About the treatment
Making a better scar than the one you already have
An acne scar is a repair that went badly. The skin was inflamed, the healing was disorganised, and what was laid down underneath pulled the surface into a dent that has stayed there ever since. You cannot talk that tissue out of its shape, and no cream reaches it.
Microneedling asks the skin to do the repair again, properly this time. A pen carrying fine sterile needles creates thousands of narrow channels at a depth we choose, each one a tiny controlled injury in healthy conditions. Your body responds by producing fresh collagen and elastin through the area, and over the following months that new material lifts and reorganises what was there.
Nothing is burned and nothing is removed. At our West Broadway clinic in Kitsilano numbing cream goes on first, the pen is worked across the area, and you leave looking sunburnt for a day or two.
Candidacy
What responds well, and what does not
This is one of the few treatments where the type of scar matters more than the number of sessions, so it is worth being precise.
Rolling and shallow scars: yes
Wide, soft-edged depressions that give the skin an undulating look respond best of anything we treat. The tethering underneath is exactly what a repair response can loosen and fill.
Narrow deep pits: only partly
Ice-pick scars go straight down and are too narrow for a needle to influence meaningfully. They improve at the edges as the surrounding skin thickens, and they do not disappear. Anybody promising otherwise has not looked closely at your face.
Texture, pores and fine lines: yes
General roughness, enlarged-looking pores and the fine crepey lines that come with thinning skin all improve, because all three are really the same problem — not enough structure underneath.
Active acne: not yet
Needling across inflamed lesions spreads bacteria and risks scarring the very skin you came to fix. We treat the acne first, wait until it has settled, and then needle. That order is not negotiable.
Why here
Why we start these courses in the autumn
Freshly needled skin is temporarily more vulnerable to light, and a course runs for months. In Vancouver that points clearly at one half of the year.
The grey months are an advantage
For once, a wet coastal winter is exactly what a treatment wants. Low light, covered skin and no temptation to sit outside means the sun restriction between sessions costs you nothing.
Damp air suits a healing surface
Skin with thousands of open channels recovers more comfortably in humidity than in dry air. It is one of the few genuine advantages of this climate, and it shows in how quickly the redness settles.
Summer is the awkward half
Kits Beach, the seawall and a boat on a Saturday are all incompatible with skin that must stay out of the sun. Courses started in June tend to acquire gaps, and gaps cost you sessions.
Overcast is not protection
The most common mistake here. Cloud scatters light without removing the ultraviolet, and treated skin marks easily. Sunscreen every morning through the course, regardless of what the sky is doing.
Indications
What is it good for?
Anything that comes from missing structure underneath rather than from something sitting on the surface.
Flat brown or red marks left behind after a spot has healed are pigment rather than scarring and do not need needling. Congestion and surface dullness belong to a HydroFacial. Everything available in Kitsilano is on our Vancouver clinic page.
Being straight with you
Three ways people undersell their own result
The treatment does what it does. These are the three habits that stop clients ever seeing it.
Judging it at three weeks
Collagen is laid down and then spends months reorganising. The honest read is at three months from the last session, and the first few weeks show you swelling and redness rather than anything real.
Stopping after two sessions
Scarring needs a course, usually four to six appointments four to six weeks apart. Two sessions is not a small course, it is an incomplete one, and it reliably produces the conclusion that the treatment does not work.
Rushing back to actives
Retinol and acid on skin that is still closing is how people turn a good treatment into a week of irritation. Give it the few days we ask for, and take a photograph before the first session so you have something to compare against.
Getting ready
Pre & post treatment
The first two days need looking after properly. After that it is sunscreen and patience.
Before your appointment
- Five to seven days off retinoids, acids and any strong exfoliant.
- Two weeks with no sunburn and no fresh tan on the area.
- Tell us about cold sores — needling around the mouth can trigger one, and it is worth pre-empting.
- No isotretinoin in the last six months, and flag any blood-thinning medication.
- Arrive bare-faced and allow extra time for the numbing cream to work.
The days after
- Red, warm and tight, like moderate sunburn, for 24 to 48 hours. Pinpoint marks are normal.
- Water and a plain moisturiser only for the first day. No make-up, and nothing with an active in it.
- Do not touch your face, and change your pillowcase.
- No gym, sauna, steam, pool or hot tub for 48 hours — sweat and chlorine both reach open channels.
- Sunscreen daily from day two, and keep it up for the whole course.
Results
Microneedling before and after
A You Glow Aesthetics client treated for acne scarring across a course. Look at how the light falls across the cheek rather than at individual marks — the change is in the surface shape.
Outcomes vary with the type and depth of scarring, age, how many sessions are completed and how carefully the skin is protected in between. This is a treatment measured in months, and the honest comparison is three months after the final appointment.
Also on West Broadway
Treatments that work well around this one
- HydroFacial in Vancouver — clears congestion before a course starts
- RF Facial in Vancouver — firmness alongside the texture work
- Dermaplaning in Vancouver — between needling sessions, once the skin has settled
- Laser Hair Removal in Vancouver — for the ingrown hairs that cause marks of their own
- Microneedling brand-wide — how the treatment works across all our clinics
