Are All Light Treatments Lasers?
Lasers can do a lot for your skin—from hair removal to skin resurfacing to visible vein reduction—but they aren’t the only light-based treatment at Palm Springs’ Cosmetic Surgery Institute.
Many people tend to lump all light-based treatments into a single category, and while the various options do share plenty of similarities, there are also some key differences between lasers and such devices as intense pulsed light.
Put most simply, lasers direct a focused beam of light in a single wavelength onto or into the skin. The beam is powerful, precise, and ideal for heating pigmented areas, such as the dark cells in a follicle at an unwanted hair’s root or the tissue that makes up a visible spot or similar lesion.
Intense pulsed light (IPL) is more broadly applied, delivering light not of a single wavelength, but of multiple wavelengths at once. This factor makes IPL treatments—including the especially powerful BroadBand light—especially good at addressing cosmetic problems in larger areas. Think of the redness of rosacea or fine blood vessels that are close to the surface.
IPL, like lasers, works because darker-pigmented cells are impacted by the application of energy more than lighter-pigmented cells are. Targeting the deep brown of unwanted lesions, the vivid red in blood’s hemoglobin, and other visible cosmetic issues with light causes the targeted concerns to rapidly heat up. This sudden rise in temperature is damaging to the cells in question.
As a result, pigmented lesions ultimately flake off or are absorbed back into the body, visible vessels seal off from the rest of the circulatory system and collapse—also to be absorbed, hair follicles are rendered unable to properly grow new hairs, and more.
Wondering which laser or light-based treatment would be ideal for you? Trust the Cosmetic Surgery Institute team! You don’t need to tell us whether you think a laser or intense pulsed light would be most appropriate for addressing your concerns. Our highly trained and experienced team will assess the condition of your skin, examine your cosmetic concerns, and talk with you about the look you want to achieve. Then, we will make a recommendation based on our years of practical applications and work with the range of available devices.
For more information about lights and lasers, contactin the Cosmetic Surgery Institute online or call 760.837.0364.