Beauty And The Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Poikiloderma Civatte’

Poikiloderma Civatte (the Civatte refers to just below the epidermis/skin). I mentioned this skin condition in “Anti-Aging, Skin Care and IPL Treatment: Part I”.

Sounds scary, huh? It’s not. It’s a pigmentation issue caused by over exposure to the sun without sunscreen as a child. So all you moms out there, protect your little ones. Now that we have so many great sun protection products available, use them! Some researchers believe it is also hereditary as it seems to show up repeatedly in families.

Poikiloderma Civatte can take years to show up on the surface of the skin. It is mostly middle aged women (me), and sometimes men, that get this. It does sometimes show up in much younger individuals. It is predominately a female issue for some odd reason that no one has yet figured out. Hormonal perhaps?

So anyway, Poikiloderma Civatte is a brownish or reddish discoloration that appears on the neck, upper chest and sometimes the cheeks.  The more you expose the area unprotected to the sun, the more prominent it becomes. In some cases it can be itchy and/or scaly. Mine was fairly minor and only on the neck. It did not itch or appear scaly.

Can I tell you how much I did not like having this discoloration on my neck? I did not have as much discoloration as pictured above, but still it bothered me. I had been told at one time that my only option to remove it would be a laser treatment. Long downtime with the blistering and peeling. And costly. Read the rest of this entry »