Don't let age spots make you look older than you feel. Orange Coast Aesthetics offer state-of-the-art solutions to help fade and eliminate age spots using safe, effective techniques to help women and men throughout the Irvine, CA, area look their best.
Age spots are dark patches or spots that form as a result of hyperpigmentation in specific areas of the skin, typically areas that receive significant sun exposure like the face and hands. Most age spots form in people over 50 years of age, but they can appear in younger people as well. Most age spots are tannish or brownish in appearance, and although they are not cancerous nor do they imply an increased risk of skin cancer, they can appear similar to cancerous lesions, and so any area of skin darkening should be evaluated to ensure it isn't a type of skin cancer.
Lasers use highly-focused beams of energy which are absorbed into the skin at different levels. Pigments found in the skin absorb this energy at different rates, with darker areas absorbing greater amounts of energy. When lasers are focused on pigmented age spots, the energy is absorbed into the pigmented cells where the laser's intense heat destroys the cells and breaks them apart, enabling them to be carried away over time by the body's natural waste system. Depending on the size of the age spot and other factors, more than one treatment may be necessary to ensure the best possible results.
Because lasers are so highly-focused, they can target the specific cells that cause pigmentation to ensure only those cells are damaged while preserving the surrounding healthy tissue. Bleaching agents are much more indiscriminate, often damaging a broader area and leaving unsightly scars or large areas of hypopigmentation – lack of color in the skin. Plus, the bleaching agent can be absorbed into deeper areas where it isn't needed.
