Overview
Pellevé is designed to tighten neck skin by heating the tissue with a radio wave frequency. The Pellevé neck skin tightening treatment tip provides a continuous deep warming with optimal temperature which targets the subdermal junction and allows delivery of heat to the dermis, subcutaneous tissue and deeper structures such as the fibrous septae fascia. It offers a safe, customizable, easy to perform, reproducible and well tolerated non-surgical neck skin tightening treatment.
Collagen:
- Collagen is comprised of proteins which make up a supporting structure surrounding the skin cells.
- Collagen formation and breakdown takes place in the dermis or inner skin, the thicker, firm layer of skin that lies beneath the paper-thin outer skin or epidermis, much as a mattress lies beneath a sheet.
- In youthful skin collagen is firm, taut and abundant, like a new mattress. In older skin, the collagen structure begins to fall away.
- Just as a foam mattress over time becomes flatter and creased in places as its structure breaks down, aging skin begins to sag and wrinkle when its collagen is diminished and fragmented.
- A wrinkle is caused by the break down and reduction of collagen.
Why we get Wrinkles and Skin Laxity:
- Skin ages as a consequence of the passage of time.
- Sun damage degrades the skin’s normal collagen fibers and causes the accumulation of abnormal elastic fibers.
- UV radiation causes collagen to break down at higher rates than chronological aging.
- When the skin is repeatedly exposed to UV radiation, the permanent formation of disorganized collagen fibers forms solar scars, or “Wrinkles”.
- A wrinkle is caused by the break down and reduction of collagen.
Fibrous Septae and its role for Immediate Skin Tightening:
- Ten to thirty percent of subcutaneous tissue is composed of collagen-based fibrous septae which form a connective tissue network interlaced between fat locules (see illustration below). These fibrous septae threads give skin its structure and shape.
- Researchers have found that monopolar radio frequency (MRF) stimulates the collagen-based fibrous septae.
- MRF energy, following the path of least resistance, is conducted to the natural fibrous septae threads.
- MRF is not conducted to the fat layer since fat is >12 times resistant to the energy, therefore causing the heat to build in the fibrous septae.
- The selective heating of the fibrous septae, tightens and remodels the collagen, producing the immediate tightening that is seen with Pellevé treatments.
Normal Skin
Role of Fibroblasts in the Extended Repair Process:
- Fibroblasts are the basic building blocks of collagen.
- After thermal injury has occurred, causing micro-scarring in the dermis, fibroblasts possess a unique ability to change to myofibroblasts, (a fibroblast having some of the characteristics of smooth muscle cells, such as contractile properties) which contribute actively to the repair process.
- Skin tightening occurs as the skin’s repair cells, the fibroblasts, pull collagen strands together.
- Researchers have observed for years that fibroblasts in aged tissue do not produce as much collagen.
- Once fibroblasts have been exposed to thermal injury they once again produce significant amounts of collagen.
Skin Rejuvenation:
- By producing a thermal injury, new collagen growth is stimulated to effectively restructure and restore the dermis to a state that resembles undamaged skin.
- The same immediate collagen contraction and dermal remodeling that is observed in the dermis also takes place in the deeper structural collagen as well.
- Skin tightening cannot occur without high levels of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in your skin. Vitamin C levels in the skin are easily increased by taking at least one gram daily as a supplement.
- Concomitant use of salicylic acid or glycolic acid products that remove the older cells on the skin’s surface also helps with skin tightening. Hydroxy acids produce a very mild skin damage as they remove older skin cells but this helps the renewal process, probably by increasing the numbers of the skin repair cell, the fibroblast.
- This manifests as a more youthful appearance and improved skin texture with firming, lifting, tightening and smoothing of the skin.
