I remember my grandfather who was almost completely bald at the age of twenty told me that when he started getting bald at such an early age, he was extremely depressed. Shortly after, he met my grandmother who did not care about his baldness and they lived happily together for sixty years!

Chronic stress and unhappiness about one’s body can lead to clinical depression that is difficult to improve without medication.

The culture of  being “perfect” and young is very distressing for many of those who do not feel “perfect” for whatever reason. While I certainly do support looking after oneself, I do not support the advertizing industry’s overblown ideal of eternal youth, the ridiculous cult of beauty which only purpose is to make you feel bad because the worse you feel the more money you will spend on looking and feeling better.

Bombarding you with “beautiful” people, “perfect” skin and heavily photoshopped glamor models is good business. You will spend more in increasingly desperate, but largely fruitless attempts to look like the shiny people in the shiny magazines.

The same with fashion. Let’s be honest: Fashion is for those who want to look like everyone else! Surely, wearing new clothes is enjoyable and I don’t say you should spend twenty years wearing the same shoes, but do not lay waste to your mood and bank account by succumbing to the pressure of always having the latest mobile phone, hair – or heel style.

To be honest, Big Cosmetics is not even the main cause of this vicious circle of trying to throw money at the inevitable forces of nature. They simply abuse our instincts to their advantage. Our genes are programmed to reproduce – everything in nature submits to this prime goal. This whole issue of feeling the need to be sexy is nothing else than our genes bullying us into doing what they are programmed to: To procreate.  We are slaves of our own DNA. What’s at play is a survival-of-the-fittest scenario and the struggle to become the alpha male/female, a desirable procreation partner in an environment of competing genes. If you realize this and manage to more or less resist playing this game, you will be relieved and can enjoy looking good without the need for extremes and perfection.

Lots of supposedly physically “perfect” people have unhappy relationships anyway.

A daughter of a friend complained to her brother that she was ugly and he said:

“You are quite pretty but you are not gorgeous. That’s actually an advantage because that will keep superficial people away from you.”

Don’t obsess over things that can’t be changed. Or else you’ll suffer through your life. Focus on what you can change.

There currently is no method that can remove stretch marks. You can only improve their appearance, for example with dermarolling. Concentrate on achievable goals such as staying or becoming slim and toned (unless you really feel OK as you are), waering hairstyle that fits you and especially: Being pleasant to be with.

Why do you want to be perfect? To find a loving partner? Who do you think has a greater chance to find a nice partner? Who would you prefer as a partner?

Someone with stretch marks who’s overweight, depressed and usually snappy and in a bad mood?

..or a person with stretch marks who’s mostly in a good mood, has done his best to look good but who ignores his stretch marks, is a pleasure to be with?

I don’t blame stretchmark-afflicted people when they become depressed. Not at all. I totally understand it. It is extremely difficult to withstand the competitive environment we’re in.  I only say that you should try to change what you can and decide to ignore the rest and that will likely result in finding an agreeable partner and it will also prevent your life being “suffered through”.

I’m not promoting a plattitude like: “Don’t worry about stretch marks, it can always be worse”.  It’s not a competition of what is worse. It is about the approach you decide to have.

Important to remember: Living with a person who’s merely covered with stretch marks is very easy but living with a person who has low self-esteem is extremely difficult. Low self-esteem ruins everything.

There are billions of people on this planet. You just need to find one good, loving person for yourself who will not care about your stretch marks.

A tip for summer:

When you go swimming, make the decision that you will not look at the others at all, decide that you will not spend the entire day observing how many stretch marks others have or don’t have and how unlucky you are., etcetera. People with many stretch marks usually don’t go to the beach anyway. They stay at home and write desperate emails how they stay at home, cry and overeat, which makes me sad.  If you don’t feel comfortable  exposing your stretch marks in a swimsuit, cover them with UV swimwear. I have written a forum posting about it:

http://forum.owndoc.com/showthread.php?400-Swimwear-to-cover-stretch-marks

This picture is from March 2011, after five months of needling. The customer is very happy with the results and posted them originally on our forum.

Dermarolling before and after pictures – 2

This photo is taken before microneedling, but after acid peels that had no significant result. The photo is taken under halogen illumination inside a bedroom.

And this photo is taken one and a half year later, in September 2010, outside in a sunny garden. The photo was taken six weeks after her last needling.

She has needled her stretch marks every 4-6 weeks for one and half years and she will continue. She has used a 1.5 mm dermaroller and the single needle, topical vit. C and Infadolan. She densely needled the stretch marks from different angles, to various depths up to 2 mm with quite some pinpoint bleeding.  No other treatment was employed. Stretch marks are still there but the overall improvement is amazing. The stretch marks tanned for the first time since they had formed. (The straight red lines are caused by swimsuit pants). The photos are not manipulated in any way.

Dermarolling before and after pictures – 3

This customer has her own blog.

This picture is from her blog. She bought our dermarolling products. “Sarah and John Vaughter” can be made out on the instructions:

This is a “before” picture:

This is a picture after three rolling sessions and two agressive single-needlings:

Such improvement usually takes more needling sessions. Click on the picture for an enlargement.

Dermarolling before and after pictures – 4

The  next customer’s photos are of a vaccination scar, treated with the single needle. The scar is 35 years old.

The same vaccination scar immediately after needling with the single needle:

And here is the same vaccination scar after four needlings, one months apart. The photo is taken five weeks after the last needling.  The hardened collagen scar tissue is mostly gone and the scar tanned for the first time since it had formed. She has used the single needle, topical vit. C and Infadolan.  The scar is much less visible now.  No other treatment was employed.

The middle photo was taken inside, the others outside in full summer light.

You can use single needling to improve both atrophic and hypertrophic scars, stretch marks, surgical scars (including liposuction, breast augmentation and tummy tuck scars), scars resulting from accidents including burn scars, acne scars, etcetera. You should not use it on keloid scars.

You can also improve individual wrinkles, especially the ones between the eyebrows and on the forehead.

The needle has to be very thin with a long taper. Our single needles are custom made according to our own design.

The “stretchmarked” skin is usually thinned both in the epidermis and the dermis (skin layers). Stretch marks/scars usually have abundant collagen in them but that collagen is in the form of a scar – the collagen layout is different from that in normal skin and the elastin fibers are abnormal as well.

Pricking the stretch marks densely with a single needle will crush the hardened collagen bundles and that should smoothe the texture of the stretch marks and make them less bright and shiny. With repeated needling, the indented scars fill up a little. Although the scar will never completely disappear.

If you are lucky, the repeated micro injuries caused by pricking the skin will make the stretch marks heal with a better collagen layout and a fiber configuration that is a little more “normal skin”-like. Old scars usually have poor blood supply. Needling often triggers angiogenesis – the growth of new blood vessels. Needling can also induce melanocyte production and that will enable the stretch marks to tan or partially tan. All this is individual, so we can’t give hard guarantees.

If your stretch marks are very shallow (unfortunately, most of them are not), they could even disappear entirely but so far, no current method can totally remove deep stretch marks. All we can do is improve them over time. Remember – there are no silver bullets or magical solutions. All real improvement takes time, effort and the endurance of some pain.

Dermarolling before and after pictures – 5

This customer tried to improve her skin texture – successfully.

Before (Sep. 12, 2011) and after dermarolling (Jan 14, 2012).

This is a detail of the skin before the single-needle treatment. The stretchmarks were a little worse to begin with – she did some peels in attempt to improve them but real improvement came only after treatment with the custom-made single needle we sell in our web store.

And this is is after treatment with our dermaroller and the special 0.25 mm diameter single needle:

She needled just the stretchmarks, pricking by hand, with the special 0.25 mm single needles we sell in our web store. The idea is to move like a sewing machine with the needle over just the white stretchmarks, going about 2 mm deep. Do not use a tattoo machine – it goes way too fast, loses power when down-regulated and you can easily make the scar worse. Plastic surgeon Dr. Des Fernandez, inventor of the dermaroller, said:

“However, we have to realize that if one did the deeper needling at the density of a tattoo, then the skin would be scarificed, and sure one would get a lot of collagen (in the form of scar tissue) and not a restoration of the complex elastin and collagen network which we aim to achieve with needling. However, deeper scars need greater penetration with the needle…  …Even if the extra needling is done by hand with a single needle, this is well worthwhile doing”.

Neither use an ordinary tatoo needle – their diameter is 0.35 mm, which is too large and causes more scar tissue to appear. Using a single needle is a laborious process but you can do it bit by bit, whenever you have some time left. The stretchmarks have become much darker and are much less visible. She will proceed dermarolling this area and after one more year, the stretchmarks will look even better.