What’s The Story
How you decide to treat your sun damage depends on several factors: the type (or types) and the severity. For brown spots, wrinkles, and broken blood vessels, it used to be the case that you’d need a variety of lasers or treatments to see improvement. Not anymore.
Laser Hair Removal
At The Derm
Los Angeles dermatologist Harold Lancer favors a two-step treatment using both the Halo hybrid fractional laser and BBLs BroadBand Light. “BBLs is the new, more-specific, higher-energy version of intense pulsed light, and can be used anywhere on the body,” he explains. That’s followed by the Halo, a resurfacing laser that uses ablative and non-ablative wavelengths to remove damaged skin and trigger new growth. (Lancer is skeptical about any sun-damage treatment that claims to have zero downtime: “If it doesn’t involve any downtime, then you threw your money out. The bottom line is, if there’s no healing involved, there’s no stimulation of tissue repair and new formation.”) Pain can be moderate, and Lancer says that you’ll have to lie low for five to seven days post-treatment. “It looks like a first-class sunburn,” he says. Cost: $1,500–$2,500 for the face and neck. You can expect to see results after one session.