Optimizing Your Treatment Results

You have just had a skin treatment at Carter MD Aesthetics.  Wouldn’t you want to get the very best results possible?  There are a few general health behaviors you can follow and also some skin specific things that you can do that will increase the chances of the best outcome possible following your treatment or procedure.

Generally, all of the well accepted healthy practices that we may already know about apply for skin treatment recovery as well.  The first of these is 7-8 hours of quality sleep each night.  Recent evidence points out that if you are shortchanged one night you can in fact “catch up” from a sleep deficit as long as it is accomplished within a week of the shortened sleep period.  Another important thing is drinking the correct amount of healthy fluid each day.  This would be about 64 oz. of liquid.  Coffee, either caffeinated or not, counts.  Yes, caffeine is a weak diuretic but this effect is more than made up for by the volume of liquid in the coffee consumed.  Sadly, alcoholic beverages do not count as healthy fluids!  Likewise, sugar containing liquids and foods are not healthy.  Ingested simple sugars are inflammatory in our bodies.  We want our body’s repair systems to be focused on repairing what was recently done to our skin and not trying to counteract a widespread inflammatory process because of dietary indiscretion. Finally, and perhaps the very most important general good health guideline is to eliminate or at least severely restrict smoking.  Besides being extremely pro-inflammation, smoking shuts down the ability of fibroblasts to create type 3 collagen which is one of the four most important forms of collagen that make up all of the collagen in our skin.

Now, what specific measures can be taken to promote the very best skin procedure outcome?  First and foremost, increase your protein intake.  Although we typically require 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight, wound healing requires that we increase that amount by 50%.  The very healthiest form of protein comes from the plant kingdom.  Second best is from lean animal sources like fish and poultry.  Least healthy is from animals which propel themselves with legs.  Next in importance is taking in the optimum amount of vitamin C for tissue repair.  This is 500 mg twice a day to best heal wounded skin.  Lastly, I would recommend collagen peptides, 4 tbs once a day.  Make certain that the collagen product you buy is in the form of peptides. 

Lastly, if your skin treatment involved creating open wounds in the skin, such as from micro needling or a fractionated CO2 laser, then topical Intense (Plated) Exosomes by Rion, twice a day for at least the first three days will accelerate the repair process and lessen one’s recovery time.  This product is available at our office.

We have done our part by intelligently wounding your skin.  Now by following these helpful suggestions you will maximize the benefit from your treatment.  Such a great team we make, right?

William A. Carter, M.D.