Freckles: How Does It Work?

Lumenis IPL.  The beauty of skin, restored.  IPL is a breakthrough treatment that can address numerous skin conditions, including freckles, without injuring its surface².  IPL offers a gentle, long-lasting solution¹ for visible signs of skin damage that affect the way you look.  It also combines dramatic improvement with virtually no down time¹. There simply isn’t any of the burning, swelling, or discoloration² to your skin that other methods of treatment may cause.

Why do I have freckles? Freckles are brown or black spots that appear on areas of the skin that have reacted to sun exposure by overproducing melanin (a pigment-producing element).  Most common in fair skinned people, this form of photoaging can begin as early as childhood.  Photoaging speeds up the skin’s natural processes to a level where it produces too much protective pigment in uneven, irregular ways.

Avoiding sun exposure by covering up with clothing or using high SPF sunscreen is the best way to avoid this condition.  But since part of your life will inevitably take place outdoors, even these measures may fall short if you are very susceptible to freckling. Until the era of IPL, freckle treatments have generally been applied to the surface of the skin.  The emphasis was on fading the spots, as opposed to dealing with them in the deeper dermis.  IPL offers a freckle treatment that targets the layers where freckles are formed.

^{1. Weiss R. Rejuvenation of Photoaged Skin: 5 years Results with Intense Pulsed Light of the Face, Neck and Chest. Dermatol Surg 2002;28:1115-1119.}

^{2. Bitter PH. Noninvasive Rejuvenation of Photodamaged Skin Using Serial, Full-Face Intense Pulsed Light Treatments. Dermatol Surg 2000;26:835-42.}

^{3. Sadick N. Photorejuvenation with Intense Pulsed Light: Results of a Multi Center Study. JDD 2004; 3(1):41-49.}

^{4. Goldman MP, Weiss RA, Weiss MA: Intense Pulsed Light as a Non Ablative Approach to Photoaging. Dermatol Surg 2005;31:1179-1187.}