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Couperose: an effective treatment

January 24, 2017

Chronicles

Laser removal of redness


Are you tired of showing redness, no matter the time of year and the attempts at camouflaging it? Would you like to treat your couperose with an effective treatment that doesn’t involve recovery? Aesthetic medicine can meet your needs with pulsed light. Let’s take a look at this in detail.

Couperose: what is it?
Couperose is a chronic skin condition caused by the weakening of the blood vessels, located mainly on the cheeks and nose. It’s totally natural for your skin to redden under the influence of heat, cold, emotion, stimulants (alcohol, spices, coffee), or during physical activity. The blood vessels dilate to let blood flow through them, then spontaneously close after a certain amount of time has passed, thus allowing the skin to regain its normal appearance. However, certain blood vessels may have trouble reclosing; redness then appears and couperose settles in.

The origins of couperose
In most cases, couperose is hereditary: the blood vessels are genetically “programmed” to gradually lose their vitality. However, it can also result from an intense sunburn, surgery, or frostbite.

Couperose and rosacea: what’s the difference?
Couperose is a vascular condition that affects both large and small blood vessels and appears as localized redness in specific areas. Rosacea, on the other hand, is associated with permanent redness that only involves the small blood vessels as well as rashes. You might say that it’s an advanced stage of couperose: the red spots can sometimes be very intense and diffuse, combined with pimples similar to those caused by acne. In that case, we’re talking about acne rosacea. 

Treating couperose
Intense pulsed light (IPL) is one of the most frequently used methods to date for treating couperose. In aesthetic medicine, these technological platforms used to even out skin tone are medical grade, very safe, and highly effective.

How does it work?
Pulsed light can treat several types of skin disorders thanks to its adjustable penetrating power: permanent hair removal, mild to moderate acne, age spots, redness, etc. It can therefore treat couperose and is effective even when the face takes on a purplish complexion, a sign that the blood vessels are seriously weakened.
A customized filter is inserted into the universal applicator to achieve the desired wavelength, according to the desired therapeutic effect. Yellow light, for example, reaches a depth of 560 nanometres and helps calm inflammation. During a typical session, a protective gel is first applied to the skin, then the nozzle moves over the entire treated surface and diffuses light by pulsation. At the end of the session, the skin is cleaned and pampered with soothing products.

The results
The results are incremental; you’ll need 3 or 4 sessions — depending on the initial condition of the skin — for an even complexion. In addition, since couperose is a chronic condition, annual touch-up sessions will be necessary to maintain the results and strengthen the capillaries.

What happens if couperose isn’t properly treated?
If they’re not handled correctly, the red spots will continue to multiply, and it will be increasingly difficult to camouflage them — hence the interest in treating couperose as soon as possible. The fewer “defective” blood vessels there are, the faster and more effective the treatment will be in terms of the number of required sessions.

There’s no excuse, therefore, for not taking charge of your couperose! Winter is also a particularly appropriate time to make use of the benefits of pulsed light. Take advantage of it to give yourself a radiant complexion before the summer!

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