This Laser Treatment Got Rid Of My Rosacea Redness After Just One Session
Procedure: Intense Pulsed Light (IPL)
Price: $500 - $800 per session
Benefits: Treats rosacea, hyperpigmentation, melasma, and photo damage
What to look out for: Inexperienced technicians performing the procedure
Picture the way your face flushes when you're embarrassed. Now imagine your face doing that all the time. That's basically what it feels like to have rosacea.
The uncontrollable redness in my skin is something I've been self-conscious about for a long time. It flares up when I drink wine, eat spicy food, get emotional, and even when I'm presenting something important at work (so embarrassing!).
I've tried a ton of different products to calm it down over the years, but nothing worked. I had succumbed to the fact that I'd have blazing red skin until the end of time (ok, maybe I'm a little dramatic). At least I did, until an esthetician mentioned Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) as a possible treatment option.
What exactly is IPL?
"IPL is a broad bandwidth of light that targets both redness and brown hyper-pigmentation, so you can see overall tone improvement," explains Dendy Engelman, MD, the NYC-based dermatologist who performed my treatment.
Basically, these bright blasts of light go down into your skin and constrict the red vessels. When these capillaries dilate (from tons of different stimuli), you get that red, flushing effect, says Dr. Engelman.
Some people, like myself, are more prone to that reaction because of genetics, says Dr. Engelman (thanks mom and dad!). But my fair skin also doesn't help the matter. "Darker skin types may have dilated vessels in their skin, but their melanin is going to camouflage it," she explained.
What does IPL feel like?
I'm no stranger to slightly painful beauty treatments, but I was still a little nervous before my IPL. First, Dr. Engelman applied a cold gel all over my skin. She said it helped the laser head glide easier, but it also cooled down my skin for comfort.
After I slid on some safety goggles, which protect your eyes from the bright flashes of light, she did her first pass. Each zap of the laser felt like a hot rubber band snap (if you're ever had laser hair removal, it felt a little like that).
She went over each section of my face twice, and that was it. The whole treatment took less than five minutes. My skin was a little red after, but that went down over the next 15 minutes.
And Dr. Engelman wasn't lying. My skin had an instant clarity and glow that you just can't get from a bottle. Now I understood why she said this treatment is popular among brides.
What you should look out for:
Here's the thing, lasers of any kind are powerful devices, and they need to be treated as such. "In the back of my nail salon they have an IPL, but I wouldn't recommend getting treatments there because often they don't have physicians operating these devices," says Dr. Engelman.
She's seen patients come in with scars, burns, and blisters from inexperienced technicians doing the treatment. "I want to caution patients who think that all lasers are created equally and that anybody can fire them. Lasers are quite strong and powerful devices, and we need to respect the power of that."
The results from my IPL treatment:
Over the next few days, the results just got better and better (as evidenced in my final result photo above). My redness has been significantly reduced, and I found myself reaching for less face makeup each morning.
Dr. Engelman does recommend three to five sessions spaced out every four weeks to get the best results. But if it's anything like the first session, I'm totally sold. In the meantime, I’ll be cracking open a bottle of Malbec, and enjoying my non-flushed face.
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