Do-It-Yourself or Professional Grade Microneedling?

Diwan, Microneedling - Image

Recently, microneedling has seen a surge in popularity. Just this month, Vogue hailed microneedling as the “next big thing in skincare”! As microneedling has become an established treatment, a number of at-home alternatives, often called dermarollers, have been introduced in addition to professional, in-office microneedling treatments. Dr. Diwan reminds her patients, that microneedling, like other skincare services, will have the best results when performed by a skin care professional.

Professional Precision

While both at-home dermarolling and professional microneedling share the same principle of creating micro-wounds in the skin’s surface to stimulate collagen and elastin production, at-home dermarollers are different than what Dr. Diwan and her staff utilize at her Westlake practice. Whereas at-home devices are simply needle-studded rollers that employ one depth of needles, professional microneedling uses a hand-held device with which needles of different lengths can be used so that different depths in the skin can be reached. In this way, the treatment is customized to the specific problem being treated, and achieve optimal results. 

Going Deeper, Better Results

With safety in mind, the do-it-yourself at home treatments are limited to shorter needles and are thus substantially less effective. At our office the needle length used is selected for your specific skin concern. Skin laxity, deeper wrinkles, acne scarring, and stretch marks—all require the use of longer needles that cannot be found with at-home dermarollers.

Keeping Clean

Both at-home and in-office techniques require creating microscopic entries into your skin. Thus, it is important that microneedling be performed in a clean and professional setting to prevent infection (which can lead to scarring). At-home dermarollers are nearly impossible to sterilize and store in a sterile manner, and their use can lead to infection. To ensure your treatment is as clean and safe as possible, Dr. Diwan requires the use of a sterile, single-use tip for each treatment which is discarded after each use.

Enhance

The results of professional microneedling are enhanced with the use of serum containing growth factors.  The channels created by microneedling penetrate the skin barrier, allowing growth factors applied to the skin surface, to infuse directly to deeper skin cells where collagen and elastin production is enhanced. Microneedling has been shown to increase the absorption of the serum with growth factors by up to 300 percent. Dr. Diwan’s protocol involves the application of medical grade growth factor serums before and after your treatment to maximize your results. These serums are available only with certain microneedling devices to skincare professionals, enhancing the benefits of in-office microneedling.

We recommend investing in the best technology to obtain the best results—schedule a microneedling consultation with Dr. Diwan at Westlake’s Laser & Skin Surgery Center.