Lasers, Red Light and RF Microneedling — What Actually Works

Johanna is sharing another conversation from the unPAUSED podcast — Dr. Mary Claire Haver with Dr. Tony Youn, board certified plastic surgeon and bestselling author of Younger for Life. This one moves from the science of skin into the practical: in-office treatments, at-home devices, and how to think about anti-aging without going down a rabbit hole. IPL, fractional CO2 lasers, chemical peels, radiofrequency microneedling, red light therapy — Dr. Youn covers what each one actually does and where the limitations are.

🤩unPAUSED with Dr. Mary Claire Haver — Dr. Tony Youn 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unpaused-with-dr-mary-claire-haver/id1846701533?i=1000768880815

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Swinging through these with legal Midlife's calling honey where nobody's full. Got the fire side where I'm not the shine. This is our time, yeah. So divine, old and drive, and hold and free. Women owned in midlife, just do a dance through the changes with the heart so strong. This is our anthem.

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Come and sing along. Hello, my friends, and welcome back to Not Your Mother's Midlife. I'm your host, Joanna, and today we're talking about treatments. The in-office ones, the at-home ones, and how to figure out which ones are actually worth your time and money. I'm sharing another conversation from the AnnPause podcast. Dr. Mary Claire Haver and Dr. Tony Yoon. Um, I shared their first conversation a couple of episodes ago, which covered what estrogen actually does to the skin in menopause. This one picks up from there and gets into what you can actually do about it. So Dr. Yoon goes through the most commonly asked about in-office treatments one by one, and he's very clear about what each one does and importantly what it doesn't do. Because I think a lot of us have sat in a consultation room and nodded along without fully understanding what we're actually agreeing to. This conversation gives you the background to ask better questions. He starts with IPL, intense pulsed light, which targets hyperpigmentation and sun damage. If you've got uneven skin tone, dark spots, or the kind of sun damage that's been building for decades, this is where the IPL earns its place. It's not a collagen treatment, it's not going to change skin texture or firmness, but for what it does do, it does it very well. I have had this treatment. You can go to my YouTube channel, the link is below, and watch the episode on my it's called BBL experience. So it's bright rather than intense. Like um, so you can see that experience that I had. Then he covers fractional CO2 lasers, and he makes a point here that I think is worth knowing. The older, more aggressive CO2 lasers, the ones that required weeks of downtime and carried a real risk of complications, have given way to a new fractional version that are more controlled and more targeted. The results are real, but so is the recovery. And he's straightforward about that. It's not a lunchtime treatment. But chemical peels get spoken about too, and he explains that the depth determines results. A superficial peel and a deep peel are not the same thing. They're treating different problems at different levels of the skin. And a lot of women have had a peel and felt underwhelmed by it, and it's often because the depth wasn't matched to what they were actually trying to address. Then there's radio frequency microneedling. It's probably the one that he gets asked the most about, what it can realistically achieve, which is skin tightening and texture improvement over time, and where it falls short, which is the expectation that it's going to dramatically lift or restructure your face. It's a solid treatment, but it's not a surgery replacement. And anyone telling you otherwise is overselling it. I have had this treatment also. You can go and check it on my YouTube channel. It's under the title of Halo. You can find a link to my channel in the show notes below. Then he moves into at-home devices, which is where I think a lot of us spend money and wonder whether it's actually doing anything. He talks about red light therapy specifically, what the studies actually show about its effect of on collagen and elastin. The device matters and the consistency matters. It's not a one-week fix. He also covers dermal stampers. I think we've all seen these on TikTok and Instagram, and people are rolling things on their face or stamping their face. He tells you what to look for and what separates a device that's actually going to do something from one that's basically just poking you in the face and it could actually tear your skin. Needle depth and quality are the things to pay attention to, and he goes into specific details about that and also serums to put on that will actually help it and ones to not put on, which actually could run you into an infection. The bigger picture thread running through all of this is something that he comes back to a few times. How to think about aging and anti-aging without swinging to either extreme, not ignoring it, not becoming obsessive about it. Finding the things that are actually evidence-based, that match what you're actually trying to achieve and that fit into your life rather than taking over your life and also what's affordable for people. I'll link the full episode in the show notes for you to click on. And again, thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend who'd love it too, and drop your thoughts or ideas for future episodes. Subscribe to this podcast and to my YouTube channel so you never miss an episode or a video. And until next week, I am Joanna and this is Not Your Mother's Midlife. Bye bye.