HealthWatch: Skin Treatment

NEW YORK (CBS 2) -- If you're like most people, you rang in the new year with a long list of new resolutions, and a lot of them probably have to do with turning back the clock and looking younger. However, even if you lose weight, exercise more and eat healthier, sometimes Mother Nature needs a helping hand to turn back the clock, Dr. Max Gomez reports.

For a younger-looking face, there's always surgery, but new technology is actually making it possible to rejuvenate without cutting.

"My skin, my face, made me, you know, feel and look a lot older than I really feel inside," said Dana DiBiaggio, 50. Years of sun worship and a skin condition caused breakouts and splotchy-looking skin for her.

"I had a lot of redness in my face and breaking out with rosacea. I had a lot of sun damage, fine lines, and you know general tone of my skin wasn't even," she said.

So Dana came to Dr. Lori Brightman of the Skin And Laser Surgery Center Of New York for help, who recommended a new device called the e-matrix. Instead of a laser, it uses radio-frequency to deliver energy to deeper layers of the skin, which means there's less damage to the surface of the skin while still achieving a number of good things at the same time.

"It helps stimulate new collagen, new elastin, gives you some tightening, reduction of the blood vessels, brown spots and wrinkling," said Brightman.

There are other techniques, such as different lasers that can also treat acne, broken blood vessels, brown spots, wrinkles, even loss of pigment called vitiligo.

For overall skin darkening, there's a new natural skin-lightening lotion that is effective with fewer side effects than other creams.

The key is that no one approach works for everyone.

"See your dermatologist, have a good evaluation, and find out what your personal goals are. And then you can choose the technology thats most appropriate for your concern," Brightman said.

For Dana, the e-matrix did the trick. The differences are subtle but together they add up to a new year, new you. "The fine lines, it really helped to reduce those, the acne scars and then I got this overall lift, you know, a tightening of my skin, which seems to be sustainable, which I'm very pleased about."

The interesting thing about many of these treatments is that your skin keeps improving, especially in texture, for months afterwards, as you continue to make new collagen.

Dana said that her face got red for a couple hours after the e-matrix treatment and her skin did peel some for a few days but it was coverable with makeup.

Bottom line: you can turn back the clock without surgery.