Removing Stretch Marks

Most if not all people have at some point had to deal with the presence of stretch marks on their body. Around the belly, on the back, on the legs, wherever they appear they can often turn an unotherwise beautiful piece of skin into something quite hideous. The causes are of course numerous but in most cases it’s due to either a rapid gain or loss of body weight e.g. pregnancy, weight lifting, crash dieting.

This article looks at the various solutions and products available on the market that can help eliminate and or reduce the visibility of those marks, so lets get straight into it.

The Common Problem

Stretch marks can appear anywhere on the body but simply put some places on the body seem to feature them more than others. Examples include the buttocks, abdomen, upper arms, underarms, inner and outer thighs, hips, and of course the breast area. I just want to stress at this point that although stretch marks pose no health risks and/or harm to your body they are unsightly and this alone is an acceptable reason for us to look for a solution.

The Creams & Oils

The majority of the early products included things like olive oils and creams which tended to focus more on fading the stretch marks rather than eliminating them, and to top it all off in many cases they did little more than reduce the redness and color around the stretch marks.

Other products which were heard of throughout most of the 80s and 90s included the classic Cocoa butter creams which claimed to be an effective moisturizer in preventing stretch marks from forming in the first place. Once again no research studies have shown that these methods prevent stretch marks or improve their appearance once a stretch mark has already formed. Creams sound like a quick and dirty way of ridding yourself of stretchmarks but in most cases they’ll either work perfectly or won’t work at all. We’ve reviewed some creams that do work at the end of this article.

Laser Treatments

Moving on from the creams there are many laser and micro dermabrasion treatments available that actually do work and help improve the appearance of existing stretch marks. Used daily for one month, there can be monumental improvements in the appearance of a stretch marks length, depth, and overall surface area.

The great thing about laser stretch mark removal is that it’s a 100% non invasive in office procedure that needs no recovery time at all. It works by sealing blood vessels that cause stretch marks to appear red, which will in turn minimize the appearance so much that they will either look invisible or simply disappear.

The laser in many cases can also activate collagen growth, which will attempt to close the scar that was created by the stretch mark in the first place. The only downside to this method is that in certain cases the body may suffer from some superficial tissue damage, certain stretch marks simply may not respond to the laser therapy, and you may develop blisters and other reactions to the treatment.

Fractional laser resurfacing is a variation of the conventional laser therapy techniques and uses scattered pulses of light to treat stretch marks. Only a small fraction of the scar is zapped by the laser over the course of several treatments which causes microscopic wounds on the scar allowing the body to respond with new collagen and epithelium.

In a 2007 a clinical trial was carried out on this cosmetic procedure where 5 out of 6 treatments resulted in the sufferers stretch marks improving by as much as 75 percent. Now that’s odds we like the sound of.

Cosmetic Surgery

The tummy tuck (and we’re going into cosmetic surgery here) is a slightly more extreme and albeit costly method which many celebrities follow up with after giving birth. By removing the skin from around the stomach area a successful tummy tuck will remove the bulge and the stretch marks that were developed during the pregnancy. This however is an extreme method and obviously only applies to stretch marks on the abdominal area. If you’ve got marks around your thighs, buttocks or back, you’re going to have to look for an alternative, so not really a great method in our books.

Creams For Prevention

We’ve already covered creams and confirmed that most either have extremely low success rates or simply don’t work at all. However despite all these problems there are creams that will help you prevent further stretch marks and in some cases even reduce the coloration of existing ones.

These creams don’t promise the permanent removal associated with laser but can and will prevent new marks from developing. As long as you’re realistic about what a cream can achieve, there’s no reason why selectively using creams won’t help you achieve your goals.

Our personal recommendation is a product from Revitol which we’ve found to work extremely well as a prevention cream, which in some cases also helps to dull down the coloration of existing marks. Head over to their site and you’ll find a no hype, straight forward site with a nice 90 day return policy. It’s worked great for the majority of women who’ve purchased so before you give laser a try, give the guys at Revitol a shot.