As a skincare studio and med spa, we don’t take the phrase “med spa” lightly. We take our responsibilities as certified aestheticians incredibly seriously; when it comes to offering medical services, we know that our clients expect treatments backed by medical science and performed according to those rigorous expectations.
This is why Bellagena partners with Dr. Pamela Chapman, a physician and family medicine expert. Dr. Chapman represents the medical safety of all of our treatments, and she also directly supervises and performs her own services that fall entirely within the medical realm.
In this way, Bellagena is able to extend our spa and aesthetic partnership into promoting Dr. Chapman’s more extensive, medically scientific procedures—while knowing that these procedures are both safe and effective.
One of the most recent treatments offered by Dr. Chapman is platelet-rich plasma (PRP) to mitigate (and potentially reverse) hair loss. Here’s how it works.
What is PRP? How is it made?
Platelet-rich plasma is a substance derived from your own blood. The three-step procedure involves drawing blood directly from you (and only you), processing and separating it in a centrifuge, and then reinjecting the most nutrient-rich solution back into a part of your body that needs the additional healing nutrients.
A centrifuge is a basic mechanical system that spins liquids. The centripetal force of the spinning acts a little differently on things with different densities. The result is that the centrifuge separates out a denser mix of plasma (a thick, protein-rich elixir) and platelets (essential cell fragments derived from bone marrow).
What is PRP used for?
PRP is a common therapeutic, medical treatment often used for chronic pain or injury caused by soft-tissue damage (including tendons, ligaments and muscles) or overall joint injury. Professional atheletes often receive PRP therapy as part of their orthopedic rehab in order to accelerate their recoveries and get them pain-free, stronger, and back on the field faster.
How does PRP for hair loss work?
When injected strategically into the scalp, platelet-rich plasma can rejuvenate hair follicles and stimulate hair growth. This is because the combination of nutrients contained in a PRP solution is treated by the body as a rich growth factor. This can mean reversing baldness, slowing hair loss, or even thickening hair growth for improved density.
Because hair grows slowly, it can take six months to see marked growth, especially in long-haired individuals and/or those aiming for substantial results. However, these results can often be achieved with as few as four or six treatments, each of which usually takes about an hour.
Why is PRP a preferred therapy over other injections and growth-stimulators?
No matter what part of your body receives the PRP treatment, this medical therapy comes strongly recommended because it uses your body’s own blood. This means that your body immediately recognizes your PRP as a known factor.
Other treatments are often treated by the body as invasive substances, which can slow the therapeutic process and even cause dangerous side effects. To prevent these negative outcomes, foreign injections often come paired with steroids or other anti-inflammatory precautions—meaning that you’re injecting even more foreign substances into your body.
PRP simply involves maximizing and concentrating your body’s own growth factors in a particular location. As such, it is performed in Bradenton by Dr. Chapman as a safe and effective aesthetic-medical healing therapy.
Call Bellagena or Dr. Chapman today to learn more about PRP, and to set up an appointment for a more personalized conversation about what PRP can do for you.
