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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi, my name’s Michelle Gellis, and I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to speak to you today about microneedling for hair loss. Go to the first slide.

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A little bit about me. I am an acupuncture physician. I am the author of this book called Treating the Face. It is a comprehensive guide. Wait this way and back a little bit. Okay. It is a hardcover 500 page full color book with over 350 images in it, on treating the face and. There’s an entire chapter in this book on micro needling, so you might wanna check that out.

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And I teach cosmetic and facial acupuncture classes internationally, and I am currently on faculty at Yoan University in Los Angeles, California. So what is microneedling? Microneedling creates micro channels in the skin, and these micro channels will trigger cellular repair and regeneration. It helps to stimulate collagen and elastin and growth factors in the skin, improves the blood flow to the skin, and therefore nutrient delivery.

It enhances the absorption of any topical products that are put on the skin. And. Therefore it is used for skin rejuvenation, for things like wrinkles, scars, pigmentation issues, and what we’re gonna talk about today, hair growth. This is what a micro natal pen looks like. This particular one is made by AccuLift and you can see the website on the slide there, acif skincare.com.

And these have a dial here, and this determines. How deep the little needles on this cartridge will go into the skin. And this little window here it determines the speed, how fast those needles are going in and out of the skin. And this is what the needle cartridges look like. These are the 16 pin or 16 needle cartridges that would be used for microneedling the scalp.

And I did wanna talk to you a little bit today about hair loss, different types of hair loss. There are a lot of different reasons why we lose our hair. And this quick 10 minute lecture I’m giving you today is part a much longer one hour CEU lecture that I give. Which goes into all of this in much more depth.

So this is an overview, but some of the more common types of hair loss are androgenetic. Alopecia, which is commonly referred to as male pattern or female pattern baldness or hair loss. Intelligent effluvium, which is typically from stress or illness if your hair falls out. Alopecia areata, which is an autoimmune disease, scarring up.

Alopecia, which is an irrevocable follicle loss. There are other hair shaft abnormalities. Enogen Effluvium, which is a rapid hair loss resulting from some sort of a medical treatment like radiation or chemo. Tinia capita, which is ringworm in the scalp. And hypo psychosis, which is just naturally sparse hair or reduced hair growth.

Now micro noodling is good for some of these and not for others, but I just wanted for to purposes of today. I just wanted to give you an overview on some of the different types of hair loss within the TCM framework, hair loss. Can mean reduced follicles, whereas hair thinning is the reduced shaft, the caliber of the hair shaft, and we have several patterns that we look for.

So chi and blood deficiency, damp heat, liver, kidney deficiency. These are all different patterns that can show up with hair loss, just microneedling. I’m sorry for hair loss that microneedling can be effective for. So you want to address the root with body points and then do some local scalp therapy with the microneedling.

So you do your acupuncture body points, and then you would do the microneedling locally and. Blood heat generating wind pattern might show up as itching, headache, red tongue, and the treatment. Would be to clear the heat, extinguish the wind chi and blood deficiency frequently, or post illness or postpartum.

And your patient may have fatigue, palor, weak pulse, thin hair. And the treatment would be to tonify the cheek, nourish the blood for damp heat. This is often diet related. They might have a greasy scalp, loose roots, itching, red tongue, so you wanna clear the heat, resolve the dampness. And for a liver and kidney deficiency, this can happen in middle aged individuals.

They might have dull or graying hair, so microneedling can actually help the hair to not be as gray as well. They might have sore back knees, dizziness. Red tongue thin coat. Thin rapid pulse. So you wanna nourish the liver and the kidney. And of course, within Chinese medicine, mental and emotional factors can play a role in hair loss.

So stress, grief and worry can cause hair loss. So how does microneedling support the hair growth? Microneedling, as I said, stimulates the collagen production. Also, when you create these little micro injuries, it triggers cytokine and regenerative cycling in the skin. And this can help with the hair regrowth.

It enhances blood circulation. It, as I mentioned, improves the absorption. And trans epidermal delivery, how any topicals that you would put on your scalp, whether it’s a medical topical, like something like Minoxidil or some sort of a peptide or a growth serum, it can thicken the existing hair. And enhance the overall scalp health, making a more more, better, more fertile place for the hair to grow.

And it can activate some if the person has a hair follicle, it can activate the dormant follicles promoting new growth. It also releases growth factors and in my longer lecture, I get into what all of these different growth factors are, and these can help with all of the above concerns. So within Chinese medicine, the way we think of it is microneedling promotes qi blood.

And collagen renewal and stimulating the scalp works with microcirculation for the follicle vitality.

So again, activating stem cells, enhancing the microcirculation and creating collagen production can help to thicken the hair and enhance the overall scalp health. The equipment that you need is a professional microneedling pen. Especially if you’re working in your office, you don’t want to get a commercially available pen.

You want to get a professional microneedle pen because the speed. Will be calibrated properly. The pen itself should have anti backflow technology. The needle should come in single use cartridges and then serums that are appropriate for hair growth. Things that. Contain growth factors or peptides.

Botanicals, and you will prep the scalp with witch hazel or alcohol to cleanse it. You’re going to need gloves. You’re going to section the hair. And you could put topical anesthetic on and then put on a disposable, like a shower cap for 15 minutes. You can even use blue light if you have a blue light device.

So you want, the basic treatment flow is you meet with your patient. You’re going to prescreen them for any contraindications and go through a treatment plan. Typically, you’re going to see them once every two weeks or so, and. You’re going to cleanse the skin, apply numbing cream. Then that has to come off and you would section the hair, whatever hair is there, and you’re going to apply serum.

You’re gonna set the depth on the pen, depending on where in the scalp. And other factors, it’s either gonna be 0.25 to 1.0 millimeter, and then you’ll either do a linear or a stamping motion. You could use red light afterwards to help to increase the blood flow, and then you would set up aftercare with the patient, tell them what needs to be done, and then you could see them again in two to four weeks.

Typically improvement is seen within eight to 12 weeks. And that usually looks like enhanced density and reduced shedding. And you want to make sure that. You are following clean needle techniques. You’re going to use gloves. Your hands are gonna be clean. You would have a clean field set up. You definitely want to use single use cartridges, and they’re put into the sharps afterwards and you want to record the.

Of the needle, how many passes you did, if you used an LED light, how much time and what the response was. And then of course, document with before and after photos. So here are a couple of before and after photos from patients over about 12 weeks. And as you can see the density. Was quite significant density change in this patient’s hair.

And the first one was taken. If you’re wondering why the hair color was different this was taken. In the beginning of the autumn after the summer, and then this was taken 12 weeks later and after some haircuts, all of the blonde had grown out after a few months. And this is another before and after, again, significant changes in this bald area.

So if you want to learn more on my website, facial acupuncture classes.com, you can get a copy of my ebook on microneedling. And I also offer several different classes on microneedling for anti-aging acne. Hair loss. And I also teach live hands-on classes around the country and around the world.

But the online classes do have live they have demos and they’re all approved for continuing education. So you can visit facial acupuncture classes.com. And if you wanna learn more about the products, go to Alife Skincare. Com.

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So the first thing you want to look at when you are considering purchasing a device and you’re looking at safety features is the weight.

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Hi, my name is Michelle Gellis. I am an acupuncture physician and an author, and I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to speak to you about safety concerns when purchasing a microneedling device. So there are a lot of microneedling devices out. On the market now, and I’m not here to try to sell you one, but the American Acupuncture Council is an insurance agency, and so safety is very important to them, and it should be very important to us as practitioners, both the safety of our patients and Our peace of mind when we are taking on a practice, whether it’s acupuncture, needling, or in this case, if we are doing microneedling.

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So the first thing you want to look at when you are considering purchasing a device and you’re looking at safety features is the weight. Of the pen itself and the reason why this is important, if you are doing a lot of microneedling, then if your pen is too heavy, your hand will get tired, and you may not have the consistency across the face, neck, chest, hands, wherever you’re going to be microneedling that you would have with a lighter device.

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Now that said, you don’t want to buy a product that is merely made out of aluminum, which is very lightweight, but it’s not going to be durable, and then you can run it into other problems with the product. Breaking or just not lasting very long. Something that is aluminum and stainless steel will give you the durability and also the lightness that you are looking for.

The next important thing when you’re looking at safety in a device is how easy is it for it to use and to adjust? So there should be two adjustments on any microneedle pen. And the first one, which is also a safety feature, is the speed. So in this particular pen, the. Speed, which is indicated by these different numbers is easily visible.

And so you know exactly what speed the pen is operating at. What does speed mean? The speed is how quickly the needles go up and down. So if they’re going too slowly. So we refer to this as RPMs. If it’s going too slowly, it can actually tear at the skin, and so you don’t want a pen that isn’t at least 16,000 RPMs with 18,000 being the kind of gold standard for professional microneedle devices.

The next feature. Setting is, if you look at the pen here, there’s numbers on the. Pen and these numbers indicate how deep the needles will penetrate into the skin. Professional micro noodle devices typically will adjust from zero. To 2.5 millimeters and usually when you are using a microneedle pen, you’re going to start out around 0.25 and you really, when you’re working on the phase, really don’t wanna go over 1.0 millimeters.

The next important safety feature that we’re looking at. So these numbers should be easy to read even if you have a protective sleeve over the pen, and it should be easy to adjust without any confusion about. What number you’re at. Next is the actual cartridges themselves and the cartridges you purchased should be pre sterilized.

And this is usually done through a gas process and. The package itself should be sealed. It should be dated, and it should be easy to open. So heal them open and. The cartridge itself should not be a screw type, and the reason is screw type cartridges can pop off the pen. You want something that has a bayonet.

Tight, and you’ll see this is a three prong bayonet. You want a bayonet type, which when you put it into the pen, it will click on nice and tight, and you don’t have to worry about the cartridge popping off. So another. Important feature of buying a professional pen should be some sort of anti backflow technology.

So let’s break this down. What does that mean, anti backflow technology? The prongs when they go into the pen should. Fit into sorry, my camera’s reversed, so you can actually see right inside there. There are three little holes inside the pen and there are three. Places where the pen connects and then there are three hall.

Let me do it this way. Let’s see, trying to get the right light. You can see, almost see there’s three holes here on the cartridge itself. So these three prongs go into the hu inside the pen, and they fit like this, and then you push it on. And once it’s connected, it stays connected. Also, the needles should be protected with a tip so that when you open the package up, if you put the cartridge down, the needles aren’t exposed.

But don’t forget to take the tip off before you do your microneedling. Then as you adjust the pen, you can see the needles will come out over the top, just like that. You see that? So that’s adjusted. Right now I am all the way up at 2.5, but you would never, so that’s how deep those needles would be going into the skin.

Perhaps you could use that on acne scar on the back or the chest, or stretch marks on a leg, but you would never have the needles out that far for working on the face. So we’ve talked about some of the actual safety fit features of a pen. So lightweight, easy to read display, easy to read, and easily adjustable numbers, the cartridge, pre sterilized, and individual packets.

And good connection, no backflow, so that when you’re microneedling any serums that are on the face you really shouldn’t have any body fluids coming out. But any serums that are on the face do not go back into the pen itself. And lastly your device should have, should come with a couple of rechargeable batteries.

And that way if you are in the middle of microneedling and your battery dies, you have a backup. And just as an extra backup, should you have a really busy day and you. Forget to charge your batteries or you just completely use up the batteries, both of them having a cord that you can plug in. Sorry, mine is in a case.

Having a nice long cord that you can plug in. To the same sort of instead of a battery, this would be something that shows you the speed and controls the pen just like the battery does, except this plugs into the wall. Having a nice long cord so that if your treatment table is not anywhere near a, an outlet, you have plenty room to work with.

So last but not least, having good instruction manual, something that is also easy to read, very important having. Nice pretty pictures and what each one of the parts does and all the contraindications and precautions. And this will ensure that you don’t that you actually know what you’re doing or what each one of the parts or four.

So I just wanted to give you that. Quick overview on safety and kind of what to look for when you’re purchasing a microneedle device. There are a lot of knockoff products and multifunctional devices that maybe or not. Designed just to do microneedling, and I would caution you that these devices probably are not very good.

If you try to do too much in one tool, you’re not really going to be very good at any one thing. So if your pen has red light or if your pen does microcurrent. It’s not going to be as good as a dedicated red light device or a dedicated microcurrent device, or as a dedicated microneedle pen. Wanna thank you again and.

I look forward to speaking to you next time. We will be. I also will be talking a little bit about marketing and so stay tuned for that. Thank you so much.

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When we’re treating the face, we’re treating the entire person because facial acupuncture impacts not just our appearance, but it affects the function of the face, and it also affects a person’s spirit. So when we think about facial. Cosmetic acupuncture, which is what I’m going to talk about first.

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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi, my name’s Michelle Gellis. I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for an opportunity to present to you today on treating the face as a whole. And this is part one, so you can go ahead and go to the slides.

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So my presentation today is on a multidimensional approach to facial acupuncture. As I mentioned, my name’s Michelle Gellis. I am currently on the doctoral faculty at Ossan University. I’m a formal faculty member and clinic supervisor at the Maryland University of Integrative Health. And I am a published author and regular contributor to the Journal of Chinese Medicine, and I’m a columnist on acupuncture today, and I’ve been teaching facial inter facial acupuncture classes internationally since 2005.

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This is the cup of my. Book that has recently been published on Treating the Face. It is a hard cover 15 chapter book on all aspects of treating the face. And you can scan that QR code if you wanna check it out. So when people think of facial acupuncture, the first thing that comes to mind is cosmetic acupuncture.

But treating the face is much more than just cosmetic. When we’re treating the face, we’re treating the entire person because facial acupuncture impacts not just our appearance, but it affects the function of the face, and it also affects a person’s spirit. So when we think about facial. Cosmetic acupuncture, which is what I’m going to talk about first.

That works with both the body and the face, bringing blood and cheese circulation up to targeted areas in the face. It stimulates collagen and elast in production, improves the tone of the skin and the of the skin. It enhances circulation and reduces inflammation. So puffiness and increases the natural glow of the face.

So you look rested. You have more color in your cheeks. And additionally, because of the. Nature of the acupuncture points on the face, you are supporting your patients’ overall health, their digestion, their immunity, and their overall circulation. Facial acupuncture can erase five to 15 years off of the face, and it’s great for lifting and treating on a very deep level.

The important thing when you are performing facial acupuncture is to use precision needling techniques, which typically involves training with someone who’s very well experienced, who’s been doing facial acupuncture and teaching facial acupuncture for many years. So how does cosmetic acupuncture work?

Cosmetic acupuncture brings blood flow and oxygen up to the face and it brings nutrients to the skin cells so your skin will look better. It does take about 28 days for collagen to regenerate, and that is increased if someone is older. So you really do have to do a series of treatments. It’s not just a one and done.

And once a person has gone through a series of approximately 12 weekly treatments, then usually they can start to spread their treatments out over time and eventually come once a month or just seasonally for touchups. Cosmetic acupuncture also utilizes motorpoint stimulation, and this can help with the functioning of the muscles in the face, and it will therefore balance.

Overactive muscles. Muscles that are too tight, causing the skin to contract or weak muscles, which can cause the skin to sag. It can help to enhance the jawline, giving a more lifted and supported appearance. And it also helps with the mid-face support. And this all happens through proper engagement of the facial muscles.

So if we just look at the layers of the face, we have the skin, then there’s some superficial fat, and then this mass layer. The superficial muscular AP neurotics, AP neurotic system, which is very unique to the face. We have some retaining ligaments, deeper fat on the lower part of the face, and then we have some deeper fascia and the bones and this mass layer.

Is what enables us to make our expressions because the muscles on the face are connected directly out to the skin. So as we can see, we have bone muscle. And skin. And so what happens is as the muscle contracts, the skin moves, and over time when we’re contracting these muscles, either through smiling or frowning, the skin that’s over the muscle will contract and it will eventually form lines and wrinkles and folds.

So here is someone who doesn’t have a lot of signs of aging, someone who’s a little younger. Then as we get older into our fifties, we can begin to see some signs of aging. And then as someone is progressively older, they’ll start to get forehead lines, bolts and more wrinkles.

In addition to wrinkles from facial expressions, gravity can cause the neck to hang down and jowling, especially around the mouth area and the skin on the cheeks and underneath the neck. The platysma bands start to form the cheeks start to sag.

And different facial expressions related to our emotions will cause different sorts of wrinkles. For example, smiling can cause crow’s feet frowning or being angry can cause these lines in between the eyebrows and cursing the lips a lot. If you were pensive, that’s an expression can cause lip lines.

The forehead is a kind of a zone of anger and frustration. The crow’s feet area, smiling. Sometimes sadness, depending the lips from overuse or estrogen loss can lose their. Plumpness and cause wrinkling the chin, if there’s a lot of fear, the chin can pucker and then jowling and the neck area frequently is a sign of cheat deficiency.

So we have emotions that can cause wrinkles cheap. Blood and body fluid are also related to the skin and how the skin looks. If the chi is deficient, you can get a withered looking appearance. If the chi is stagnant, it can block the flow of blood and fluids. So blood causing discoloration and fluids and cause puffiness, especially under the eye area.

So let’s take the liver, for example. If we’re looking at the liver system, we can see that stagnant liver blood can cause liver spots and liver blood deficiency can cause the skin to be dry. And liver cheese stagnation can sometimes manifest as anger and frustration, and this can show up in between the eyes.

So there’s a lot of different ways with our medicine to treat the emotions. A five element. Treatment. If you’re trained in five element, acupuncture can help to balance the organ systems and the emotions. Additionally, using the entry exit points on the face can be very beneficial for opening the face up, getting a smooth flow of Qi between the face and the body, between the Z and the.

Also allowing for a balancing between the organs, facial motor points can be very beneficial for treating the face, especially expression lines. And there are many muscles on the face and neck, as you can see. Some of them are listed here. This is not. A comprehensive list, but this is these are the muscles that we frequently use motor points for when we’re looking to treat some of the emotional manifestations.

Some of the, of some of the expressions. So here for example, we have the expression of anger. So here we have a relaxed face, and here we have an angry face, and you can see how the muscles get contracted. And by using the motor points or the different muscles, which are the motor points are located. The most electrically acceptable part of the muscle.

So you treat the motor point and it treats the muscle and it allows the muscle to get back into normal functioning. And this can help with not only the manifestation, the external manifestation of the emotion, but it can treat the muscle, it can treat the acupuncture point. Which helps to treat the whole person.

Many motor points on the face are acupuncture points.

This is actually an image from my book. This is from a chapter called The Anatomy of Expression. And it’s a little easier to see here. Side by side, a person making the expression, and then a split view of a relaxed face with the motor points and then the contracted muscles on the right.

Facial Gus Sha can be very beneficial for treating the skin, helping to work with fascial adhesions and tension in the face can help to sculpt the face. It’s very relaxing to the patient. It’s very calming to the spirit. I really love Jade Guha tools. I find that they tonify the skin and they help to nourish the blood.

Facial cupping is also a wonderful technique. These small glass facial cups. That are easy to squeeze, are wonderful for treating the face. And of course, when you’re doing facial cupping or facial gua, you never wanna leave any marks on the face. So if you’re going to do either one of these techniques, protocols, please get properly trained.

And everything that’s happened to us in our life gets etched on our face. Our fla, our face reflects our life story and needling the face helps to release stored trauma and can really transform the she on a very skin level. Related to what we do, but in no way a deep level or a spiritual level treatment microneedling using a device like this, a microneedle pen with microneedle cartridges. This can treat very skin level conditions on the face and on the body chest. Back and other parts of the body as well.

And here’s an example of microneedling. You can see on a very skin level, some wrinkles around the mouth. And then after a few treatments the wrinkles are gone. So if you’re interested in learning more about facial acupuncture. There’s a QR code there for my website, facial acupuncture classes.com, and you can find me on Facebook into Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok.

Under my name, Michelle Gellis and I have a Facebook group called Facial Acupuncture. Thank you so much.

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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi, my name’s Michelle Gellis. I am an acupuncture physician, and today I am going to be presenting on microneedling for Aging Hands, neck and Chest. So a little bit about me. I have recently published a hardcover 500 page book on treating the face. So you might wanna check that out. And currently I’m on the doctoral faculty at Yoan University, former faculty member and clinic supervisor.

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At the Maryland University of Integrative Health for about 18 years. I’ve been published several times in the Journal of Chinese Medicine, regular columnist at acupuncture today, and I’ve been teaching facial acupuncture classes internationally for about 20 years. So today I’m talking about a couple of specific topics within the general heading of microneedling.

So I’m gonna be talking about microneedling for the neck, chest, and hands. So I’m gonna go over the benefits of microneedling, how it works, contraindications, some special considerations when you’re microneedling the hands, neck and chest. And then some technique techniques. So why would we do microneedling?

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Microneedling is a great alternative to injectables, things like Botox and fillers and surgery to address things like fine lines, acne scars, loose skin, large pores, crow’s feet, lip wrinkles. Skin discoloration, like dark spots, stretch marks, and even hair restoration. So what does it do exactly?

How does it work? Microneedling stimulates your body’s own collagen production, the micro. Stimulate your body to produce collagen, and it also increases the absorption of any product that you will put on your skin by up to a thousand percent. And in my book, I have pages and pages of references to studies and white papers that have been done on microneedling and how it affects the skin.

I. So the benefits are, there’s very little downtime. It’s very low risk, highly effective, and the collagen that’s produced is your own collagen. So it’s very natural. It’s. Relatively comfortable. There’s very little pain and the results can last up to five years from a series of treatments. There are some indication contraindications.

You don’t want to do microneedling on people that are on blood thinners. People that are undergoing chemotherapy or radiation, people that have really any kind of moderate to severe conditions that are open or oozing that might require medical care, psoriasis, eczema, active acne, that’s pu warts, other things like that.

If you’re not sure, look it up. Speak to your patient’s doctor. Have them speak to their doctor before you start microneedling over any skin condition if your patient has keloids or if they are pregnant. These are all contraindications. So real quick education of the skin. This right here is the stratum corneum.

And so this hole piece right here is the dermal layer and the epidermis. And right at the base of the epidermis is this layer called the stratum basal, and this is where the stem cells. That produce new keratinocytes are formed. So you really don’t even need to get down into this dermal layer, which is where the blood vessels are.

So just by staying in the epidermis, you can stimulate the growth of. New fibroblasts and collagen. So the way the fibroblast stimulation works is these needles puncture. This would be like the head of a microneedle pad, puncture little holes into the skin. They heal very quickly, but they damage the epidermis, and the epidermis heals itself with new healthy skin.

So when we’re doing microneedling, we are going to use different depths for different parts of the face and the neck. And the neck and the chest are very sensitive. The skin on the neck in particular is very thin on the chest. It’s a little thicker. But you really wanna dial it down when you’re working on the neck itself.

So when you’re microneedling, you want to take into consideration the depth of the. Skin, the thickness of the skin that you’re needling and how deep you want those needles to go. Because on a microneedle pen, the needles go up and down and they’re going to penetrate into the skin, and there is a dial on microneedle pens showing you how deep the needles are going to go.

As I mentioned, skin on the neck and the chest can be very sensitive and thin. It can be crepey on the chest. There can be a lot of dark spots on the chest. On the neck, you can get loose and wrinkled skin. So here is an example of an aging neck, and you can see how thin and delicate the skin is here, and then when you’re working on the chest, you get these deeper wrinkles and folds and a lot of sun damage because the sun, when we’re out, the sun is going to hit our chest.

A lot of times we put sunscreen on our face, we put on our hat, but our chest is exposed. So this is an example of what a patient might look like before microneedling and then after, just so you can get an idea, they’re going to be red, but they, there shouldn’t be any bleeding when we’re talking about the hands.

The hands as people’s. Hands get older, they can get very bony veiny, and the veins can be right up at the surface. Their hands can be very sensitive. The skin can be very thin, and because the hands and the feet are so far away from the heart. The healing capacity, there’s the blood flow to the hands and the feet isn’t as good as the rest of the body.

So you can have some reduced healing capacity. So you wanna be very careful not to go too deep. So for a patient like this, when you’re working, you wanna make certain to avoid any prominent veins and to pay attention to any dark spots. I. This was a patient of mine came to me for three or four microneedling treatments, and this is what they looked like before and this is what they looked like after their third treatment.

I had just. Treated them. And I had dabbed at this spot right here, but you can see this spot here is almost completely gone. And just overall the skin on the hand looks much healthier. Little bit about the protocol. You wanna make sure if you’re working on their hands, that the patient washes their hands.

And if you’re working on the chest, you can use a neck. You can use a makeup remover wipe with some rubbing alcohol on it to get that clean. You wanna make sure you put gloves on. And if they would like numbing cream, you can put numbing cream on. I usually recommend like a 5% lidocaine cream, and then you’re going to let that sit for about 20 minutes.

You remove that either with a cotton pad or a makeup remover, white and. Then whatever area you’re working on, you wanna make sure to spray it or wipe it with alcohol, and then you’re going to apply your serum. I recommend hyaluronic acid serum. The product that I use is made by. A company called AccuLift.

It has vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, and collagen. And then you’re going to adjust the depth of the pen and the needle lengths and the speed of the pen according to how deep you’re going to go, depending on the thickness of. The patient’s skin. You’re going to use an up and down technique, and if you’re working on the hands, you’re going to go up and down.

So you’ll be going like this, you are not gonna go across the hand this way. And then if they have any spots, you would use a stamping technique and again, avoiding any prominent veins. For the neck, you’ll be working up and down and on the chest you can go up and down and left to right and use a stamping technique.

When you’re setting up expectations for your patients the results can take. Up to two weeks to see any sort of improvement. And I recommend four to six weekly sessions and the appointments are one month apart. So I’m sorry, not weekly sessions, four to six monthly sessions, and if they wanted to come in for some nano needling, which is a much more superficial.

Needling. It’s more of an exfoliation. They can do that after their skin is healed. So usually within a week. And they do need to know if they’re using any prescription products that they will absorb more quickly. When you’re setting up expectations for your patients, you wanna take into account their skin type, their age, lifestyle, diet.

How much sleep they’re getting. Water, they’re consuming what their skincare routine is, their genetics. Talk to them about their family and how they aged. Of course, your TCM diagnosis, I always include, I. And acupuncture treatment with my microneedling. And any blood, she yin deficiencies, excesses, stagnations, things of that nature.

Some of the possible side effects could be some pinpoint bleeding, redness, itching, burning, a little skin irritation or some pigmentation that should say changes. You also wanna send your patient home with some take home instructions. Let them know they could be red Peel flake for about 24 out 12 to 24 hours and schedule their next appointment for a month out. Soothe their skin with either aloe and Orica blend again. AccuLift has a calm spray. It has green tea.

And aloe and tica and CBD and some other things that are very calming to the skin. They shouldn’t put any makeup on the day of, stay out of the sun. No exercise because sweat can irritate the area, use very mild soap. And after the treatment they should start on a skincare routine. So this is what a microneedle pen looks like.

You have needle cartridges wall charger, batteries, extra batteries, and that way you can plug it in. It should come with instructions and a nice long cord. I recommend a minimum of 18,000 RPMs on the speed for the needles to go up and down for it to be effective and that you should purchase a medical grade pen.

The less expensive pens that are sold online usually are for home use for single person use. Professional pens have anti backflow technology and they are meant the pen is meant to be used for long-term use on many patients. And then the needle cartridges go in the sharps container afterwards.

So this little snippet I just showed you was a little piece of a much bigger class. I teach a four hour microneedle in class and a bunch of other classes live and recorded. You can check them out@facialacupunctureclasses.com. And any of the products I’ve talked about today, you can find@uluskincare.com.

Thank you so much, and thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity

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