Melasma Treatment in Makati: What Controls It and What Makes It Worse
Melasma is a chronic condition that we manage. Anyone who offers to cure it in a package of six is either using the word loosely or has not treated much of it.
It shows as symmetrical brown or grey-brown patches, usually across the cheekbones, the upper lip, the forehead and the bridge of the nose. It runs in families, it flares in pregnancy and on hormonal contraception, and it is far more common in Filipino skin than in the skin most laser protocols were written for.
The reason it defeats so many courses is that the two things that drive it, sunlight and heat, are outside every clinic in this city. You leave the treatment room and walk into both.
What a session is like
The consultation looks at the pattern, asks when it started, and asks about pregnancy, contraception and how much sun and heat your day involves. Those answers change the plan more than the machine does.
Sixty minutes. Cleanse, cool, a series of light passes, then a calming serum and sunscreen before you leave. Faint pinkness for an hour and no time off work.
Between sessions the work is sunscreen with iron oxide reapplied through the day, your topical, and staying out of avoidable heat. Sessions are spaced three to four weeks apart and the change is gradual on purpose.
When this is the wrong treatment
Pregnancy and the months after
Melasma that arrives with pregnancy often fades on its own once hormones settle. Treating through it means fighting the trigger while it is still running. We wait.
Anyone who will not use sunscreen
Said plainly because it decides the outcome. Without daily tinted sunscreen the course buys a few months and then hands the money back as a relapse.