A chemical skin peel: what is it, how does it work and is it right for you? - A blog by Dr Bradley

The chemical peel is one of the most honest skincare treatments around. It doesn’t hide behind a fancy name. It is what it says: a chemical solution that harnesses your body’s natural processes of renewal, which can largely be summed up as “discard old skin cells to make space for new ones.” In other words, it causes the skin to peel so that new skin can grow in its place.

The idea of peeling away small amounts of skin might sound scary initially, but chemical peels are one of the most common treatments for correcting skin and achieving visible results – especially in winter when skin needs a bit of a lift – simply because they have proven so very effective in rectifying damage and renewing skin.

To understand the science behind peels, what conditions they can help alleviate and to be able to make an informed decision, it’s best to start at the beginning: how renewal naturally happens in the skin.

Regenerating skin

Lifecycles are very important in nature, and our bodies are no different. It is just as important for skin cells to drop off and make space for new cells as it is to live healthily. In fact, our bodies rely on it (cancer is a prime example of what happens when cells don’t “die” when they are supposed to).

We shed a lot of skin, constantly. In fact, your skin seems to completely renew itself every 30 days or so (ideally). Why? Because your skin is there to protect the rest of your body – it is designed to grow quickly from the deepest layers through to the uppermost, so that it can be shed. This process allows your skin to keep impurities out of your body. And there are a lot of impurities to go around.

How much skin do we shed?

It’s estimated that we have around 1,6 trillion skin cells on our bodies (estimated by how much of your bodyweight skin accounts for, because no one has managed to sit down and count them all yet). And we shed around 30 000 to 40 000 of them every hour – that’s around a million per day, or 3,6 kg per year.

Nearly every minute of every day, your skin has to fend off a barrage of attacks, from pollutants, chemicals, ultraviolet rays, changes in temperature and climate, bacteria and a host of potential infections. These all pose a threat to you, and your skin is there to save the day. And, naturally, fending off these elements has an impact on your skin in the long run, especially as we get older and the natural renewal process slows down a little. This “impact” (damage) can show up in a few ways, from wrinkles, lines and sagging, to hyperpigmentation and even acne – all of which you’ll recognise as conditions you’ll want to have corrected timeously and effectively.

If, at this point, you were thinking along the lines of, “Hey, why not use the body’s natural regenerative processes to correct this type of damage?” then you are right on the money. Because that is exactly what chemical peels do.

Find out how Lamelle’s Chemical Peels can help you, and exactly what they do.