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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