I’d like to tell you a secret. It is a secret with a funny name. I hope it is a bit less of a secret when I have finished.

‘What’s in a name?’ as my old friend Arthur Shufflebottom once said. But then names can be very important. There are names to conjure with, names to confuse, names to celebrate and names to stir the soul.

So how’s about ‘Photo Dynamic Therapy’ or Omnilux?

What the hell could that name mean and what difference could it make to you? Well I must begin with a confession. Having spent last month telling you to avoid sun beds then you may think I am suggesting using one as a form of treatment, but I am not. Let me emphasise again. Ultraviolet light is bad for your skin, whether directly from the sun or artificially from sun beds. This has not changed. However there are some frequencies of light which are good for the skin. Ultraviolet is a group of frequencies present in natural sunlight and sun beds which is damaging to the skin. It leads to breakdown of collagen and disruption of the natural elasticity of the skin. This is the principle cause of ‘photo-damage’ and visual aging. There are lots of other different frequencies of light in both the visible and invisible spectrum. Some of these in individual bands have been found to stimulate fibroblast regeneration and collagen production and thus improve the health of the skin. These frequencies are present in

sunlight but their effects are negated by the ultraviolet. But what if it were possible to produce lights which just produced these particular frequencies of ‘beneficial’ light? Could we then use these lights to reverse some of the effects of photo-damage? Well Yes, and Yes!

For the Omnilux machine we have been able to develop particular arrays of LEDs which produce relatively narrow bands of light in particular ranges, specifically in the beneficial ones. These things look a little like sun beds on a smaller scale but they don’t produce any of the harmful ultraviolet rays, and they do produce lots of the beneficial rays!! In current production there are three different sets, red, blue and one called ‘near infrared’. The blue ranges are particularly helpful for acne problems, the red ones are very useful for wound healing and the near infrared is good for photo-rejuvenation. Together these constitute a range of treatments called ‘photo dynamic therapy’. What is nice is that none of the treatments are at all unpleasant. Doesn’t that make a change!!? It usually helps to have a pre-treatment with micro-dermabrasion and then a gentle facial followed by roughly twenty minutes gentle snooze under the LEDs. “Et voilá!” Pretty good even if I say so myself.

Yes I know a single treatment doesn’t do a lot and we usually recommend a course of ten as a start, but for something so simple and so pleasant to actually be truly beneficial to the skin is pretty darn good.

So how does the name ‘Photo Dynamic Therapy’ or Omnilux sound to you now?

Pretty good name for a pretty good treatment. So good that (here is the secret) I must confess to having had several myself and I still like the occasional ‘top up’. It could be why some people have suggested that I have a ‘picture in the attic’.

If you would like to talk about this or any other of the many treatments I have at my disposal then please call the girls on 01625 598 000 to arrange for your free consultation. Quite a few of them are reasonably priced and they don’t all hurt!!

PS. Please don’t let too many people in on my secret!

© Dr Paul Cronin 2008 www.eternalyouth.co.uk

Tags: Face, Neck, Photodamage

This entry was posted on Friday, April 18th, 2008 at 8:52 pm and is filed under Light Therapy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.