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The good news is I haven't noticed any more new scarring.....
It is only 3 months since you began so hopefully there could be some improvement over the next few months.
Do you still think Fraxel caused more scarring? Are you sure it is scarring, not transient inflammation? What does your doctor say?
is radiesse a permanent filler? i read an article that cited a study done that showed any collagen fillers even temp will encourage the body to lay down their own collagen over time. so that as you repeat injections over the same spot the results get better and better and seem to last longer and longer (really it is your body filling it in).Hi TCBC. Yeah, I heard of reports of residual collagen formation around Restalyne. Can you give a link to that paper?
Radiesse & Sculptra are designed to instigate collagen formation. I understand Radiesse typically lasts 2-3 years but has a high incidence of lumps that can last 5-7 years and there is no antidote. It is supposed to be a good viscous filler for accurate placement under scars. I opted for Sculptra. It can form lumps too (I had one), but not quite as common as Radiesse. And at least with Sculptra there is an antidote - 5FU injection. They say Sculptra lasts 18 months - 2 years but for me it was 3 years. I think I had a slight amount of residual collagen/ fibrotic tissue but I can't really be sure.
Of course new products will continue to be developed, which is why I think temp fillers are the smart move. I would only go for a permanent filler if there was a safe antidote. Doesn't exist yet.
I agree with the having fillers done now, while waiting for a more "fool proof" treatment arises (if it ever does). I'm actually going to have my first treatment done with Restalyne this thursday, im hoping I get good results from it, I can deal with it being temporary, as long as it hides most of my larger scars. On the topic of fillers, can I expect any permenent results from restalyn?....
A question I posted to that Dr Garcia online forum:Question: What is `heat shock protein`? I read Retin A is not recommended when having Fraxel because it inhibits heat shock protein. But I note you use Retin A until a few days before Portrait. Thanks
Answer: It is a protein induced in the skin that can kill bacteria, it is made in response to an injury. I do not see how Retin-A would negatively affect the Fraxel. I will say that Retin-A use while doing a series of Fraxels can be risky as the skin is like baby skin and overly sensitive and where before the treatment you easily tolerated it, after the treatment you might be super sensitive to it, so it needs careful use.
As far as I know, his response is semi-accurate. There are several different heat shock proteins (differentiated by the number appended to hsp). These proteins are involved in the immune system's fight against foreign invaders (things like viruses as well as bacteria) but in other processes as well (e.g., collagen growth). In one of the fraxel webinars, Dr. Rahman talks about how Retin-A blocks hsp activity and how that hurts collagen re-growth. Whether she is right or Dr. Garcia is right, I don't know. Personally, I would place my faith on Dr. Rahman, but that's up for you to decide...
Apart from ice, what things can minimise swelling post Fraxel? Has anyone tried Arnica tablets? Witchhazel?
I agree with the having fillers done now, while waiting for a more "fool proof" treatment arises (if it ever does). I'm actually going to have my first treatment done with Restalyne this thursday, im hoping I get good results from it, I can deal with it being temporary, as long as it hides most of my larger scars. On the topic of fillers, can I expect any permenent results from restalyn?....
Peps,
I just had my frist frax yesterday morning 24 hours ago.
25 MJ, frax 2, 8 passes. Felt minimal pain.
I iced for ages yesterday so the swelling isnt to bad. but it more or less looks like ive had my tonsells out or ive just consumed 85 whoppers + fries. .. so looks chubby in the face.
They used the blue dye still .. i was asking them all these questions and they were tripping out about how much i knew about the procedure\machine and all the other techniques.
All the dye washed off without not hassel by the way.. but dont wear any expensive clothes incase when you wipe it off it gets on your top (trap for new players!)
so they did my cheeks and temples.. the redness (sunburn look) is in turn only confidneted to those regions.. so it looks pretty funny.
Couple of days and I should be sweet though in regards to the redness.. im applying alovera at the moment.
I also tried to sleep on my back so that i wasnt keeping the heat into my skin.
My face was throbbing when ever i took the ice off.. i noticed that last night for about 2 hours i didnt put ice on cause i was busy doing something.. anhyway i swelled up heaps. Then i put the ice back on and it went down mostly again... so FYI: keep putting the ice on (trap for new players again!)
So the funny thing is i was talking to my concierge (i live in an appartment) and yesterday when i walked down stairs I showed him my redness and swelling.. and he was like "how come you doing stuff to your skin, theres nothing wrong with it" .. and my footy coach also said when i told him i cant play this weekend said "what you mean you getting something done to your skin, .. whats wrong with it" ... these are 2 pretty genuine fellas... i still know i have some scars there will be no convincing me otherwise, but it is good to hear people tell you (that you know are genuine) that your not as 'mutant' or you may think.
Anyway.. apolgies for the jumping of topics, hit me up if you have any questions that you think i can assist with.
cheers.
I will like to get started on fraxel treatment for my acne scar. I am Asian and I am afraid of getting skin pigmentation because it is summer so I will get exponsure to the sun. I just wonder if I should wait for the fall or winter to get my fraxel treatment.
I guess it depends on how much it bothers you.. else just wear sun screen hardcore like and stay out of the sun like a vampire.
Peps,I just had my frist frax yesterday morning 24 hours ago.
25 MJ, frax 2, 8 passes. Felt minimal pain.
I iced for ages yesterday so the swelling isnt to bad. but it more or less looks like ive had my tonsells out or ive just consumed 85 whoppers + fries. .. so looks chubby in the face.
They used the blue dye still .. i was asking them all these questions and they were tripping out about how much i knew about the procedure\machine and all the other techniques.
All the dye washed off without not hassel by the way.. but dont wear any expensive clothes incase when you wipe it off it gets on your top (trap for new players!)
so they did my cheeks and temples.. the redness (sunburn look) is in turn only confidneted to those regions.. so it looks pretty funny.
Couple of days and I should be sweet though in regards to the redness.. im applying alovera at the moment.
I also tried to sleep on my back so that i wasnt keeping the heat into my skin.
My face was throbbing when ever i took the ice off.. i noticed that last night for about 2 hours i didnt put ice on cause i was busy doing something.. anhyway i swelled up heaps. Then i put the ice back on and it went down mostly again... so FYI: keep putting the ice on (trap for new players again!)
So the funny thing is i was talking to my concierge (i live in an appartment) and yesterday when i walked down stairs I showed him my redness and swelling.. and he was like "how come you doing stuff to your skin, theres nothing wrong with it" .. and my footy coach also said when i told him i cant play this weekend said "what you mean you getting something done to your skin, .. whats wrong with it" ... these are 2 pretty genuine fellas... i still know i have some scars there will be no convincing me otherwise, but it is good to hear people tell you (that you know are genuine) that your not as 'mutant' or you may think.
Anyway.. apolgies for the jumping of topics, hit me up if you have any questions that you think i can assist with.
cheers.
Sounds like you have pretty shallow scars, but 25 MJ on fraxel 2 is a very low setting. You might want to ask them to bump it up next time to at least 30, if not 35 or 40.
Hey Zonk,
They start frax on 20mj in my office but they craked it to 25 for me cause im a battler and said we wont have to start on the lowest levels for me.
They will put it to 30 next time... the most this office goes up to is 40mj suprisingly.
So no doubt it will go something liek 25,30,35,40,40mj.
My derm said the Fraxel 1500 'protocol' (presumably for acne scars) started around 25Mj Level 6/8, but she likes to start at 30Mj Level 8 and get to 40Mj Level 10 asap if it is well tolerated. I really got the impression from that Fraxel webinar ( https://reliant.webex.com/ec0507l/eventcenter/recording/recordAction.do?theAction=poprecord&path=pop_program_info&confViewID=300509920&siteurl=reliant ) that Dr Geronomus (sp?) considered 40Mj like a 'norm' for acne scars and seemed almost keen to progress to even deeper penetrations.
The MTZ depth chart I have doesn't go to 40mJ but suggests about 100 microns depth per 5mJ at the high end.... so I guess 40mJ would be around 1.2mm deep, ie 0.3mm deeper than 25mJ at 0.9mm.
Just thinking out loud here....
...........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.
I think PSR and Fraxel were similarly aimed at minimal downtime resurfacing. Fraxel is basically progressive partial resurfacing using tiny bits of Erbium laser, which allows rapid healing and deeper penetration with less risk of scarring. But PSR is unique because the plasma (not laser) energy produces heat only at the dermis level which is cleaved while the entire epidermis remains cooler and intact (until it is eventually shed), unlike C02 which ablates the skin from the surface to the dermis leaving an open wound. This reduces downtime significantly and has less risk of infection and scarring compared to fully ablative resurfacing. It can be done as a single deep treatment or 3 cumulative light treatments with virtually no downtime and produces collagen tightening second only to C02. To me PSR seems like the best (safe and effective) resurfacing system for anti-aging, and actually superior to Fraxel in that respect. But here we are hoping to remodel acne scars that are typically deeper than the PSR reaches. Now, whether Fraxel can do that remains the question...
Anyone have any luck on fraxel with scars caused by a chemical peel?
I'm planning on getting fraxel done in a few months and have a couple spots where the peel actually scarred my skin.
I was wondering if anyone had improvement in any similar type of scarring or burn scars?
Thanks
how about fraxel for pigment issues like hyper pigmentation and melasma how much u think would clear up with 5 treatments 10,20,30 percent? , and i am dark skinned also.please answer my response thnx.
i read a study that showed 95 percent clearance of melasma.
fraxel was made for melasma. thats what it does best. look at the slideshow on www.reliant-tech.com
))))))))))
how about fraxel for pigment issues like hyper pigmentation and melasma how much u think would clear up with 5 treatments 10,20,30 percent? , and i am dark skinned also.please answer my response thnx.
i read a study that showed 95 percent clearance of melasma.
fraxel was made for melasma. thats what it does best. look at the slideshow on www.reliant-tech.com
That is true and it is LEAST effective on acne pitting. I was told that by a Reliant rep today, so I am glad I won't be spending much $$ on this. I had lukewarm feelings about it from the getgo.
it's been 4 days post first fraxel.
without having to read over 200 pages i would like to find out when does the sandpaper texture feeling go away? i just had my forehead done with some swelling and redness but nothing i couldn't handle. and went to work the next day.
this texture is driving crazy.
anybody please help
Tabs - thanks for that info, ill touch base with them.. my next frax is on the 13th of next month.....i have a feeling the time between is going to fly by.
Unfortunatly for 25 of the time ill be red!
The treatment level is important as well. I have very superficial scarring, and you can see that my derm started out very aggressively w/ the MJ settings and less aggressively on the treatment level. If your scars are shallow, you may not need 40 MJ, but make sure the treatment level is at least 8. At least one of the two should be aggressive, in my opinion.
it's been 4 days post first fraxel.without having to read over 200 pages i would like to find out when does the sandpaper texture feeling go away? i just had my forehead done with some swelling and redness but nothing i couldn't handle. and went to work the next day.
this texture is driving crazy.
anybody please help
about a week.
Anyone have any luck on fraxel with scars caused by a chemical peel?I'm planning on getting fraxel done in a few months and have a couple spots where the peel actually scarred my skin.
I was wondering if anyone had improvement in any similar type of scarring or burn scars?
Thanks
I got burned and scarred by a tca chemical peel 10 years ago, and that is part of the reason I'm getting fraxel. My burn scars are thicker and raised, where most of my acne scars are indented. I have seen the most improvement (only had 2 so far so minimal improvement, but it is some) with the raised burn scars. It has flattened them out some and evened out the color. The technician has to know how to change the settings for the different types of problems for it to be most effective. I am encouraged for you, so let us know how it goes....
Thanks FraxelFace,
Yeah i was pretty stupid awhile back and accidently went a little too long with a GA peel. I didn't think it could scar that badly back then but i can still literally see where the acid ran down my face almost like an L-shape.
I already had some deep acne scars there and was just trying to help even my complexion. The one on my left side looks a little indented but it connects two deep scars.
I read a study about fraxel being conducted on burns but heard that it was less effective because the scar tissue is denser.
Although the scar was caused by a peel, i hope fraxel can help with it because GA peels don't go that deep unless heavily concentrated. The scar tissue does not look that dense though.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Best of Luck