Three months after I first started monthly reviews with IDS Aesthetics, my overly active pores have reacted well to the daily use of IDS Skincare products by no longer overproducing sebum.

Upon review of my greatest skincare concerns worries, IDS recommended a Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) Therapy to reduce the appearance of pigmentation and sunspots on my cheeks. I do wish to, at some point, feel comfortable enough to go to work with no makeup on all the time.

So, I’m back at IDS Clinic!

Third time round, I’m used to the bustle of clinicians, doctors and nurses working hard even late in the evenings, tending to their constant stream of clients entrusting their faces to the IDS experts.

What exactly is IPL and what does it do for you? If you’ve tried IPL on any other parts of your body, IPL for the face works in similar ways.

Women have always subscribed to ridiculous beauty standards. In the early 1940s, X-Ray treatments were believed to beautify or smoothen out one’s skin, and women were lining up to get their faces zapped, till some if not most of them ended up with strange growths on their faces. Unlike these past dangerous procedures, the IPL is safe enough for your most sensitive zones as well as on your face.

BroadBand Light™ (BBL) is the trademarked name for an advanced-technology model of IPL, used in the IDS Clinics. The BBL is said to produce younger-looking skin. With little recovery time and no surgery, BBL offers a safe, FDA-cleared option for sun damage, anti-aging, and skin rejuvenation.

The BBL IPL procedure started off with a layer of numbing cream, which takes 20 minutes to take effect. This ensures comfort level when lasers hit the skin with mid to high intensity. Never had a full-face of numbing cream before so I was tickled by how my face slowly lost sensitivity. I could barely feel my lips when I took a sip of water.

By the time of procedure, my face was comfortably desensitized. The treatment involves 10 minutes of BBL delivered through a handheld device, operated by Dr Michelle. To make me feel entirely in good hands, a team of 3 (clinicians and Dr Michelle herself) were in the room with me. I wore dark glasses to shield my eyes against the BBL light (as a result, couldn’t take any photos). Each time the BBL was shot into my skin, a rather loud ‘pop’ could be heard. Indeed, I was really glad for the surface anesthesia, as the snapping of the BBL lights against my skin was hard and tingly bordering on painful. It’s like that game where, if you lost a bet, someone flicks their fingers as hard as they can against your skin. But it was manageable, and I think the pain was all in my mind.

According to IDS, BBL works by targeting various components in the skin:

• Pigmentation (dark spots or hair)
• Blood vessels
• Water in skin tissues

Post procedure, I didn’t experience skin redness at all, thankfully. Tiny scabs formed over the highly-pigmented spots on my forehead and cheeks, which peeled off painlessly in 3 days. I’m amazed by how my skin remained smooth for a month following the procedure (although this could be attributed to my daily sheet-masking).

I would definitely go back for BBL treatments as it worked to reduce my dark spots visibly! What I loved about IDS was the comfort level – both in the overall clean and sanitized aesthetics of the clinic, as well as the service level from the beauticians, nurses and doctors. While pictures can’t reveal how my sunspots have lightened (because of my fair skin, these tiny spots just look like dust specks and dirt), I can safely say that I’m one step further to going makeup-less in my daily life.

IDS Clinic is a premium to regular facial outlets in terms of price, but the quality of service, products and expertise is a differentiating factor. Doctors at IDS can provide clinical evaluation and expert advice which regular beauticians cannot provide, such as identifying the underlying root cause of skin problems, and recommending appropriate clinical skincare procedures and routine.

xoxo,
Jean

*Credits to Viktoria Jean

Visit Viktoria Jean's blog post here.