It’s 11:38 pm on a Tuesday night and you find yourself stuck in yet another algorithmic-driven doom scroll. You promised yourself it wouldn’t happen. You swore. Tonight you were going to be asleep by 9 and get a full 8, maybe even 9 hours of sleep. But you can’t put your phone down. Each new video is promising you the metaphorical Fountain of Youth. Use this cream, and get this treatment, and you’ll look 10 years younger. Beautiful girls telling you which milky toner they used to keep their skin looking so perfect. Influencers left and right, telling you how they look better today than they did 10 years ago. All of these intoxicating videos center around the science of regenerative care. And there is it. The trigger word. “Regenerative” or “prejuvenation”.
Prejuvination is having her moment right now. She’s the 2021 matcha latte of the aesthetics world. Everyone’s heard of her, everyone wants to try it and there’s still some confusion about what it actually is.
So let’s clear it up.
As we age, our skin (and body) begins to slow down. It heals slower, creates collagen slower and sheds slower. As a baby, our skin’s cellular turnover rate is approximately 5-14 days- meaning we have a fresh “baby soft” layer of skin every 14 days. As we age that slowly creeps up to about 28 days in our 20’s and 30’s and continues to slow into the 50-90-days rate as we age. Regenerative aesthetics works to keep our skin turning over quickly, producing collagen and elastin efficiently, and slowing down our melanocytes (pigment-making factories) so our skin is bright, resilient, healthy and function as good as or younger than our biological age.
Contrary to popular- and maybe a little delusional- belief, prejuvination is not a treatment. You can’t book a “prejuvenation facial” and walk out of the clinic with your skin instantly acting 10 years younger. It’s a strategy – a proactive approach to maintaining your skin’s health and slowing down the internal mechanisms that drive aging before they become concerns.
Already have concerns? That’s okay! Regenerative aesthetics is great because it works for all age groups and concerns.
In your 20’s? Start collagen banking.
30’s? Start collagen banking and keeping your skin functioning optimally.
40’s? Your skin might need a little boost to keep it acting young.
50’s? We probably need a reminder on how to do the young skin stuff.
60’s? We are doing some serious remodeling on that internal skin structure.
70s? We’re going to be working on our skin top-down.
et cetera.
Instead of asking
“How do we make the skin look younger”
We are asking
“How do we make the skin function younger?”
It’s a subtle difference – but it’s the entire foundation of regenerative aesthetics (and regenerative medicine as a whole).
Until recently – traditional aesthetics often focused on replacing what has been lost.
Lost volume? Filler.
Lost Hydration? Add Hydration.
Lost Collagen? Try to camouflage the effect.
With regenerative aesthetics- we are encouraging your body to do more of the work itself. We are training your skin and the pathways inside of it to stay in a cycle of production, healing and regeneration. We balance inflammation with recovery-To put it simply – increasing cellular turnover and collagen production is the name of the game. Instead of trying to trick the eyes to see younger skin, we are training your skin to behave younger.
And I’m not trying to sit here and say filler is bad! Your girl loves some filler to enhance and balance my profile. I think filler works beautifully in tandem with regenerative skincare treatments and products. This is how we get celebrity level aging. Hello Anne Hathaway, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.
Now, if you’re thinking to yourself – girrlllll don’t you worry I have TONS of inflammation. This arthritis and psoriasis is going to keep me young forever! I wish I had better news for you – but not all inflammation is created equal. While we intentionally introduce inflammation through in-office treatments – this purposeful inflammation acts as a signal that tells the skin to repair, remodel and produce new collagen. Chronic inflammation from factors like excessive UV exposure, smoking, poor sleep (those midnight doom scrolls?) excess alcohol, and a high-sugar diet does the opposite; accelerating collagen breakdown and contributing to premature aging. This is partly why the celebrity popstar girlies looked so much older in the early 2000s than they do today. Gone are the days of tanning oil, alcohol and cigarette diets and dancing the night away…every night.
That’s where treatments like lasers, microneedling, RF microneedling, biostimulators, PRP and exosomes start entering the conversation.
Not because they’re trendy – (even tho they are!)
But because these treatments are going to go deep into the skin and create controlled injuries or signals that encourage repair, remodeling and collagen production.
I’m also not saying every treatment needs to be regenerative.
The best treatment plans and the best providers are going to be strategic and combine multiple modalities, products and approaches. The best treatment plans are rarely all-or-nothing.
And the clients who age the best are usually the ones combining multiple approaches- protecting and stimulating collagen, maintaining skin quality and addressing volume loss when appropriate.
Taking my example back to celebrities – often this is why it’s so hard to pinpoint exactly what they’ve had done. Because they’re getting a series of different treatments to make small tweaks and to make their own skin behave younger, bringing back their volume, bounce and glow – now if we could all just have the paparazzi and their amazing camera’s following us around too.
Which is why when someone asks me is a treatment is “worth it”- I typically will answer with:
“Well, what are you trying to achieve?”
Because regenerative aesthetics isn’t about chasing trends, booking the newest treatment or collecting procedures like Pokemon cards.
It’s about understanding how skin works and choosing treatments that support it long-term.
Sometimes it means lasers.
Sometimes it means microneedling
Sometimes it means skincare.
Sometimes it means filler.
And sometimes it means putting your phone down, getting 8-hours of sleep, drinking some water and calling it a day.
The goal isn’t to look 20 forever. The goal is to have healthy, resilient, beautiful skin that continues to function well at any age.
That’s regenerative aesthetics.
And unlike the miracle cream from your doom scroll, it’s not a trend. It’s strategy.
Get on a regenerative treatment track and you’ll soon be wishing you had the paparazzi following you around too,
Thanks for reading! xx
-Chelsea
P.S.
Some of my current favorite rejuvenation treatments are:
Microneedling
BBL laser
Moxi laser (Click here to see why EVERYONE should get at least one moxi a year)
Biostimulators
Platelets and growth factors
Exosomes (click here for more information on exosomes)
Good skincare products that can reach the dermis!
