Do you remember the ice bucket challenge that was popular for a time? Many of my friends were challenged. As a doctor, I must remind everyone that pouring ice water over your head carries certain risks for those with cardiovascular disease.
But what about using ice elsewhere? Is there a connection between ice and medical aesthetics? I know that there are different home remedies that use ice for facial care. I don’t know about their effectiveness, but ice and cryotherapy do play an important role in dermatology and medical aesthetics.
The most familiar use of cryotherapy is for freezing treatment (cryotherapy). Freezing treatment is mainly used for warts, skin moles, actinic keratosis, and even skin carcinoma in situ. Liquid nitrogen is generally used as the freezing tool, using extremely low temperatures to destroy skin cells. The extremely low temperature will cause the skin cells to freeze instantly and also be destroyed. The treatment effect is excellent, and it is generally used to treat larger lesions. For smaller lesions, laser treatment is more accurate.
Another cryotherapy-based medical aesthetic treatment is cryolipolysis. Its principle is that fat cells are more sensitive to freezing than skin cells. At a specific temperature, fat cells will self-destruct but leave the skin cells intact. The effect takes several weeks to appear, and the results vary from person to person.
In addition, ice is sometimes used as a local anesthetic, especially before injecting botulinum toxin and hyaluronic acid. We use it to paralyze the epidermal tissue and reduce the discomfort of the injection. If the client is sensitive to anesthetics, we use ice as a substitute.
The last and most common but often overlooked use of cryotherapy is in laser treatments. Laser treatments often heat the epidermis, and as the power level increases, the risk of skin burns increases. Therefore, some laser devices incorporate a cryogenic spray (cryogen) that sprays out at -20 degrees Celsius before the laser is emitted, protecting the epidermis and reducing the risk of laser burns.
It turns out that cryotherapy has many uses in medical aesthetics! If you are unfortunate or fortunate enough to be challenged, why not think about the uses of ice in medical aesthetics before being doused?