Healthy Living broadens its knowledge about stretch marks

Many women develop them during pregnancy and both genders discover that they can be caused by weight gain.  And the only thing we find uglier than stretch marks is the fact that they are here to stay, as this week’s edition of Healthy Living found out.  So if you’ve tried everything on the shelf and over the counter and have gotten no results, it’s time to hold up.

Marleni Cuellar, Reporting

Some dub them “victory scars”, as stretch marks become a manifestation of overcoming large feats in life like having a baby or losing a great amount of weight. For the masses, though, stretch marks are considered unsightly lesions on the body. As a result, consumers are bombarded with a range of treatment options. If you are willing to go to all lengths to be spared of stretch marks, then it is most important to understand the causes and what steps, if any, you can take to prevent them.

Dr. Jorge Lopez-Granja, Dermatologist

“Stretch marks we can basically say are a type of scars cost by hormones that impact the skin. They impact basically the elastin content of the skin.”

Dermatologist, Dr. Jorge Lopez Granja puts to rest the number one misconception about stretch marks: that they are NOT caused by stretching the skin.

Dr. Jorge Lopez-Granja

“Just a couple years ago, we had in mind that whatever made your skin stretch would cause stretch marks which is really, really not the case. We know that there are some factors contributing to this: for example pregnancy , the fact that females taking birth control pills, the fact that you would lose weight or gain weight in a rapid manner and puberty is also one of the factors that contribute to this and also the use of steroids cream. They all affect the hormones in your skin and that actually gets us to the destruction or the targeting of the elastin fibers in the skin and elastin is basically the protein that helps your skin maintain its shape and recoil back to its normal shape whenever its being stretched and the problem is our body has a very hard time recovering from the damage of the elastin fibers.”

The most common places to develop stretch marks are not restricted to the stomach and affect more than just a pregnant woman.

Dr. Jorge Lopez-Granja

Dr. Jorge Lopez Granja

“Usually around the belly button, buttocks, thighs, inner arms and the reason for this is that in those areas the fat content of the skin is higher so wherever you have more fat, the hormones play a bigger role and that’s why it happens that way. We know that stretch marks affect two times more frequently females than males. Usually they would appear from five years of age to fifteen years of age. I mean they can occur at any age but that’s the time frame that they usually appear and in terms of the race they tend to affect more the white people, Caucasians more than the dark skinned people.”

Recent stretch marks are purplish and reddish and old stretch marks look whitish.  People seek out ways to treat both forms in a multitude of ways. Current suggested treatments range from ‘at-home care’ of cocoa butter or lemon juice to hundreds of creams and ointments as well as surgical and laser procedures. Of all these, though, Dr. Lopez can confirm the effectiveness of one.

Dr. Jorge Lopez-Granja

“The most effective type of treatment we have up to this day is laser but a specific type of laser, which is called fractional laser and that one helps a lot. According to the studies, it gives you about fifty to seventy-five percent improvement specifically for the old stretch marks the white looking ones. Now if we are talking about the reddish, then you would use another type of laser called the pulsed dye laser.”

Laser is the best option for treating but it does not REPAIR, it only changes the appearance of the stretch mark improving the way they look. There is no known cure to stretch marks once formed but there are some recommendations for prevention.

Dr. Jorge Lopez-Granja

“You could rely on products that have tretinoin, alpha hydroxy acids and when the stretch marks are recent we would combine those with steroids for example. Aside from having a healthy diet and preventing to gain weight or lose weight very abruptly, there’s very little we can do because aside from that there is a genetic component to this. So bottom line is that ninety-nine point nine percent of the products that are readily available over the counter. They are just placebo that means they basically don’t do anything for stretch marks.”