A few years ago, I was watching puppies play in the window of a dog sitting service when a woman came up next to me to take in the adorable scene. After watching in silence for a few minutes, she turned to me and asked, “Excuse me, are you Irish?”
“I mean, partly, yeah?” I responded, turning towards her in surprise. “How could you tell?”
She smiled. “You just look so stereotypically Irish!”
I assume she’d asked because of my pale, freckled skin and rosy cheeks, which tend to flush even more scarlet in extreme weather, when drinking wine, or during exercise. Like 16 million Americans, I have rosacea, so my complexion has always been much redder than I’d like. I’ve tried serums and creams and even topicals to help diminish the redness, but nothing has stuck. So when the folks at Flash Lab Laser Suite offered a complementary treatment combo meant to lessen redness, I practically ran to my appointment.
Owner and laser specialist Kelly Rheel worked with my esthetician Hope to put together a facial treatment focused on moisturizing, brightening and targeting redness. Here’s everything the Flash Lab team did to get my skin in order.
Lymphatic Drainage
First Hope started with a facial lymphatic drainage massage, meant to target the lymph nodes. She tapped, pulled and applied pressure at designated points on my face, trying to de-puff and draw out toxins.
Laser Genesis
Next Hope performed Laser Genesis, a quick and painless laser treatment that gently heats up the dermis layer of the skin to break up capillaries, thus reducing rosacea. Added bonus? “It’s pain free, has zero downtime and it repairs wrinkles, fine lines, dark circles, acne, hyperpigmentation, rosacea, enlarged pores,” Hope says.
Glyocolic Chemical Peel
After finishing the laser work on my skin, Hope applied a gentle glycolic chemical peel to help exfoliate and brighten. Then it was time to move onto the second major part of the facial.
Jet Peel
For the grand finale, Hope performed a Jet Peel facial, using a supersonic stream of saline and oxygen to penetrate deep beneath the skin and deposit serums containing Vitamin C and hyalauronic acid.
“Working with the Jet Peel we are actually able to infuse and nourish the skin deep on a dermal layer without being invasive at all!” Hope said. “I’m able to create micodroplets with the pressurized oxygen that spits out over 600 ft of pressure per second and penetrates 1.5mm into the skin.”
It’s kind of like microneedling, without any actual needles. Or, as our Assistant Editor Nerisha Penrose put it,”It’s like a car wash for your face.”
By the end of the treatment, I looked relaxed and refreshed, like I had just gone on a tropical vacation instead of what I’d actually been doing (working too much and eating too much sugar). A week later, I was dewier and glowier than I had been since high school. The one-two punch of Laser Genesis and the Jet Peel Facial, a combo you can get as often as once a month, had lessened my redness significantly. Sorry to tell that woman in the window my skin has never looked better. Guess it’s just the luck of the Irish.