I've had Restylane done twice. Once in 2009 and once in 2010 for some indented areas on my face from cystic acne I had badly in 2008. I have to say that it worked amazingly both times, and the results lasted for quite a while.

I had a lot of acne in December of 2011 and me being the foolish person I am, I thought I would try to give myself my own microdermabrasion treatments every day with a scrub that said I could do just that. Bad idea. It basically ripped off healing lesions and marks and the collagen growth in each of these healing wounds was interrupted and halted. I pretty much gave myself an array of scarring and still kick myself for what I helped make happen.

But this year.. 2012.. I have been dermarolling those scars. I dermarolled 6 or 7 times in the past 10 months, which I felt was a good amount considering all that I've found about dermarolling being the most helpful when you dermaroll and wait as -long- as possible before the next treatment. These people dermarolling every week and every DAY are seeing swelling. That's why they think they're seeing results. After you dermaroll your face gets swollen for a few days and plumps up slightly, and it may make some scars look a lot better.. But this process is a traumatic one for the collagen in the skin and it won't even fully make the collagen heal and renew itself until the healing process truly begins approximately 6 MONTHS after the dermaroll. This swelling is also basically a form of inflammation in your skin and if constantly done it can apparently cause cancer, as well as rough ugly texture because you would be consistently damaging your skin and not giving it any time to heal. I've read several posts on other sites from wise people who have dermarolled and then made sure to have 6 to 10 months of patience before the next roll and I applaud them for their ability to wait so long. They've spoken a great deal about how the best results show up around month 6 and 7 after the treatment. I feel that this is true since I first tried to dermaroll back in 2010 on a scar (small indented) that is very much smaller now.. Makes me truly think that having waited between 2010 and 2012 on the dermarolling is what provided the collagen in that area to build up and make the scar practically invisible. It worked. It just took time.

I dermarolled several times in the beginning of this year and I tried to wait four weeks in between treatments. It didn't really show any real results that I could notice so in August 2012 I decided to roll one final time and throw in the towel until March of 2013. This will hopefully give my skin the time to build up the collagen that I've poked and prodded to renew.

I'm also planning to get Restylane done in the areas of the scars. I've read some interesting things about collagen apparently being stimulated somewhat by these fillers and if you're dermarolling and you inject the dermarolled areas one would think that it would help improve the collagen regrowth process. The effects of the Restylane are also fairly instant so there would already be great results there to enjoy, but having done the dermarolling prior to this could truly mean that your skin can heal scarring while the scarring is "hidden" by the Restylane's plumping and filling. Essentially healing the problem and masking it at the same time.

When I first got Restylane injected in 2009 I vividly remember having the areas be a little pudgy and I had to massage the injected drops so that it would spread around in the areas it was injected. It horrified me because I thought I wouldn't massage correctly or I wouldn't do it enough.. but after two days and just a bit of simple massaging the results were unparallelled. My face was plump and firm in the indented areas where cysts had made the scars that they had. I had a huge confidence boost that totally made the $500 for the treatment feel well spent. I had it done again in 2010 for the same areas and now with these new scars that I've made I'm sure that the treatment will help once again when they're injected sometime this winter.

I've read about how lasers don't provide many results and often even make problems worse by adding new scars or funky redness. They're also incredibly expensive treatments to have done and they basically do what dermarolling does already! It's all about stimulating collagen and that's what lasers like fraxel try to do. That is the point of dermarolling. To injure an area and trick the body into thinking it needs to heal that area and bump up the collagen. Why would people want to spend thousands on laser treatments when you can buy a dermaroller for $40 on Amazon and perform as many treatments as you want? It can truly yield some awesome results at a fraction of the price of laser treatments.

My girlfriend is even studying to become an esthetician who specializes in laser treatments so if that doesn't show how strongly I feel about lasers then I don't know what will haha.

I guess what I'm trying to say is.. I feel that dermarolling in very slow moderation (approximately 7 months between each treatment) combined with the treatment of Restylane (which has never given me any problems and has provided instant results).. is truly a genuine strategy to combat acne scarring.

I will continue to update this page every few months to add in details about my experience with this technique..

Hopefully others out there will consider trying this out too!