IPL Treatments
It’s been established that I am a product junkie - skin products, hair care products and I’m also a treatment junkie!
This past weekend, I visited my favorite Nurse Practitioner Julie for my second IPL treatment. Julie is an NP at Ever/Body in NYC / Flat-Iron. Their facility is new, bright, clean and everyone is very friendly and helpful.
They offer a variety of treatments --> (https://everbody.com/services/).
They do weekend appointments so it is a breeze to get into the city for an early morning appointment.
IPL stands for Intense Pulsed Light. It’s a Photofacial, which is a non-invasive way to treat and reduce mild sun damage, brown spots, broken capillaries and irregular pigmentation. IPL uses intense flashes of light that penetrate deep below the skin’s surface to break down pigment.
I have fair skin and freckles, so I saw lots of micro crusting after my first treatment that we did in early July. We waited until the fall to do the second treatment since IPL is counter intuitive to sun exposure. My second trip, I had less microcrusting. Overall my skin texture continues to even out. I have 2 additional treatments; I will get one in November and one in December. They need to be spaced a month out from each other.
Here’s the real talk. It’s not relaxing and it feels like work. I’m noisy and a jumper, so I have to work really hard not to yelp and jump. However, it doesn’t last forever and Julie was in constant communication with me about my pain level and if I needed a break. The results are worth the effort.
The machine creates a very bright light and the sensation it creates, as Julie describes is “spicy”. I think that is spot on - people like me, with fair skin will feel the spicy a bit more than people with different pigment. Your eyes are covered as well as your eye brows. Your skin is slathered with a gel that helps to distribute the light.
I’m eager to see what is my next skin treatment after I finish my IPL sessions.
Before first IPL Treatment
After first IPL Treatment (I look super serious....!)
The day after the first IPL treatment. You can see the micro crusting. Nothing that was crazy or prevented me from going out in public. My freckles just looked a little bit darker.
This was 1 week after the first IPL treatment.
Here are the pictures from the second IPL treatment (btw.... what I will do for a blog post!)
After the 2nd IPL treatment
The second time around I had less micro crusting than the first time. To me this is a good thing - it means that I took care of my skin over the summer and I didn’t increase my sun exposure causing new damage. Another goal is to reduce the capillaries around my nose...when I am on a Zoom meeting they are no longer the first thing I see on my face.
Thank you for reading this far. I will update the blog post in November and December with updated pictures.
