Are Collagen Treatments Right for You?

Looking at harnessing and renewing our skin from within

By Bradley “Beej” Davis, Jr.

Photos by Kate Treick Photography

The steadfast search for the perfect skin care regime can help one feel beautiful and confident. Sure, all the creams, serums, pills and needle pokes can be overwhelming, so it may be helpful to look at the cellular, biological level in order to become confident when choosing a skincare routine. A great place to start is collagen, the primary protein that, for the sake of simplification, helps make our skin look and feel the way it does. The good news about collagen? We already have it throughout our entire body. Think of collagen as flexible scaffolding; it gives strength to our cells – but it also gives elasticity. At first thought, we associate collagen with our skin, hair and nails, but collagen is found in our tendons, blood vessels, cartilage and even bones.

Zooming in with that microscope, we find that collagen is composed of nothing more than proteins forming fibrous strands or connectors which are themselves intertwined just beneath the skin’s surface. But over time, those strands become thin and weaken, leading to a loss of elasticity, thus creating the appearance of wrinkles. This is when most people reach for those special serums and crafted creams, but what if you could revive those weakened strands?

“Collagen is a building block for skin repair,” said Alice Bohannon with The Skin Care Center at Gulf Coast Plastic Surgery.

Bohannon said their office, like many skincare centers in town, offers an array of treatments that go deeper than, well, skin deep.

“Everything we do in our office is to improve the appearance of the skin. This can be facials and routine use of products to microneedling and deep lasers as well as injectables under the skin,” she said. And, yes, you heard that correctly: lasers. “We have numerous types of lasers at our office. CO2 lasers are a type of ablative laser which actually break the top layer of skin or the epidermis. The results are not only collagen stimulation but also smoothing