What Does Microneedling Help? 

What Does Microneedling Help? 

What does microneedling help?  My analogy for microneedling is that it is beneficial for basically aerating your lawn before you plant your grass seed.  You're poking holes in the surface.   You're allowing the topical treatments to get in.  You're applying it using it as an enhanced delivery for a topical application.  It is beneficial if you're just using it as in and of itself. You're creating those micro injuries.  You're using titanium needles. Sharp ones.  Lots of them and you're either using a roller. You're going up and down, side to side, crisscrossing, both directions putting hundreds and hundreds of holes in the skin.  They’re very shallow holes. You're not going deep.  

For the things that affect the epidermis and where, for example, if you've got epidermal melasma, the melanocytes are just right there at the top of the stratum basale.  They're right in the stratum based cell.  You don’t have to go deep to get to those. You're creating those micro injuries and you're going to create the vascular endothelial growth factors.  You're going to create the keratinocyte growth factors.  A lot of things that are going to help stimulate growth and that's going to be very beneficial.  If you can increase turnover with the  injury then you're going to help create better growth and melanocytes are not very deep. If you're trying to deliver something topically to the melanocytes, a skin lightening formula, then the shallow 0.5 millimeter, 0.75 millimeter needles are all you need to use.

Some people say they’ve been using LDN  for nearly a month and I haven't seen any symptom relief. I'm thinking of stopping.  But the mantra now is to start low and go slow and be patient. It's not going to happen quickly. I had a lady with vertigo and she said she didn't notice anything  to start with and she got it badly on her legs and then suddenly her knees started to clear and the patch slowly, slowly you know got smaller. She was very very impressed but it wasn't an overnight thing. Having realistic expectations is the way to go. ely and uh with any kind of a pigment disorder, either hypopigmentation or hyperpigmentation as an adjunct to that I think microneedling is a good choice by the way derma rolling or the pen devices or do it having it done in the office is a good good choice.  To have done you know monthly at minimum if you're using a small small not very deep needle, like a half millimeter you could do it once a week.  Maybe once every other week.  You're creating micro injuries and you're going to stimulate those growth factors in the skin like you do when you see a wound. The keratinocyte growth factor and it also would have impact on the melanocytes. That's key and it'll help them.  Do it around the margins of the patch. You can do it across the patch and around the margins as well because you kind of want to stimulate the periphery to grow in.  You're trying to stimulate the melanocytes to come back in. I think that's a beneficial tip to go with the LDN.