Therapies can help lighten stretch marks

Just mention stretch marks and most women roll their eyes.

Stretch marks are lines where the skin has actually broken down, thinned and healed somewhat like a scar.

The immediate cause is a rapid increase in body size that the skin cannot accommodate to by normal, elastic expansion. So the skin gives up, the collagen fibres break down and a thin, depressed purple streak results.

And if that weren’t bad enough, a whole series of parallel rents in the skin develop.

There is rarely just one stretch mark.

The classic example is pregnancy, but as we all know, some women get stretch marks, others don’t, often unrelated to the level and rapidity of weight gain.

Male body builders often develop stretch marks after rapid addition of muscle mass, again, distributed in a seemingly random fashion.

Whatever the cause, stretch marks — or striae, as they are also called — often occur at puberty, in addition to times of rapid weight gain.

So estimates place the presence of stretch marks in up to 70 per cent of women.

Generally, the prevalence is lower in men.

Early striae are purplish in colour and over the years become lighter, but usually retain a pink tint.

This is because as the middle layer of the skin — called the dermis, which contains the collagen fibres — is stretched and breaks down, the subcutaneous tissue, containing blood vessels, becomes more visible.

Stretch marks may become less visible and angry-looking, but they never disappear.

Nor is there any truly effective way to prevent their occurrence.

Folk remedies such as cocoa butter or lanolin do not prevent stretch marks. Nor do any of the miracle products that have popped up over the years. Intensive moisturizing may help a little, but again, there is no topical agent to prevent stretch marks.

After stretch marks have developed, there are numerous therapies to lighten the colour and thicken the collagen layer. Anything that stimulates collagen growth should be at least somewhat effective.

Alpha hydroxy acids such as glycolic acid lotions and creams help; microdermabrasion helps and application of retinoids such as tretinoin are reasonably effective. But none of these should be used during pregnancy.

Currently, the most effective treatment is laser therapy. A number of lasers have shown good results in lightening the colour of the striae and thickening the collagen layer and actually diminish the defect. The 1064 nm (nanometre) Nd: YAG is one of a number of effective of lasers effective in treating stretch marks.

A new modality injecting platelet rich plasma (PRP), which contains concentrated growth factors from one’s own blood, has shown great promise. Although serious, proper scientific studies are not yet available, the anecdotal evidence from patients and physicians is positive.

This makes sense since the very same treatment has been shown to successfully reduce the depth of acne scars.

The PRP stimulates collagen production, and the new collagen reduces the depth of the striae, making them less visible, if not entirely reversing them.