Is Melanin that Causes Dark Spots on Our Skin Good or Bad?
What is melanin?
Melanin is the pigment in our body. They formed our skin tones, eye colours and hair colours. People with more melanin will have darker skin tones while people with less melanin will have lighter skin tones.
Melanin is responsible to protect our skin against the harmful Ultraviolet sun rays (UV). However, excessive melanin will causes hyperpigmentation on our skin and uneven skin tones.
Why we misunderstand that melanin is bad for our skin?
We are know that melanin is the main culprit of our skin hyperpigmentation. But, is melanin good or bad for our skin?
Most people consider melanin as bad for our skin because excess melanin production can cause dark spots on our face. Besides that, melanin also makes our skin tone uneven.
In other side, melanin is not completely bad. For instance, they protect our skin from the harmful UV radiation that can damage our skin and potentially causing skin cancer. In other words, melanin act as our body’s natural sunscreen.
Do you know that two people with different skin colors have different levels of protection against the sun’s ultraviolet rays.
If you are exposed to the hot sun, redness of the skin is one of the symptoms of skin damage, which is also what we call sunburn.
People with lighter skin tone will most likely to have sunburn than people with darker skin tone.
On the other hand, people with darker skin tone will less likely to develop sunburn from the exposure of the sun. This is because they have a lot of melanin to protect their skin, which helps them to absorb ultraviolet rays and protects the cells of his skin.
What happen if you are overexposed to UV rays?
Strong ultraviolet rays from sun will bring us two types of damage. The first is common sunburn. If the overexposure of UV rays builds up over time, it will develop into skin cancer.
Therefore, melanin, which is responsible for helping us absorb ultraviolet rays, has always played the role of a low-key good skin guardian, silently protecting our skin from harmful UV rays, greatly reducing our chances of sunburn and skin cancer.
What is the best treatment to remove pigmentation?
Pigmentation removal can be divided into 2 methods, the first is the non-laser method. It is actually quite easy to find many skin care products for whitening and pigmentation removal.
Generally, these skin care products use fruit acids (AHA) to speed up the peeling process of our skin, and our pigmentation will look lighter after the peeling. However, skin care products containing fruit acids (AHA) may cause other skin problems such as sensitivity and dryness.
The second treatment of pigmentation is the Light Therapy or Laser Pigmentation Removal treatment. Light Therapy is actually a kind treatment utilising different wavelength of light, which we also call laser.
We often misunderstood that laser treatment use a type of light to remove all kind of pigmentations. But in fact, Light Therapy effectively utilise different wavelengths to target different pigmentation problems.
A professional Light Therapist should know your skin conditions, types of pigmentation (Freckles, Melasma, Age spots or Ota Nevus-like Spots) and the layer of pigmentation (Surface or Deep spots) before providing you the best pigmentation treatment.
The principle of Light Therapy Pigmentation Treatment is Selective Photothermolysis. This advanced Light Therapy technology only target on melanin.
When light is absorbed by the melanin, the light energy is converted into heat energy. After that, the thermal energy will decompose the targeted melanin into smaller molecules. Finally, the body’s immune system cells such as white blood cells or metabolism will digest these small molecules.
After a few weeks, your pigmentation will gradually become lighter and even disappear. Different kind of pigmentations have different absorption rates for different light wavelengths.
This explains why we need to use different laser settings to remove different kind of pigmentations. Incorrect use of laser treatment may lead to skin damage. Remember to consult pigmentation expert or aesthetic professional for the best treatment result.
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