How Often Should You Get Microdermabrasion
August 20, 2021 by VitalSkin Dermatology
Microdermabrasion has long been a go-to treatment for people looking to improve the tone and quality of their skin. One question that often comes up around the procedure is how often you should get microdermabrasion. Is there a balance? Can you get the procedure too often or too seldom? Let’s take a look at this in greater detail.
How Skin Regenerates
As a starting point, it’s important to understand how the skin functions and regenerates. The skin is made up of multiple layered sections, as you likely know, with the epidermis forming the top layer and the dermis forming the deeper layers below. The epidermis is constantly shedding layers and replacing them. This process of regeneration typically happens in 30-day intervals.
The dermis, however, does not go through this process of shedding and regeneration. Impacting the dermis, therefore, needs to happen over time through multiple treatments.
How Microdermabrasion Affects the Skin
Now let’s consider what actually happens during microdermabrasion. While minimally invasive, microdermabrasion is used to affect slight trauma to the skin. Why would you want to ding your skin slightly during a dermatological procedure? So that the skin can reorder itself during the healing process, resulting in smoother and more toned skin.
Given the layered structure of the skin, however, microdermabrasion must be repeated over a period of time so that the procedure can create continued improvement in the skin. Multiple sessions are also required so that the procedure can affect the dermis as well as the epidermis and create longer-term changes to the skin.
As someone proceeds through multiple sessions of microdermabrasion, the procedure begins to affect real change on the epidermis, allowing it to produce new cells more quickly and making it thicker and more buoyant. Lower layers of the epidermis will come together in a more structured fashion, adding more strength and radiance to the skin. Finally, the dermis will eventually see changes, too. Results from microdermabrasion in the dermis include an increase in collagen and elastic fibers. Microdermabrasion also encourages more and larger fibroblasts in the dermis, generating better production of collagen in the long term.
How Often to Get Microdermabrasion
Given all that, then, how often should you get microdermabrasion? Most skilled and licensed aestheticians and dermatologists recommend the following:
- Two to four weeks between sessions
- Six to 12 sessions on average
The two to four week gap between sessions works in two ways— it provides time for the skin to repair and restructure, while ensuring that the skin does not go through an entire 30-day regeneration cycle. In other words, the microdermabrasion procedure can stay ahead of the curve. The multiple sessions are necessary in order to create significant improvements and long-term changes in the skin. By giving you between six and 12 treatments, your aesthetician or dermatologist will be able to make the greatest impact on the dermis, increase collagen production, and retrain the skin to regenerate in a more orderly fashion. While some results will be visible after one session, you will notice much more consistent results with multiple sessions. For the ultimate benefits from microdermabrasion, plan on a monthly session for maintenance on an ongoing basis.
Microdermabrasion is a hugely popular procedure, thanks to its range of benefits and fast recovery times. It encourages collagen production, increasing elasticity, and can work to eliminate the signs of scars and sun damage, resulting in more youthful looking skin. If you would like to begin exploring how microdermabrasion can improve the tone, structure and glow of your own skin, contact a VitalSkin professional today.