit that is what has saved my sanity. Without that filler I would be in a Nut House. It strached my skin outward making my apprearence less scar looking.
i kind of responded to the ideas in this statement several pages ago, but was attacked.
basically i was pointing out that fraxel was not invented for acne scars. it was a nice side application. the money is in treating the millions of baby boomers with money to spend on sun spots and wrinkles, not the odd acne scar patient.
that being said, fraxel does soften scars. but it does NOT eliminate them. its been said time and again. if you have any kind of significant scarring, fraxel may help but you will still have scars and need filler or something.
its possible that over many many treatments fraxel can eliminate deep scars.? but no one has actually done that. its time and money consuming. (that is it would take years and tens of thousands of dollars.)
the whole beauty of fraxel is that it is FRACTIONAL. so you can't expect fantastic and immediate results. its made to NOT work like that. the trade off is that there is little downtime or risk, and each treatment is cumulative. so you see a slow and somewhat steady improvement as your face skin, literally, rejuvenates itself.
even if nano technology where to become available it would still have to work in the way fraxel does. because your body just does not work like a car mechanic does when it comes to repairing itself. you can speed and aid the process of healing with chemicals, sleep, oxygen, etc. but its still not an immediate process. it takes days to weeks to heal a cut. a broken bone takes weeks to months. repair is happening at the cellular level.
as for nano technology robots i hope you're right. but even if it becomes practical, the cosmetic use will be SUPER expensive and not covered by insurance. its more likely to be used for micro heart surgery or something. the best thing is to do, as you said, and be comfortable with yourself and find someone who loves you and doesn't care.
i don't have much advice on your weird coloring. but drinking tea wont do it, unless you put the tea bags on your face. or maybe if you drink inhuman crazy amounts of it. but then the coloring would be all over your body not just face.
as for the orange peel (crepe paper skin). isn't the polaris the plasma PSR thing? i took one look at it and said NO THANKS! It peels the skin like a CO2 laser (actually i think it is a co2 laser). crepe paper skin texture is a common side effect. im sorry this happened to you.
but i wouldnt be questioning fraxel when you had a completely different laser. PSR is not even fractional.
Okay...no. I'm a biochemist and have worked in world renowned labs involving nanotechnology. First off, oxygen is not good for you. it's just a reactive chemical that you just happen to breathe, it has to do with glycolysis, but let's not get into that. nanomachines will be able to penetrate the skin, but when you think of a "machine" you should really be referring to a molecule. not a mechanical metal machine. nanoengineering is just chemistry. the media hyped it up to make everyone think it's "mystical". No, it's chemistry. The only way to heal the skin is to reconstruct the collagen and stimulate it, how do we do this? we have to break it up, hold it up, and fill it in. In my opinion, subscision with a combination of saline injections will work best for acne scars, however, very few surgeons offers this. One named Dr. Sire, does this procedure and it has a 95 percent success rate. I agree that fraxel is too expensive and was not designed for acne scars, I think the best laser is still the C02, despite what people think. The new active FX C02 laser is highly recommendable and I have heard from countless surgeons who I associated with that this laser blows fraxel out of the water. Surgeons make money, and the reason they like fraxel is for the money. 900 dollars a pop? wow. no. not worth it. there are better options out there, you just have to search for the surgeons that got into the business for PEOPLE and not themselves.
my recommendations. I have seen from 50-95% improvment.
active FX c02 and saline injections/subscision combo.
i mentioned oxygen in reference to hyperbaric oxygen therapy. they use it to speed/aid in compromised healers. even some top performance athletes use it to recover better and quicker from breaks and surgery. just a random example.
when i was talking about CO2 in the other post i was referring to traditional CO2 lasers ala the 70s and 80s which literally burned off the outer most layer of skin. the new class of fractional CO2s dont do this. although, the active fx is still using this approach, no? its just doing it at a low level (aka "mini peel").
yeah i agree fraxel is overpriced and over-hyped/over-promised. but so is every laser. unfortunately the healthcare industry is after your heart and money just like any other industry.
every doctor likes their own laser (i.e. the laser they have in their office and want to sell you). they researched and bought it and unless they are grossly disappointed, sued, or get a new one you will never hear them talk shit about their own laser.
some docs are also paid mouthpieces for the laser companies, doing demos, training, and studies for the company. so they are little better than the slick pharmaceutical reps we've all scene sliding into doctors offices with their little messenger bags full of wares to hock.
i looked at the active fx but they don't have enough pics for me to really judge. not enough patients reporting on here either. maybe it is better than fraxel? but there is absolutely no photographic or clinical evidence anywhere on the net to support that. even their histology slides are poor.
ive heard a handful of people talking about saline injections as well. i can see why its not popular at least from a greedy doctor perspective. but if it worked that well there'd be more than one doctor doing it i have to believe. doctors are not completely unscrupulous, and the average one would do a cheap and effective saline injection vs. an expensive laser if they new it was more effective. im sure they'd much rather learn a technique than invest in an expensive piece of equipment. this makes me doubt the saline. but if more people come on here with pics and studies start being conducted i'd believe it.
i think the real issue with scars is getting money pumped into that specific area for research and development. i mean they started doing dermabrasion at the turn of the century and are still doing it today. there is CO2 resurfacing starting in the 70s and now the discoveries of fractional. not much innovation really. lack of funding and potential profit i think is the reason.
(also sometimes innovation is due to one individual or a small group, like einstein and physics or rox anderson did with fraxel.)
i heard once that all the biggest economic trends are really just based on clever people selling to the baby boom generation as they age. from the pet rock and hoola hoop when they were young to the cosmetic aging procedures and geriatrics in general now that they are old.
i could be wrong but i'd guess that active fx was intended primarily for the baby boomers just like fraxel. but if it works better for acne scars im all for that.
i think the fractional concept is what is really key. finally they hit upon something at doesn't have awful side effects! and the knock-offs and competition seems to be driving further development which is great.
if the next development is nanotech then im all for it. i do think incorporating supramolecules and all that jazz into the procedure could be an incredible leap. i just dont see it happening. but perhaps.
one thing is certain. they are starting to hit a wall with the fraxel. they can't go much deeper. so they're going to have to modify their strategy if they want to keep one-upping the competition.
like i said in an earlier post, i think that's the real reason behind the renaming of fraxel. with the re:pair they've taken the one-upmanship to a glass ceiling, so they wanted to create a "whole system of lasers" to make for attractive marketing, verse their competition which are all just adaptable laser heads.
im excited to see what new things come down the pipe over the next few years. probably something i'd never even guess . . .
Has anyone here had results comparable to any of the 'before and after' photos published by the Fraxel company for acne scarring?I've had my 3rd Fraxel 1500 tx today with supposedly "the best" doctor in NYC. I haven't been posting much about my treatments since didn't feel I have anything NEW to add and waited until I do...My treatments have been spaced 2 - 2.5 wks apart, he has a new roller tip, so no blue dye, and yes! the treatments are painful in spite of the numbing cream and a cooling machine. My recovery time seems to be longer than what most people post here and takes about 10 days for my skin to look "normal" again. Sorry for this long intro to answer your question, but thought some background info would be useful. I did see before and after pix for acne scaring published by different sources and was convinced that I will see improvement with Fraxel on my shallow/rather superficial scarring. However, I am still witing to see those results. So far, the only improvement I have noticed is in my pore size, but nothing dramatic. At this point I am not getting discouraged and will continue with my tx, going to have 6 total, but hearing about other people's results with just 1 or 2 treatments makes me wonder if my scars are EVER going to respond to Fraxel...Since age is relevant, I'm 32, on a healthy organic diet/collagen boosting supplemets and I exercise.
which doctor- dr rokhsar? my 1st treatment with him is next week.
Yes, that's him. I sent you a PM last week when you mentioned your appt, I thought you had it scheduled for the Friday 11, around the time I had my 3rd Fraxel.
FYI, my derm went to a demonstration where rokhsar was touting the fraxel. he went to school with rokhsar and asked him afterwards, "so whats the deal. should i sell my sciton and invest in a fraxel." and rokhsar told him no its not really much better, save your money.
then again this was for fraxel 750 like 2-3 years ago now. so who knows.
What exactly is the subcision/saline combo?---subcise the scar and then just inject with an (isotonic) normal saline? How would this be different than subcising and injecting with, say, Sculptra or another injectable filler?
I have been doing alot of research on fraxel laser, and have seen some before/after photos from dr's offices. To my dissappointment, it seems that this procedure is mostly hype as to the effectiveness in treating acne scars. The pictures posted up in the fraxel.com website seem to be highly misleading as i suspect they are only the few instances where the most signficant improvement in patient's outcome has been shown. call it biased advertisement. I recommend going to your local dr.'s office where they do fraxel treatments and asking to see some photos. I have yet to see any substantial improvements from the photos i've seen in my dr's office. Just a forethought, the pictures you see on reliant technology's fraxel laser can be misleading--showing only the few instances of patients who's outcome were positive compared to the numerous dissappointments other patients who've had it done showed.
Exactly. Even this person said she had two Dermabrasions and Two Laser resurfacing's done by renoun Dr's and she ended up with a worste condition and the only thing that is making her look better in her case is the Silicone Droplet 4th photo from the bottom which I think was already posted here or somewhere else not sure.
http://www.lamfacialplastics.com/index.php...52&Itemid=9
My point is maybe some light Micro's and or checmical Peels and only light and maybe some Liquid Augmentation of some sort will help a bit until some new technology comes out.
In My opinion is will most likely Medical Nanotechnology. TIny little Robots with either chemicals or some sort of Biological ingrediant to precisely repair damamged skin.
THis is not Scinece Fiction and this technology is about 10 years away.
THat is our hope. Lasers are good for some thing but to remove Scarring, in my opinion is is only temporary and seems to just cause further scarring as a lot of people as myself have seen after a couple of years off the laser.
have you noticed people like FLoridaguy etc who have done fraxel have also had to plump up with some time of liquid augmentation as in his case Sculptra. I have done sculptra and have to admit that is what has saved my sanity. Without that filler I would be in a Nut House. It strached my skin outward making my apprearence less scar looking.
FYI, my derm went to a demonstration where rokhsar was touting the fraxel. he went to school with rokhsar and asked him afterwards, "so whats the deal. should i sell my sciton and invest in a fraxel." and rokhsar told him no its not really much better, save your money.then again this was for fraxel 750 like 2-3 years ago now. so who knows.
Maybe I'm just too skeptical of docs anymore, but I could also see him saying that so he will have the market on a better product. Rokhsar has always been a HUGE propronent of fraxel. And if he really believes that its not much better, doesn't make him sound too ethical either way. Fraxel has seemed to stand the test of time better than almost anything, with the biggest complaint it seems (and my main complaint also after having 2 done) is the expense. I have seen some general improvement and will wait till after my third before I judge too much either way. That's one of the reasons I like acne.org, we can get real experiences from each other to help us make our own decisions.
Question for "mag" -I notice you said your doctor is doing treatments every 2-2.5 weeks. Many people have been doing them only 1x/month. Has he said why/if every 2-2.5 weeks is better?
Thank you.
There's no medical difference. It's just a matter of what you can fit into your schedule and how spaced out you want your downtime to be.
Zonk -The question was not directed to you; it was directed to mag.
Obviously, if there was no medical difference, everyone would be having them 2 weeks apart. There must be theories as to why waiting longer/less is better/worse.
I think you're taking offense to my second post, which was not really a response to your post.
And there really is no medical difference, you may not want to believe me, but that's ok. I had the option of doing them 2 weeks apart and chose to do them 4 weeks apart. I take fridays off work to do them, and I just can't take a friday off every other week. Not to mention, some of the doctors who have been studying fraxel say there's only a difference if you wait 2 months rather than a month.
But, of course, what do I know, I only have a degree in biology from harvard, currently work in biotech, and researched fraxel for 6 months before pulling the trigger on my treatments...don't worry, though, next time i won't try to be helpful unless you've directly addressed me.
Update for you all.This morning i was feeling daring (actually hung over) i brought a big mirror outside with me to look at my skin. I have had three fraxel treatments so far. I for once in a long time was pleased with my skin. I really see an improvement. Now it's not perfect, but its so much better then it was before.
I was contemplating if i was seeing results or just having a good skin day. I'm definately going for the 4th and 5th treatment.
awesome! congrats!
how old are you?
i've had 2 out of 5 treatments and i'm seeing improvement already also.
FYI, my derm went to a demonstration where rokhsar was touting the fraxel. he went to school with rokhsar and asked him afterwards, "so whats the deal. should i sell my sciton and invest in a fraxel." and rokhsar told him no its not really much better, save your money.then again this was for fraxel 750 like 2-3 years ago now. so who knows.
Maybe I'm just too skeptical of docs anymore, but I could also see him saying that so he will have the market on a better product. Rokhsar has always been a HUGE propronent of fraxel. And if he really believes that its not much better, doesn't make him sound too ethical either way. Fraxel has seemed to stand the test of time better than almost anything, with the biggest complaint it seems (and my main complaint also after having 2 done) is the expense. I have seen some general improvement and will wait till after my third before I judge too much either way. That's one of the reasons I like acne.org, we can get real experiences from each other to help us make our own decisions.
he is one of the clinical researchers. so basically he got money and equipment to perform the first procedures and be one of the lead researchers writing the clinical paper. i dont think its a big deal, but should be taken into account if trying to garner his motives and such.
I just had my 2nd fraxel done 4 days ago. The RN was really agressive this time. See below for the settings. I'm still alittle swollen and very red with crusty scabs/skin all over my skin. I can see that my face might stay red for several days. I fiqure if I'm going to go through all these fraxels I want to get it done aggressively for the best results.
Question for "mag" -I notice you said your doctor is doing treatments every 2-2.5 weeks. Many people have been doing them only 1x/month. Has he said why/if every 2-2.5 weeks is better?
Thank you.
i know your not asking me but just offering this.
there is supposedly a small difference between 2.5 weeks and 4 weeks. 4 weeks is better. but this can depend on the levels and your personal reaction as well.
but as long as its within two months of each other the issue is more like zonk said, a matter of scheduling and when you can afford a few days of stress free downtime.
some of the first patients in the slideshow had treatments within a week or less of each other and it still worked well for them. i guess the researchers experimented more and decided on 4 weeks. though, im sure most doctors offices are scheduling patients according to the day of the month instead of exactly 28 days.
but when you think about it. there really isn't any mechanism in your skin that is counting the exact number of days, so of course the optimal spacing is not an exact number of weeks but a range. if i were to guestimate probably something like 4-5 weeks for acne scars on fraxel 2, possibly even longer if you have an extended downtime.
I guess the minimum period is to ensure that the previous wounds have healed well enough to be able to epithealise the next set of wounds?
Does anyone understand the mechanism of the maximum period? I assume there is an accumulative/interactive effect on collagen production/remodelling?
With PSR they suggest 3 'light' treatments spaced 3 weeks to produce a wounding on wound which creates a deeper level resurfacing with less risk.
Question for "mag" -
I notice you said your doctor is doing treatments every 2-2.5 weeks. Many people have been doing them only 1x/month. Has he said why/if every 2-2.5 weeks is better?
Thank you.
i know your not asking me but just offering this.
there is supposedly a small difference between 2.5 weeks and 4 weeks. 4 weeks is better. but this can depend on the levels and your personal reaction as well.
but as long as its within two months of each other the issue is more like zonk said, a matter of scheduling and when you can afford a few days of stress free downtime.
some of the first patients in the slideshow had treatments within a week or less of each other and it still worked well for them. i guess the researchers experimented more and decided on 4 weeks. though, im sure most doctors offices are scheduling patients according to the day of the month instead of exactly 28 days.
but when you think about it. there really isn't any mechanism in your skin that is counting the exact number of days, of course there has to be a moderate amount of play to it.
I guess the minimum period is to ensure that the previous wounds have healed well enough to be able to epithealise the next set of wounds?Does anyone understand the mechanism of the maximum period? I assume there is an accumulative/interactive effect on collagen production/remodelling?
With PSR they suggest 3 'light' treatments spaced 3 weeks to produce a wounding on wound which creates a deeper level resurfacing with less risk.
Question for "mag" -I notice you said your doctor is doing treatments every 2-2.5 weeks. Many people have been doing them only 1x/month. Has he said why/if every 2-2.5 weeks is better?
Thank you.
i know your not asking me but just offering this.
there is supposedly a small difference between 2.5 weeks and 4 weeks. 4 weeks is better. but this can depend on the levels and your personal reaction as well.
but as long as its within two months of each other the issue is more like zonk said, a matter of scheduling and when you can afford a few days of stress free downtime.
some of the first patients in the slideshow had treatments within a week or less of each other and it still worked well for them. i guess the researchers experimented more and decided on 4 weeks. though, im sure most doctors offices are scheduling patients according to the day of the month instead of exactly 28 days.
but when you think about it. there really isn't any mechanism in your skin that is counting the exact number of days, of course there has to be a moderate amount of play to it.
This is speculation on my part, I haven't really thought about this, but...
Fraxel activates collagen promoting pathways in your skin. Presumably sometime near the first month, these pathways become less and less active. So you're losing the additive and/or continuous collagen growth that shorter time periods may enable.
i've heard that argument and refute it. the laser is wounding your skin. thats all its doing.
your body is actually doing all the regeneration aka wound healing. yes these are microwounds, but i think the best thing is to allow the wound to fully heal before its zapped again.
in the same way that picking at a scab contributes to a scar, zapping an MTZ/MAZ that isn't fully healed contributes to sub optimal healing.
"collagen promoting pathway" is just a fancy term thats thrown around but i haven't read or seen anything histologicaly that shows anything but the simple process of regeneration. an MTZ is roughly the size of a very fine paper cut. and i don't think giving yourself another paper cut on top of a healing paper cut would aid healing, in fact i think it'd hurt it.
that's the reason they say 4 weeks. because it takes that long for the MENDS (sort of a microscopic scab) to fall off. also as tabula rasa points out the whole point of fraxel is that the wounding is fractional. so if you don't wait till the skin is 100 percent recovered then your are wounding it again and creating a more than fractional wound (more than 20-30 percent).
PSR recommends a wound on wound effect because its completely ablating the skin. and when you do that you have a catch-22. you can't go deep enough to get rid of the scar without causing too much damage to the surrounding tissue. so the PSR people thought they'd try a wound on wound approach. which is an improvement over complete ablation down to the mid dermis. but still causes excessive skin peeling, risk of infection, downtime, and has none of the benefits of fractional wounding and healing by regeneration.
its like fraxel and PSR where trying to solve the same problem and just used two different approaches. PSR chose to modify the treatment settings of ablative laser resurfacing. fraxel chose to overhaul the actual technology and created a new laser.
only a few people on acne.org got PSR. the thread died after only a few pages. one person posted pictures and he had terrible peeling of the skin. i mean like huge. like when you were a kid and put elmers glue on your palm and spread it out to dry then peeled it off. he had those things hanging off his face for a week or more. PSR is dead and buried in my opinion, except for a very few limited applications in special cases.
"collagen promoting pathway" is just a fancy term thats thrown around but i haven't read or seen anything histologicaly that shows anything but the simple process of regeneration. an MTZ is roughly the size of a very fine paper cut. and i don't think giving yourself another paper cut on top of a healing paper cut would aid healing, in fact i think it'd hurt it.
We're talking about the same thing. When I say collagen promoting pathway, I'm talking molecular biology, not histology. When your skin is injured, certain pathways in your molecular biology are activated to promote collagen growth. With fraxel, one of those pathways involves hsp90, if i recall correctly. either way, one of the heat shock proteins is involved. i just can't remember off the top of my head, which one it is. this is why you can't use retin-a, because it blocks the hsp mechanism.
http://www.skinandaging.com/article/6155
"Upon significant damage to the basement membrane zone, dermal contents are also expelled as microscopic epidermal and dermal necrotic debris (MENDs). In this way, epidermal and dermal pigmentation are treated without specifically targeting melanin as the chromophore. Zones of collagen denaturation in the dermis trigger the inflammatory cascade, which leads to collagen remodeling and new collagen formation."
not really. heat shock collagen formation is a delayed response your body has after the wound is created--while its healing itself. if your rewound the area, you create another shock--but you also create another wound. you'd just be undoing the the regeneration and collagen formation that had just taken place.
the cumulative effect of fraxel occurs because each treatment covers a new area, not because the prior treated areas are being retreated. there is some overlapping but im convinced that is detrimental (unless the MTZs are fully healed).
yeah, surely repeat wounding of the same point within too short a timeframe must be undesirable. and i guess this must happen with fraxel but the probability for overlap is low due to the low percentage of coverage (area of mtz/cm2 x area of mtz/cm2? any mathematicians?)
i was thinking more about the desired timeframe for these micro wounds to be created beside each other. the suggested maximum spacing may have to do with the timeframe for collagen remodelling / cross linking etc to begin and, if all wounds are in place at that time, remodelling can occur between wounds, rather than just isolated points?