Skin Condition
Acne & Acne Scarring:
Achieve Clearer, Smoother Skin
Acne is a common skin condition that can lead to frustrating breakouts, inflammation, and persistent scarring. At Dermal Glow, we offer advanced treatments designed to effectively manage active acne and significantly improve the appearance of scars, helping you achieve a clearer, smoother complexion.
Understanding Acne and Scar Formation
Acne develops when hair follicles become clogged with a combination of excess oil (sebum) and dead skin cells, creating an environment where acne-causing bacteria, particularly Cutibacterium acnes, can multiply. As bacteria thrive within the blocked follicle, the immune system responds with inflammation, which is what causes the redness, swelling, and tenderness associated with active breakouts. The depth and severity of this inflammatory response largely determines whether a breakout heals cleanly or leaves lasting damage behind.
Scarring occurs when inflammation breaks down the structural collagen within the dermis faster than the body can repair it, or when the healing response overcorrects. With more superficial breakouts, the skin's repair processes can usually restore the area to its original texture. With deeper, more severe lesions, particularly cystic acne, the inflammation extends further into the dermis and damages the surrounding collagen network. If the body fails to fully rebuild this lost collagen, the result is the indented, pitted texture of atrophic scarring. Less commonly, the healing response goes the other way, producing too much collagen and creating raised, hypertrophic scars. This is also why early, effective treatment of active inflammatory and cystic acne matters so much: the sooner inflammation is brought under control, the less opportunity there is for deeper structural damage and permanent scarring to occur.
The Different Kinds of Acne and Acne Scarring You Might Be Seeing
Acne and the scarring it can leave behind aren't one-size-fits-all, they show up differently depending on what's driving them:
Comedonal Acne: The mildest form, made up of blackheads and whiteheads caused by clogged pores, without significant inflammation.
Inflammatory Acne: Red, tender papules and pustules that develop when clogged pores become infected and inflamed.
Cystic Acne: Deep, painful, fluid-filled lumps beneath the skin's surface, the most severe form of acne and the type most likely to cause lasting scarring.
Hormonal Acne: Breakouts linked to hormonal fluctuations, often appearing along the jawline and chin, and common during puberty, menstrual cycles, and perimenopause.
Atrophic (Indented) Scarring: The most common type of acne scarring, where tissue loss leaves behind icepick, boxcar, or rolling scars that create a pitted or uneven texture.
Hypertrophic Scarring: Raised, thickened scars that form when the body produces excess collagen during healing, less common with acne but possible with severe or picked-at lesions.
Post-Inflammatory Hyperpigmentation (PIH): Flat, discoloured marks left behind after a breakout heals, ranging from pink to brown depending on skin tone, which fade over time but can persist for months.
Why it happens
What Causes Acne & Acne Scarring?
Excess Oil Production:
Overactive sebaceous glands, often influenced by genetics and hormones, produce more oil than the skin needs, increasing the likelihood of clogged pores and breakouts.
Hormonal Fluctuations:
Androgens stimulate the sebaceous glands to produce more oil, which is why acne often flares during puberty, around menstrual cycles, during pregnancy, or with conditions like PCOS.
Bacterial Overgrowth and Inflammation:
When pores become blocked, acne-causing bacteria multiply within the follicle, triggering the immune system's inflammatory response, the deeper and more severe this inflammation, the higher the risk of lasting scarring.
Picking or Squeezing Lesions:
Manipulating active breakouts increases inflammation and tissue damage, significantly raising the likelihood that a single breakout will heal with a lasting scar.
How Our Treatments Work on Acne and Acne Scarring
Effectively treating acne and the scarring it leaves behind requires addressing two separate problems: calming active inflammation and bacterial overgrowth in the short term, while supporting genuine skin repair and collagen remodelling over the longer term. Treatments that deeply cleanse and exfoliate the skin help clear excess oil and dead skin cells from the follicle, reducing the environment that allows acne-causing bacteria to thrive, while also encouraging healthy cellular turnover that keeps pores from becoming blocked again.
For active inflammatory acne specifically, light-based treatments work by targeting the bacteria and inflammation directly. Certain wavelengths of light are absorbed by porphyrins, naturally occurring compounds produced by acne-causing bacteria, which generates a reaction that helps destroy the bacteria from within the follicle. This reduces active breakouts while also calming the surrounding inflammation and redness that acne leaves behind.
Once acne is under control, addressing scarring shifts the focus back to the same collagen-remodelling principle that underlies many of our skin rejuvenation treatments: controlled stimulation of the skin triggers a renewed healing response, encouraging the body to rebuild collagen within the depressed, scarred tissue. This gradually fills out atrophic scars from within and smooths the skin's overall texture, with results building progressively as new collagen matures over the following months.
Our Go-To Treatments for Acne and Acne Scarring
Because active acne and acne scarring are really two different problems, often requiring different approaches, we tailor your treatment plan to what you're dealing with, whether that's calming current breakouts, fading post-acne marks, smoothing textural scarring, or all three together.
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DMK Enzyme Therapy & Skincare:
A results-driven treatment that uses enzymatic masking to increase circulation and oxygenation in the skin, helping to detoxify the follicle, reduce congestion, and support the skin's own repair processes from within. We pair this with a tailored DMK home skincare routine, since consistent daily care between treatments is essential for keeping acne-prone skin balanced and breakouts under control.
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Acne Hydrafacial MD:
A multi-step treatment that cleanses, gently exfoliates, and extracts congestion from the pores, while infusing the skin with hydrating and clarifying serums. For acne-prone skin, we use a dedicated Acne HydraFacial protocol, incorporating a stronger peeling system to more effectively clear congestion, paired with LED light therapy to help calm inflammation and target acne-causing bacteria. It's an excellent foundational treatment for keeping pores clear and skin calm, suited to everything from milder, comedonal acne through to more active breakouts.
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BBL Forever Clear:
A dedicated BBL protocol built specifically for acne-prone skin, combining multiple targeted wavelengths in a single treatment. One wavelength targets porphyrins, compounds naturally produced by acne-causing bacteria, helping to destroy bacteria within the follicle and calm active breakouts. Another works on inflammation and vascular redness, reducing the visible redness and swelling that comes with active acne. Because the same light energy that calms active inflammation also helps clear residual redness, Forever Clear is equally effective at fading post-inflammatory erythema (PIE), making it a useful bridge treatment between managing current breakouts and addressing the marks they leave behind.
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Skin Needling:
Our primary treatment for textural, atrophic scarring. Controlled micro-injury triggers the skin's natural collagen induction process, gradually rebuilding collagen within depressed, pitted scars to smooth and even out skin texture over a course of treatments.
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Clear Silk
A gentle, low-downtime treatment using a 1064nm Nd:YAG laser, similar to Laser Genesis, particularly effective for post-inflammatory erythema (PIE), the pink or red marks left behind after a breakout heals. ClearSilk's longer wavelength gently heats the skin to calm residual redness and support healing, while being gentle enough for sensitive, healing, or acne-prone skin.
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Skin Membership:
Because consistency is genuinely one of the biggest factors in successfully managing acne long-term, we offer memberships that make regular treatment more accessible. Acne responds best to an ongoing, proactive approach rather than one-off visits, and a membership helps keep your skin on track between flare-ups rather than only addressing breakouts as they happen.
