NBC Channel 10 – turnto10.com
Providence · New Bedford
Imagine taking years off your face without surgery. Do it in an hour and all people see are results.
Mary Ella doesn’t have to imagine it; she’s doing it, to erase years and something more.
“I have some dark pigmentation on my skin from sun damage that occurred a long time ago. I don’t go in the sun anymore but it’s too late,” says Mary Ella Dubreuil.
“This has actually helped to lighten the spot I have here which was my original complaint, she says.”
Mary Ella has just undergone microdermabrasion. “It’s excellent for enlarged pores, for pigmentations such as small dark sunspots or environmental damage,” says aesthetician Patty Priestner.
Microdermabrasion exfoliates the skin with a very fine crystal. “It’s actually a salt and it’s been crystallized several hundred times so it’s like a very fine cornstarch or powder,” explains Priestner.
The skin absorbs the salt, which, according to Priestner, eats up the dead skin tissue. “Right now this pressure is forcing the salt to the skin, you can see where it actually changes the color of the skin.”
The microdermabrasion is followed by the application of a mask. The particular mask used on Dubreuil is a high dose of vitamin C.
Priestner uses ultrasound to force the vitamins from the mask deep into the skin.
“The best part is having skin that feels alive and vibrant,” Priestner says.
Another client know only as Brenda is undergoing one of a series of micropeels.
Unlike Microdermabrasion, this procedure uses chemicals.
Before those chemicals are applied, Priestner does something called dermaplaning.
“Rather than buffing the skin, it’s actually doing a very light scraping of the skin without causing any scrape marks or scrape penetration so it’s going to remove dead skin tissue very much like a dandruff like substance,” she says.
Then the chemical is applied. “This is a chemical mixed of lactic acid and salicylic acid.” This chemical stays on a minute or two, no more.
“This is a neutralizer which is stopping and halting the acids from going any further. Dry ice, applied to the skin, acts as an exfolient,” says Priestner.
Brenda says it’s not uncomfortable at all.
In all, Brenda will have a series of 4 to 7 micropeels over a period of several months. So far, she’s only had a few treatments and is using no makeup.
“Patty told me after my treatments, I wouldn’t have to do it and people would be coming up to me saying what kind of makeup do you have on and they’ve already started doing that and I haven’t finished my treatments. That was a compliment,” says Brenda.
Priestner works out of Dr. Patrick Sullivan’s office, a well-known plastic surgeon in our area.