Top Elt

  Aging skin is just a part of life, right? Just another of natures natural processes that results in thinning of the skin, wrinkles, lines, blemishes and other age related skin problems. As we grow older our skin starts to thin out and lose its elasticity. This equipped with the constant pull of gravity eventually leads to wrinkles. This can also be worsened by too much sun exposure. UV rays have been proven to dry out the skin and age it. They can even alter or harm the DNA in your skin cells which can result in cancers like the fast spreading malignant melanoma. The point here is that there are many factors that make up the aging process and there are some wonderful treatments currently being used by dermatologists and doctors to treat it.

There are doctors and health – fitness guru’s out there that claim their fitness or dieting programs are the new fountain of youth and that they will make you look and feel younger. While that may be true to an extent and proper diet and exercise can definitely improve one’s health and enjoyment of life, there is only so much that proper diet and exercise can do and most aging related skin damage is permanent and not reversed by these methods. This is where more rigorous anti aging skin treatments like surgery (plastic and cosmetic surgery), the latest in laser treatments (different lasers work on different issues and can be very expensive over a course of treatments) and skin peels like the TCA skin peel.

Plastic surgery is quite effective, but is very expensive and does have its risks (just look at Kanye West’s mother and her unfortunate recent death). Plastic surgery can be over done and can look fake. There are skin care lotions we all see hawked on TV as having magical wrinkle removing properties and some can range upwards of $100. Most of these were found to barely work if at all by Consumer Reports. And as stated by Consumer Reports none were any more effective than Vaseline lotion.
There is one more treatment that dermatologists use in their offices to combat the aging skin problems primarily of the face neck and hands. Do you know what it is - the TCA peel. Dr. Obagi made this skin peel popular back in the early 1990’s with his invention of the Obagi Blue Peel. He created a cream solution with a color indicating dye so that it would make application of the TCA peel basically fool proof. Doctors and their staff could easily see what areas had it applied and which didn’t. The downside was that you looked like a frog after application and until the dyed skin layers peeled off.
Many dermatologists since then have switched to offering straight TCA medium strength peels as patients prefer it. A straight TCA peel can be diluted to the desired strength just as with a Obagi Blue Peel, but the difference is that it tends to work much faster, the patient feels it more and it tends to reach deeper, work on more deeper related skin problems and issues like acne and wrinkles, and have longer lasting effects. In either case, the TCA peel has been found effective and approved for anti aging skin treatments by the FDA and the American Medical Association.