6 quick fab fixes for the holidays

We’re days away from the most wonderful day of the year!  Amid the mad shopping for Christmas gifts, schedules are obviously getting tighter by the day. And with invitations to endless parties and reunions, we also need to prepare ourselves for those photo ops bound to happen with friends, colleagues, and new acquaintances as we draw closer to Christmas and New Year.

If you’re a millennial who feels you look older than your age because of work stress or a “tita of Manila” who embraces her age but would still want to look  gorgeous for the Christmas season, despair not.

I’ve listed down here six quick and easy fixes to make you look fabulous this holiday season.

1. Get that tight, dewy, glowing skin in less than 30 minutes. Thank God for state-of-the-art laser procedures that could now wipe off your wrinkles in as short as 30 minutes!

There are two types of wrinkles — dynamic and static.

Dynamic wrinkles are caused by facial expressions such as frowning, smiling, and laughing. For dynamic wrinkles, botulinum toxin (Botox) is still the best treatment available, still nothing compares to it. For permanent furrows or deep wrinkles, fillers are recommended to be placed in the exact places where they are needed. It is both cost-efficient for the patient and also prevents deformations.

I see a lot of faces distorted due to overly aggressive filler injections like protruding lips, unnatural cheek mound, big nodules here and there, which defeat the purpose of making yourself look better. A systematic approach to filler injections would avoid these complications of buckled-up face.

The Solera platform is a compact, high-powered laser treatment system which introduces the first infrared light source for sustained, deep volumetric dermal heating, which can be performed on the face, neck, abdomen and extremities.  This is indicated for patients who are not yet ready for a facelift. The patient just lies down while the applicator head slides down gently on her or his skin in a relaxing, massaging mode that can make one sleep soundly.

Another state-of-the-art laser machine is the Genesis Plus.  There is now a laser treatment which is designed for all skin types and even tanned skin.  It can even be used on all body parts (excluding the eye and its surrounding areas though) and reduces hypertrophic and keloid scars as well.  It reduces pores, improves the texture of the skin, improves rosacea and its concomitant diffused redness, plus many others. What’s even better is that this laser treatment machine has been scientifically proven to produce new collagen.

2. Zap those freckles, sunspots, age spots. With all the hypes on skin whitening, you need to verify whatever is being offered to you.  I have seen a lot of cases damaged by procedures done on them.  There is this set of creams now available in the Philippines that is very mild on the skin; in fact, it is being used to whiten the more sensitive areas of our body like the neck, armpits, genital area.  These areas are not only thin, they also get macerated every once in a while due to sweat, which is why they irritate easily, compared to other parts of our body.  A gentle peel and whitening cream is the best alternative to avoid this sensitization and irritation.  These products, in combination with an anti-aging cream or anti-acne and anti-melasma creams on the face, are also best for aging skin with acne or aging skin with pigmentation.

Solar lentigo is a harmless patch of darkened skin that results from exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which causes local proliferation of melanocytes (cells that produce melanin pigments) and accumulation of melanin within the skin cells (keratinocytes). Solar lentigos or lentigines are very common, especially in people over the age of 40 years. Sometimes, they are also known as an “old age spot” or “senile freckle.”  Lentigines, which usually come with pesky warty growths on the skin, may now be a thing of the past with the Enlighten laser treatment machine.

3. Be vain about veins. All the three layers of our skin get thinner as we age.  This explains why as we grow older, veins become more pronounced. And some people might be judged as too vain about their veins, but the truth is, protruding veins are not really a very pleasant sight.  Again, laser technology is currently the safest and fastest way to treat unsightly veins. Facial veins are actually harmless but could be unsightly. The Excel laser machine provides amazing results in treating not just facial veins but also prominent veins on your hands or legs.

4. Get soft, smooth hands in half an hour. During the holiday season, our hands are the most active with all those “mano po” moments from our godchildren and young family members.  Actually, our hands are among the most used parts of our body, which are often exposed to a lot of chemicals and trauma.  Most of the time, we overlook the condition of our hands. As such, they often show the first signs of aging such as dryness, roughness, skin discoloration. We have a lot of topical alternative creams to address the problem of skin discoloration. But wrinkling of the hands is a more complex problem. I discovered the ablative laser with special mention of PROFRAC as a one-of-a-kind treatment that provides quick rejuvenation of the hands in as short as half an hour with very minimal downtime and could be done in a single session. So, if you want to have those soft, smooth hands this holiday season, you may ask your certified dermatologist for this machine. It would be the smartest way to spend your 30 minutes. The best results will be visible in two to three days.
This machine, by the way, also addresses prominent hand veins.

5. Be armpit-perfect. Dying to buy that gloriously sexy holiday outfit but you feel that your armpits won’t do justice to it? Take heart, there is a non-invasive laser machine called The Cutera CoolGlide, a light therapy system that’s custom-designed to eliminate undesired hair, not just from your armpits, but from all parts of your body. This is how it works: CoolGlide generates pulses of intense, concentrated light which are directed through small, cooled hand pieces applied at the treatment site. This energy passes through the skin to the hair follicle. lt is then absorbed by pigments in the hair and hair follicle, technically killing the hair roots while protecting the delicate pores of the skin.

6. Be fab minus that flab. True, the constant problem that everyone worries about is the flab.  How can you be fab when you have flabs? The fastest way to eliminate flab is still liposuction and for better outcome, this is followed up by the Solera Titan, another amazing laser treatment machine, which helps tone the skin up faster. But liposuction does have a downtime and you need to consult certified doctors who could best do this procedure on you, if you’re really thinking about losing inches the quick way.

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For questions or inquiries, call 0917-4976261, 0999-8834802 or 263-4094; email gc_beltran@yahoo.com.