Because that little brown spot on my arm (yep, look up) annoyed the sh*t out of me…
When you’re a blogger (or actually almost anyone in 2017), you constantly see photos of yourself. And when that happens, you start to notice every. little. thing “wrong” or “off” about yourself. Fun fact, I only recently realized that my eyes aren’t quite the same size, and shortly after that I started noticing a small brown spot on left arm (yep, that pesky driving arm that gets ALL the sun).
How To Actually Get Rid of Sunspots
So what exactly IS a sunspot?
Sunspots, also known as solar lentigines, are darkened spots on your skin caused by direct, prolonged exposure to ultra violet (UV) rays. The spots are usually not cancerous (but always get them checked by a dermatologist to be sure!), and can appear at any age, depending on how much time you’ve spent in the sun.
It didn’t bother me at first but then it started really popping out in photos…(see bel0w).
It got to a point where pretty much any time my left arm was in a photo, that damn sun spot was ALL I could look at. So what did I do? I called in a top-rated dark spot fading product from a brand I love. I followed the directions to a T and used it every day for two weeks. No change. I thought “hmm, maybe I should try one more week to be safe.” And then nothing again.
I posted in one of my beauty lovers Facebook group asking if anyone had tried a dark spot product that they loved (assuming the one I tried just basically sucked) and a few people responded saying they had the best luck just getting them frozen off at their dermatologist.
The solution…
That was that. I immediately emailed a photo of the spot to Dr. Jessica Wu (my cosmetic derm and the BEST dermatologist in LA, in my opinion) and asked her what she thought. She said she felt 100% confident that freezing it off would solve the issue, so I made an appointment for some cryotherapy. Dr. Wu said she would use liquid nitrogen to freeze off the spot, which would then scab up and then fall off in about one week. Cryotherapy pricing varies, depending on your doctor, but I say if you have a spot thats really pissing you off it’s totally WORTH IT.
This is what the spot looked like one day after cryotherapy. It’s a little weird that it gets DARKER, but that’s actually a good thing since it means it’s going to scab up soon. The weird circle mark around the scab is from my Band-Aid, haha. I kept a Band-Aid on any time I went outside (to prevent sun exposure and, of course, any weird looks).
Even though Dr. Wu said the scab takes about a week to fall off, mine took about 10 days. Naturally, I panicked after day seven, but Dr. Wu assured me via email that it’s totally normal that I took a little longer than expected. As you can see, the skin is a little pink where the scab fell off which, again, is totally normal – think about any time you’ve had a cut that healed. And the little cut below my newly pink spot is from the Band-Aid. Boo.
The result: Annnd, about a week after that, the pink tone went away and my spot is all gone and HEALED. I’d 1000% do this again if I had a spot that bothered me. As you can see from my arm photos, I’m basically covered in freckles any where the sun has ever hit me, but sometimes the spots can get a little big (like the one I had removed), which is annoying.
What do you guys think? Would you try cryotherapy?
