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Unless you’re one of the extremely lucky few who has never experienced an acne blemish, you’ve probably tried a variety of ways to prevent and treat those bothersome breakouts. Although it is most common in teenagers because of hormonal changes related to puberty, acne can affect people of all ages. The glands in our pores produce oil to help remove dead cells and keep our skin hydrated, but dead skin cells, dirt, and bacteria can accumulate on the skin when too much oil is produced. This clogs the pores and can cause blemishes. Washing your skin with a mild, non-drying soap in the morning, at night, and after exercising can help prevent acne by removing the pore-clogging agents. To fend off acne, most of us know what to avoid, such as using greasy cosmetics and touching our faces, but it may surprise many of you that the following tendencies can also lead to acne. Flying The air inside of airplanes is usually a combination of air from outside the cabin and highly filtered recirculated air. Because the air at higher altitudes is very dry, our skin is exposed to very low humidity, which can cause the cells to become dehydrated. These dry skin cells build up and absorb oil in the pores, causing acne. To help you get to your destination without stowaway pimples, apply a hydrating serum before your flight and gently exfoliate your skin after landing. Grimy Brushes Many people take the time to find cosmetics that will not clog their pores, but they may not realize that their makeup applicators can be an acne-causing culprit. The bristles in makeup brushes easily collect dirt, oil, and bacteria in a short amount of time. Wash your makeup brushes once a week with shampoo and warm water, and let them air-dry on a clean cloth or paper towel. This will decrease your chances of experiencing a breakout from using dirty brushes on your skin. Excess Exfoliation Using an exfoliating scrub (after cleansing first) is a great way to remove dead skin cells and promote healthy skin. However, exfoliating too often can dry and irritate the skin, which can cause inflammation and the overproduction of oil, leading to clogged pores. Depending on your skin type, scrubs should be used only once or twice a week. Since this process can dry out the skin, make sure to moisturize after exfoliation. If you’ve tried to eliminate stubborn acne to no avail, Colorado Skin & Vein offers Photodynamic Therapy (PDT). This therapy combines a topical chemical and light to eliminate resistant acne and other skin lesions. Please call (303) 683-3235 or fill out our online contact form today to schedule your consultation and start your journey to healthy, clear skin!

Many of our patients have come to us very frustrated with the previous information or acne scar treatments they have received.   Many of our patients have come to us very frustrated with the previous information or acne scar treatments they have received. There are many acne scar treatments being promoted, a few of which can be effective and many that are not. Today I am going to talk a little about the physiology of acne scarring and which treatments are most likely to be effective.   Acne scarring results when the healing process after an acne infection goes array. After the skin is inflamed by the acne lesion, fibrosis can occur. This is made worse when patients repeatedly pick or squeeze their lesions. Picking causes repeated trauma and increased inflammation while squeezing can drive infectious material deep into the wound again causing more inflammation. Fibrotic repair of the lesions leads to the textural changes associated with acne scarring.    About Acne Scarring The main thing to understand is that acne scarring lesions tend to be very deep in the skin. To give an idea of scale, most human hairs are about 100-200 microns thick. Acne lesions normally extend between 800-2000 microns (.8mm-2mm) into the skin. This fact alone explains why most acne scar treatments are minimally effective.  *Individual Results May Vary.    Acne Scarring Solutions The most obvious solution to acne scarring is prevention. Scarring develops during the inflammatory and healing stages of the lesion so there are a couple of ways to prevent it. First is to keep acne, especially cystic acne under control. This involves a visit to the doctor and normally some type of education and prescription topical or oral medication. TV infomercials are not a replacement for a visit to your physician. There are many patients whose acne goes from very controllable to fairly severe because they try months or years of over the counter treatment options that never quite work. The second part is simply not to pick or squeeze acne lesions. Picking and squeezing are both inflammatory and make lesions worse.    Acne and Acne Scar Treatments Tretinoin (Retin-A) is one of the very few topicals that has been shown to improve the appearance of acne scarring in peer-reviewed clinical trials. Patients should be very suspicious of any product claims that do not compare their product to either a placebo or Tretinoin.  *Individual Results May Vary.   Microdermabrasion and Superficial Chemical Peels for Acne Scars Mild fruit acid peels such as Glycolic, Lactic, Salicylic, and microdermabrasion are often offered up as treatments for acne scarring. Most of these treatments penetrate from 10-30 microns into the skin, remember acne scarring normally goes from about 800-2000 micros into the skin. That means even at their best, these treatments only affect the top 5% of the scar. With multiple repeated treatments, this can be slightly increased but even after 10-20 treatments with these modalities, there are only modest results at best.    Deep Chemical Peels for Acne Scars TCA, multiple layer Jessner‘s Solution can penetrate through the epidermis over 100 micros into the skin. These products use a chemical reaction to literally burn a thin layer of skin off. The deeper the lesion caused by the peel, the longer the downtime will be. Peels that do deep enough to completely remove the epidermis will normally take about 7-10 days to recover from but still will only treat about the top 10-20% of an acne scar. Phenol peels are very deep peels which although they can get moderate results are not used very often anymore do to their potential for scarring.    About Non-abrasive Lasers for Acne Scars This a large category that includes any light-based technology that heats the skin to stimulate collagen synthesis which helps fill in depressions in the skin. The heat also helps rearrange the abnormal architecture of collagen fibrils that are already present. Light sources such as Cutera’s Laser Genesis and the Fraxil Re:store fall into this category. With all of the light sources, the energy of the laser is absorbed by water in the tissue and turned into heat. These procedures require multiple treatments but can provide moderate results with little to no downtime.    Simply fill out the form on this page, and one of our highly trained staff members at Colorado Skin & Vein will reach out to your promptly to schedule your appointment.    REQUEST A CONSULTATION    About Shallow Ablative Lasers for Acne Scars An ablative laser actually vaporizes (destroys) an area of tissue. The shallow lasers are normally Erbium devices such the Cutera Pearl and Sciton Contour or Profractional. These lasers come in versions that treat the entirety of the skin and in fractional versions which only treat a small portion of the skin (like aerating a lawn). The advantage of the fractional devices is that they tend to go deeper which treats deeper pathology and significantly decreases both healing time and side effects. Erbium lasers will tend to produce about 30-150 microns of ablations in the full forms and about 600-800 microns in their fractional forms. The fractional version of these lasers can provide nice improvement in acne scarring but have two drawbacks. The first is that even the fractional versions of Erbium lasers do not get to the base of most acne scars and the second is these lasers do not provide as much heat to tissue as a CO2. This heat is necessary to induce remodeling of the tissue that is not ablated and is a major factor in the final outcome that a patient sees in the mirror.    About Deep Ablative Treatments for Acne Scars Almost all of the lasers currently in this category are CO2 lasers. This is the gold standard in revising acne scarring. The newest devices are fractionated like their more shallow counterparts. There are many devices in this category including, Pixel, Affirm, Dot, Fraxil Re:pair, and Lumenis Active FX and Deep FX. Unfortunately, most of them are grossly underpowered.  Underpowered lasers need to use very long laser pulses to