acne scars on sensitive skin

[Papillon]

Dear Ms. Vaughter,

 

     I'm interested in purchasing the dermaroller you offer on you site, but I have a question.  I have acne scars that I've been trying to get rid of for the past several years (I'm 31 years old).  I've already spent a few thousand dollars on a wide range of treatments and procedures including skin needling. Which the last lady that did it I feel went too deep into the skin since I was left with skin that seemed kind of bumpy after it healed.  

 

     What I was wondering is that since I've already had so many scar removal treatments done to my skin some of the scars look white underneath, which I was told once a scar turns white there's really not much that can be done to improve it.  In your experience with the dermarollers can one expect to see much improvement on old scarring?  I saw minimal improvement with skin needling, but I only had it done twice and like I mentioned it seems that the needles when too far into the skin.  Since dermarolling works on the same principle I wonder if I could expect any better results.  I would really appreciate your opinion.  Thank you for reading my posting.

[SarahVaughter]

First of all I would like to point out that I am not a doctor. I can give you my opinion based on my research and the experience with our customers. Acne scars are a very big problem and current medicine has not an ideal or even adequate solution for them.  Dermarolling usually improves acne scars but not everyone´s skin reacts the same to dermarolling.

   

  Some people are really prone to bad healing. If you underwent several acne treatments such as dermabrasion, acid peels or certain kinds of laser treatment, it will have made your skin thinner. Dermabrasion and acid peels work by basically removing a small part of the top layer of the skin and the acne scars get shallower but by this your skin gets thinner because the part of the top layer of your skin was removed.

   

  Some lasers also remove the top layer of the skin.  That might be the reason why the needles went too deep in your case (if this is indeed the case). It is because your skin is thinned by the acne treatments.

   

  On the contrary, dermarolling is in fact thickening the skin because it is not removing any part of your skin. It makes tiny micro-holes in your skin and those will heal and if you do it many times it should fill in the the scar. It should trigger new skin growth and fill the scar.  It is a very slow process and you can only dermaroll your skin every 4-6 or even 8 weeks with long needles.

   

  Another problem that happens with dermarolling and scars is that it exposes some semi-hidden acne scars that were below your skin and they were not so visible because there was a small layer of skin covering them. But the scar was there.

   

    Dermarolling uncovered those hidden scars because the dermaroller exposed the scar underneath.  Lots of people report that their acne-scarred skin actually looked worse after several initial rollings because all those "hidden" scars were exposed. But that was the first step to improve the scars. Later their scars improved by dermarolling.

   

  What worries me is that you healed with bumpy skin.  That should not happen with dermarolling and to be honest I do not want to advice you to roll because it seems that either your skin is seriously thinned by previous acne scar treatments or you have a condition of healing badly, or the dermarolling was overdone.

   

  The only advice I can give you is to buy a shallow dermaroller of 0.5 mm needle length and try to roll but not the whole face. Try just a small part of your face. First roll on your décolleté for example and check how it healed. But the skin on your décolleté  is probably thicker than your face so it is not an indication for you how your face will heal. Try to roll a small part of your face. If it goes well try a bigger part.

   

  A 0.5 mm dermaroller can be normally used twice a  week but if your skin is thin, the needles will go deeper than in people with normal skin thickness so please be careful and never roll if the skin hasn't fully healed from previous rolling.

   

      If everything goes well, then later you can buy a dermaroller with longer needles. Normally, acne scars need really long needles to improve. Such as 2 mm needles, but in your case I would be very reluctant to do that because as you said you might heal again bumpily.

   

    What  you could try though is to use our single needle. With that single needle you will do several pricks into one of your acne scar and you will prick it every month. Every month the same scar.  After several months you should see improvement.  Both in depth and the color.

   

  If your skin heals well with this single needle method you can prick more scars but please first try only one, somewhere on the side of your face, because if you have a rare condition predisposing you to bad healing, it might heal badly. It's a very rare condition but since you got bumpy skin from rolling, I am really concerned.

   

  A person with thinned skin will get different results than a person with thick skin so it is really difficult to give some general advice. You have to carefully experiment on your own skin.

   

  We will soon have an improved version of our single needle so you should wait and order about three weeks from now, when we received a new batch of 0.5 mm rollers and an improved single needle that can't penetrate the skin too much.

[kazia]

Acne scars are seems frustrating when eventually products reacts and your skin does allow because you have sensitive skin. I have also been in that situation and I just treated it with some natural organic products like coconut oil , aloe vera and tea tree oil.