The holidays are all about warmth, joy, and feeling your best—starting with glowing skin. At Dérmica on Whyte Ave in Edmonton, you’ll discover four expert treatments designed to deliver that unmistakable holiday glow!
IPL Phototherapy: Light up your winter skin.
Dérmica uses the Sharplight Formax system to perform the ALISA Photofacial, targeting dullness, texture concerns, and uneven tone. With pulses of light and built-in cooling for comfort, the treatment revitalizes your complexion—no downtime needed. It effectively rejuvenates skin to reveal a radiant glow and minimized pores, preparing your skin for every festive close-up.
Winter Wonder-Facial: Double the Glow
Our ‘Beauty’ facial isn’t just about pampering your skin—it’s about perfecting your look from every angle. This luxurious treatment deeply cleanses, hydrates, and nourishes your skin, leaving it soft and radiant. But here’s the bonus: it includes a professional brow sculpt.
Snow Smooth Skin with Dermaplane
Experience an instant brightening effect with dermaplaning—a gentle exfoliation that removes dead skin and peach fuzz, smoothing the canvas. At Dérmica, clients enjoy added “Boost” peel options (AHA/BHA) to amplify results and leave skin supple and radiant.
Chemical Peels: Hibernate Dryness, Awaken Radiance
For deeper rejuvenation, we offer a full chemical peel menu, from mild BOOST options to medium-to-deep treatments targeting pigmentation, fine lines, acne, and dryness. Customized peel depth and downtime (2–7 days) ensure results ranging from a light seasonal refresh to serious resurfacing.
Located in Edmonton, Alberta, we offer the Alisa photofacial- a treatment for large pores.
Can you actually reduce pore size?
Small pores indicate good skin health and present a youthful appearance. If you did not win the “skin lottery” genetically, there is not much we can do to reduce the natural size of your pores. On the other hand if your pores have become enlarged over time, IPL photofacial treatments can help you “shrink” your pores back to a normal size, particularly, the ALISA treatment.
IPL phototherapy uses a broad spectrum of light pulses that penetrate deep into the skin. These light pulses gently heat the tissue and stimulate a natural restorative response. This process boosts collagen production, which enhances skin elasticity and tightens the surrounding tissue. As a result, the pores appear smaller and less noticeable.
How many treatments are needed?
The number of sessions needed depends on a few factors such as your present skin condition and pore severity. Other factors include skin type and age, with younger clients responding faster due to higher collagen production.
Typically, clients begin to see results after a few sessions, with optimal improvements in pore size and skin clarity appearing after 3–4 treatments, spread 3-4 weeks apart.
Do photofacials hurt?
Photofacials are non-invasive. They are relatively painless, especially for individuals with light to medium skin tones. Individuals with medium to dark brown skin are eligible for the treatment but may experience a light pinching sensation. This sensation is normal. It occurs because darker skin tones contain more melanin which absorbs more of the IPL’s broad-spectrum light. It is this excess absorption that can lead to increased heat buildup in the skin, causing discomfort.
Photofacials require minimal downtime. For those seeking a refined, radiant complexion without invasive treatments, photofacials offer a luxurious and effective path to clearer and tighter skin
We offer treatment for large pores in Edmonton, Alberta.
How do you get rid of large pores?
Well, there is cleaning your pores and then there is “shrinking” your pores. Most people are looking to clean their pores by emptying the contents within. You can see immediate results through pore extraction. We do this is all of our facials. However, if your skin is visibly congested and you’ve never had a facial, we recommend the PORE facial.
While other facials in our menu include other relaxing or beautifying delights, the PORE facial concentrates on pore extraction throughout the entire duration. While we must take time to prepare the skin for safe extractions, we extract as much as possible in the hour allotted. Sometimes a second facial is required when there is severe congestion in all areas of the face.
How long before I need another facial?
It’s important to understand that facials are simply “cleanups” and the skin is bound to become congested again. Therefore, we generally recommend clients come every 4-6 weeks for a facial. However, this timeframe between facials will vary depending on factors such as age, skin type, and environmental factors. Also, getting your skin under control with the right skincare routine and possibly changing some daily habits will space those facials even further.
Can you actually reduce pore size?
Small pores indicate good skin health and present a youthful appearance. If you did not win the “skin lottery” genetically, there is not much we can do to reduce the natural size of your pores. On the other hand if your pores have become enlarged over time, there are advanced skin treatments to help you “shrink” your pores back to a normal size.
Photofacials are effective at reducing pore size, in particular, the ALISA treatment. However, anti aging is a constant battle. We must consider daily external factors that are out of our control, such as winter temperatures, when setting our expectations.
In other words, advanced skin treatments and professional skincare products are great tools to have at our disposal. But we are always fighting against time. That is why the results of any treatment cannot last forever. If you choose to treat large pores with phototherapy, you may require multiple treatments to address your concern.
In conclusion, we all show our age in certain ways. If large pores is a concern for you now and they are left unattended, the matter will only get worse in a short five years. A good skincare routine will at the least slow down the damage. Treatments have the capacity to repair.
Knowing the most common signs of aging can help you retain your youthful looks longer. Let’s discuss the most common signs, and the steps we can take towards delaying the aging process.
Loss of Elasticity
Loss of elasticity or ‘plumpness’ is attributed to collagen loss. Collagen is a building block of the skin. During our youth, collagen plumps the skin thereby creating volume. However, as we age we stop producing collagen at the same rate. This in turn affects the elasticity leaving us with saggy skin as we age. Plus, the loss of muscle tone is going to cause expression lines.
Loss of Hydration
Skin becomes dryer as we age because the sebaceous glands in the skin, like any other structure of the body, are not as active as we age. This loss of hydration manifests itself through a dull, sallow appearance, crepey skin, and fine lines. Overall, the texture of the skin changes as a result of water loss.
Hyperpigmentation
There are environmental factors such as sun exposure and climate as well as other pollutants and oxidants in the air that cause aging in general. These environmental factors can also contribute to hyperpigmattion which can cause an aged appearance to the skin. Hyperpigmentation can be in the form of freckles, sun spots, lentigines, etc.
Thin Skin
The thickness of the skin changes as well with aging. The skin tries to thin out as a result of the deficiencies in collagen and hydration.
Fighting the common signs of aging at home
Try to incorporate products that accelerate your skin’s cell turnover rate; They are very useful. Examples include retinol, glycolic and lactic acid. When combined, vitamins C and E make a good protectant.
When it comes to exfoliation, try using an enzymatic exfoliant. These are really good for anti-aging because they achieve deep exfoliation and hydration without causing friction at the surface.
Wearing SPF daily helps. Be mindful when you are being exposed to the sun for periods longer than 15-30 minutes consistently. Wear a hat during longer periods of sun exposure. Cooling the skin also helps, for example, cold spoons kept in the fridge will calm the skin and reduce inflammation.
Finally, avoid the use of irratating cleansers and moisturizers. Stick with products that actually bring nutrients to the skin.
Professional Treatments
When it comes to skin rejuvenation, photofacials are amazing because they do not cause superficial damage to the skin. The light energy penetrates directly to the main contributing factor of loss of elasticity which is the collagen cells.
We have a certain amount of collagen cells in our skin at any given time. When the light energy hits those cells, they are stimulated/traumatized enough so that they regenerate new collagen cells in order to replace those “traumatized” collagen cells. However, those collagen cells that are affected by the light energy for the most part are not completely destroyed, yet they are “repaired” in a sense so you end up with a multiplied amount of collagen present in your skin after a photofacial treatment.
Located in YEG, we offer sun spot removal treatments in our vast spa menu. Sun spots usually appear in areas of high sun exposure such as the forehead, nose, cheeks, and decollate. They can also appear on the body, back of the hands, upper shoulders (especially on people who drive during times of the day when the sun is at its strongest), etc.
Sun spots are cells that were damaged by UV exposure. Typically this damage has been caused before the age of 18 and surfaces later on in life and becomes darkened with repeated or excessive sun exposure.
If brown spots appear over the summer, we can surmise that they are sun damaged cells that have surfaced in the form of sun spots as a result of sun exposure over the summer.
Sun Spot Removal Treatment
We will shed some light on repair and maintenance:
REPAIR
IPL Photofacials are safe, non-invasive advanced skincare procedures that deliver immediate results. We offer different types of photofacials for different skin concerns, and when dealing with sun spots specifically, we recommend the ACLARA photofacial.
ACLARA works to removes pigment spots (brown spots/sun spots/ age spots) and damage affecting your face, neck, chest, hands, and arms.
The procedure delivers quick pulses of light to targeted areas. The light penetrates between 535-580nm into your skin. This process breaks up the spot, which then brings the pigment to the surface. Finally, the spot sheds with your skin’s natural processes.
We perform all of our laser procedures using Sharplight’s Formax-VP System. The system has a number of safety-control features. For example, it includes a contact cooling tip that cools the skin being treated, adding maximum comfort and protection.
Best of all, there is no downtime required for this procedure. A full face photofacial takes 30-45 minutes, after which you can continue your daily routine!
MAINTENANCE
As we mentioned earlier, most damage has been caused before the age of 18. The damage surfaces later on in life and becomes darkened with repeated or excessive sun exposure.
Having said this, we recommend following our Anti Aging tips, and of course, always use sun protection. Sun block is vital, even in the winter months.
As always with the skin, genetics plays a big role in aging. Other factors that contribute to an aging neck include improper care, sun exposure, and time.
At what age does the neck generally start to show signs of aging?
The neck starts to show signs of aging roughly around the same time as your face. However, since we do not express emotions with our necks (the way we do with our face), the face leads the way when it comes to aging. Although the neck doesn’t age as quickly as the face, it’s not too far behind. In other words, once you see signs of aging on your face, consider caring for your neck in the same fashion.
Aging on the neck appears in different ways. Examples include sunspots and redness caused by sensitivity.
What is a “crepey” neck?
Magnified image of crepey skin.
A crepey neck is characterized by fine lines of a dry and scaly texture. When you squeeze the skin together, the skin looks dehydrated and finely wrinkled. Crepey skin is one of the first signs of aging because they are not depressed wrinkles just yet. They are often caused by major dehydration and are common in the chest area. This may happen because we generally don’t exfoliate as much as we do on our face. We also don’t cleanse and moisturize to the same degree, nor do we protect it as we do our face.
Can a crepey neck be reversed?
Crepey skin on the neck can be reversed to a certain extent with proper treatment, aftercare, and protection. However, early intervention with advanced skin treatments is key.
What treatments are available for an aging neck?
Chemical peels help exfoliate buildup and resurface fresh skin cells.
Photofacials do the same as the peels. In addition, they help boost our collagen content and therefore yield more dramatic and longer-lasting results. Keep in mind that photofacials can tighten the skin on the neck only to a certain extent. Sometimes sagging of the neck is due to muscular issues or an excess of adipose tissue. Those cases require medical or surgical intervention such as liposuction, belkyra, or a lipo face lift.
Other questions?
Call us or submit your questions to our “Ask Dérmica” feature.
