Hello, everyone. Welcome back to The Skin Report. Today we’re going to talk about gadgets that can be used at home for anti-aging, versus anti-aging treatments that you can do in a clinic. I know you’re thinking, “She’s an aesthetic doctor who provides these services in her clinic, so she’s going to favor the clinic-based anti-aging solutions,” but I’m going to show you some before-and-after pictures of my own patients, and also give you the science behind why those are stronger. I’m not saying that at-home devices are completely useless, but what I’m saying is that they’re not going to be as strong as what we are able to do in a clinic and based on how long you can wait for results, the extent of results you may choose otherwise. I’m Dr. Simran Sethi. I’m an internal medicine doctor who specializes in medical aesthetics. Let’s get started with today’s topic.
There are a lot of DIY at-home devices now in the market and to discuss them, I’m going to break them down into what they do and then tell you about the alternate treatment that you could do in a medical aesthetic clinic. The first one is radiofrequency devices that are used for skin tightening. A good example of one that’s very popular is NuFace. These are devices that provide small currents of radiofrequency and you have to apply them on your skin. They’re painless. You feel zinging sensation when you put them on your skin, and usually you have to use them about five days a week on a continuous basis to see results. These devices are for skin tightening.
Now, instead of doing a radiofrequency at-home device in a medical spot setting, we have a lot of solutions. My favorite one is a combination of microneedling with radiofrequency. It is a treatment that is very, very popular for a good reason. Microneedling with radiofrequency helps tighten skin, tightens up the jawline, is also very good at erasing skin texture from fine lines and even acne scars.
All-therapy is another treatment that I commonly do. The patient you’re seeing in this picture, she is in her 50s. She was experiencing a lot of skin sagging and that also caused a softening of her jawline. After giving her an all-therapy treatment, she was able to see her jawline tighten again. She had a nice natural lift that started in her cheeks and continue to also lift her jawline and neck. When you are looking at, “Am I a good candidate for home-based radiofrequency treatments versus clinic-based?” I think the first thing you should look at is how old are you? A person in their 40s is likely going to need higher energy levels, settings, more work done. And the home-based devices, while they may be better for prevention, some mild improvement, they’re not going to give the kinds of results we see in a more high-energy-based clinic setting.
The next common category of home devices is microneedling. There are now a lot of microneedling devices on the market that can be used at home. I’ve done a whole video on home microneedling and I go into it in quite a bit of depth on who it’s safe for, who it’s not safe for, and so forth. But in general, what you will learn from that video is that home microneedling cannot read the dermis of the skin where you need to pee if you are correcting things like fine lines and acne scarring. Instead of home microneedling devices, you should consider microneedling in a clinic. Microneedling in a clinic will allow you to have enhancements like adding exosomes or PRP, all things that improve the results of microneedling, and these are things that you, again, cannot do at home. I have a lot of examples of microneedling results in the clinic and essentially if you have a moderate to severe acne scars, fine lines, texture on your skin, which usually you’re going to see in your mid-30s onwards, you likely will not get any results from microneedling at home and you should really consider a clinic.
The third category of devices that are very, very common on the market are LED face masks. Now, LED face masks are used for prevention of acne and for, again, prevention of wrinkles, fine lines. I think they’re a good at-home device, but I would say they fall into a prevention category. We don’t have an alternative single device that does what an LED does, but we have multiple types of treatment that address acne. They address fine lines, texture. In this case, I’m going to tell you that LED face masks are a preventative measure. They definitely are not something that I think gives you enough energy levels or enough results to call them corrective.
I hope this video was helpful to you. I’m not saying that at-home devices are not useful. I would say that they’re not a good solution if you are looking for better correction of things like scars, fine lines, skin sagging for those kinds of things, and correction, you really do need to invest in some sort of clinical medical-grade treatment. When it comes to prevention, they can be used and I would say if you are going to use a device or prevention, LED face masks are a good solution. I also like the radiofrequency new phase devices. I do not like home-based microneedling, and again, we have a full video on that. If you are using any home-based devices for scar reduction, fine line reduction, pigment reduction, I would love to hear your comments and if you have any questions of course, to ask us. Please remember to subscribe, push your notifications button so you can always know when we have new content released.
