What Can I Do to Improve the Size of My Pores as I Age?

Have you ever looked closely at a child’s skin? It’s perfectly smooth, taut and rarely can you see the individual pores. An adult’s skin—especially someone past the age of 40 or 50—well, let’s just say it’s a different story. Time takes its toll on us, most notably on our facial skin. Why? Because your face is exposed to more environmental damage than most other areas of the body.

As we age, we lose the critical structures in our skin’s connective tissue layer that make it tight, firm and smooth: collagen and elastin. Sun damage accelerates this process and the result is skin that is lax and loose which tends to enlarge pores and make them more visible. This is compounded in areas where we’ve got lots of oil glands – the nose, forehead and inner part of the cheeks.

It’s interesting that people buy skin care products that claim to “tighten” and “shrink” pore size. While it’s true that you can temporarily see a tightening of pores after you use an astringent or exfoliate (remove/thin the very outer skin layer), these are just temporary measures; they can’t physically change the size of your pores.

Class IV medical lasers however, can work in more permanent ways to tighten and firm your skin while decreasing pore size. One way they do this is by targeting the oil glands themselves. When thermal energy is absorbed into the oil gland during a laser treatment, it can shrink and produce less oil. This helps your complexion in many ways, and can create smoother-looking skin.

Another way lasers work to reduce pore size is to build more collagen. There are a couple different lasers to do this, but the net effect is similar: more collagen means a thicker dermis (middle layer of skin) which makes your skin tighter and younger looking. This in turn, reduces your pore size and contributes to overall rejuvenation of your skin.

At Celibre Medical, we will often recommend a combination approach that uses both good, medical-grade skin care along with Class IV medical lasers. Over the years, we’ve found that this combination gives our patients the most lasting and beautiful results that they’re looking for when it comes to taming unwanted, enlarged pores.

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