Dr. Christelle Oliver-Dussault, Dr. Harpreet Lotay, and Amanda Manholt break down the fundamentals of microneedling and why it remains one of the most misunderstood treatments in aesthetic medicine. They explain how microneedling works by creating controlled micro-injuries that stimulate collagen and skin regeneration, and why results are gradual rather than instant.

They discuss who microneedling is best suited for, how it differs from other skin treatments, and why patience and consistency are key to seeing meaningful improvements in skin texture, tone, and firmness. The conversation also covers recovery expectations, realistic outcomes, and how microneedling fits into a broader, long-term skin health strategy—reinforcing that lasting skin change takes time and thoughtful planning.

Disclaimer: The Beauty Equation is for informational purposes only and not medical advice. This podcast does not create a doctor–patient relationship. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before making medical or aesthetic decisions. Information may change as the field evolves.

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About the Hosts:

Dr. Harpreet Lotay is a family physician specializing in aesthetic medicine. She is the founder of Sona MD in Kamloops, BC, and serves as Chief Medical Officer at Bios Wellness Clinics. Known for her artistic approach and comprehensive non-surgical treatments, Dr. Lotay combines medical expertise with an eye for natural results. She is also an educator, a national trainer and holds academic appointments where she shares her knowledge in clinical dermatology and aesthetics. You can get in touch with her on Instagram @hlotaymd

Dr. Christelle Oliver-Dussault is a family physician specializing in aesthetic medicine, women’s health, and psycho-education. She brings a holistic, whole-person perspective to her clinical work, blending science with a deep understanding of the mind-body connection.

She is also the founder of Reclaim The Pink Within, a movement that empowers women to rediscover themselves during life’s most transformative stages. In addition, she is passionate about medical education and mentors the next generation of family physicians through her work with the department of Family Medicine at the University of British Columbia.

You can connect with her on Instagram @drchristellemd

Amanda Manholt is a clinic manager, patient consultant, and co-host of The Beauty Equation Podcast. With over 30 years of experience in beauty, aesthetics, and leadership, she has guided patients and teams alike toward confidence, growth, and empowerment. Known for her ability to connect with people and simplify the often-overwhelming world of aesthetics, Amanda brings a warm, practical, and relatable perspective to every conversation. You can find her on Instagram @crowsfeetandconfidence.

Websites

https://sonamd.ca/

https://www.getyourpinkbackproject.com/

I think microneedling is the perfect treatment because

there's not a lot of downtime. It's a very easy

treatment to have done. It's not uncomfortable. We

do use numbing. So I would say at the Most,

you know, 2 out of 10 at if any, most people feel like they

don't feel anything. So it's really relaxing as a

facial would be. However, you get more, more

effects, in my opinion, because you do get that collagen

induction. You get this global stim of the skin, so you

get improvement in pigment over time. People see sort

of a more resilience to their skin just from that

repetitive sort of stimulation. Just like going to the gym, you know,

you're building muscles, you're really building that skin's capacity to

turn itself over. Welcome back to the Beauty Equation. I'm Dr. Christelle

Oliver Duzot. And I'm Dr. Harpreet Lotte. And I'm

Amanda Manholt. Today is our tenth episode.

I can't believe that we already are ten episodes in.

So have you made it this far? Thank you so much for listening.

We enjoy these conversations. I hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Last time we started talking about

some medical devices. So lasers and light based treatments are a type of

medical advice. Today we're going to go into

microneedling, which is another type of device. And I think, Amanda, you get a lot

of people coming into you asking for this treatment.

And it's something that you mentioned, you bring up quite a lot too, because it

has so many applications. It really does.

I feel personally that microneedling

is sort of the, an unsung hero when it comes to the

tools that we have in our toolbox. I think a lot of times it's

exciting to, you know, see something, you know, like a halo or

a BBL halo combo. And, you know, because you see a lot and it happens

right away. But collagen, my friends, Collagen,

collagen, collagen. Anything we can do to

support our collagen, to help us produce more collagen. Trust me,

as somebody that's, you know, 55, I

am very in tune with the importance of

collagen in the skin. So it's a great tool to

use for corrective measures. So I know,

Christel, you talk to a lot of your patients that

you're seeing. You know, the acne is now under control, but

there's the aftermath, right? The scarring, that sort of, you know, textural

concerns, large pores, you know, so it's great for

anything Text, a lot of those texture related issues,

but it's another really lovely

thing that people can do even as a. On the other end where they're looking

to prevent things happening in terms of

fine lines, wrinkles, enlarged pores. I just, I

love it. And it's not the, it's not the most expensive treatment that we offer

by any stretch of the imagination. The downtime is

minimal. You know, I'd argue minimal to nearly

none. Yeah. So, you know, you're not having time off

of work and gosh, if I could just get everybody to do, you

know, three microneedlings a year or, you know, even every

other month, I, you know, I'd be very happy and they would

too. They really start to see some improvement in their skin.

I've often even done it myself a few weeks before if I know I have

an event, because you get a really lovely uniform glow to your

skin. And especially since we introduced

nctf, which is kind of like fertilizer for your skin. It's like a little vitamin

cocktail. And I find that when you apply that on top afterwards,

it's a really, really nice glow. So if you know that you have events coming

up, it's a lovely treatment that you could do with little

downtime and, you know,

it goes a lot further than your standard facial.

Exactly. I had a treatment three days ago.

Oh, yeah. You can barely see how it looks. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it would be good, I think, to explain

the mechanics of microneedling and what the heck is it? Because, you know,

some people listening to this have done all sorts of things and then other people

listening to this are like so many that are thinking, well,

what the heck is that? You're poking holes in your face. I don't, I don't.

I don't think I'm down for that. It doesn't sound very fun. Right. Doesn't

seem pretty fun. Yeah. I always go back to the

analogy of aerating the lawn.

It's a favorite of mine, but it's literally poking your skin.

And it sort of came into popular culture

when Kim Kardashian was using it in her vampire

facial thing. So remember that? And

you had videos of her covering

blood everywhere. And, you know, this was

microneedling and then she put her own blood on it and like

just so, so over the top. Right. But

microneedling's come a long way from that as

well. And we have different ways to use it, so it's

not always that dramatic. And in my opinion, and I'm going

to share my opinion on microneedling here,

there's various devices on the market that create those little

holes. Some of them are these pen

devices that sort of go up and down and

they are dragged across the skin by the

technician. And you might use something to allow that pen to slip

across the skin. I don't know how

I feel about that, because you've got things

that are vibrating up and down and then you've got horizontal movement

across the skin. And I can't help but wonder if you get

drag and excessive trauma to the skin. So

we, you know, my preference is a stamping device where it sort of

vibrates and the technician pushes those. Those very, very

fine hair, thin needles up and down into the

skin. And I think that's a great way to microneedle.

And it's. What it's doing is it's stimulating your skin

to make collagen, but it's doing much more than that because

we see improvement in pigment as well as even

vascularity, even even like redness to

an extent. It globally stimulates the skin

to improve itself. It will clear

away dead waste material, it will turn itself

over. And as it's replacing itself,

if you're a healthy person and you're eating

well, sleeping well, and you're using good skincare, your skin will

replace damaged cells with better cells.

And so, you know, not only are you improving

that collagen balance, because we're. We lose a little

bit of collagen as we age, and we're

replacing it maybe at a slower rate, we can speed

up that replacement so that we can keep up with the loss at

least. So, yeah, I really like it as a treatment.

Yeah. And I use it a lot in. It comes up a lot. As you

mentioned it, Amanda, in the acne clinic I run that, you know,

we'll have to get. People who come in with quite a lot of inflammation will

get their skin, I like to use the term, under remission, because acne is

a chronic condition. So either with topicals or oral treatments, and

once things have calmed down, if they have some residual

scarring, hyperpigmentation, or redness in their

scars, it can really help with that. You do need quite a few

sessions with those. So I usually find that you're looking at five successions,

one month apart. And there are some scars that won't respond to that, the

deeper ones, but the majority, you can have a significant

improvement and the

change in people's confidence after they've had the treatments,

because acne can be really debilitating. And, you know, I Get it a lot in

teens, 20s, 30s and they'll often have like big events or I've had quite a

few in this last year that you know, it was their last year of secondary

school and they just wanted to have their skin by the time they

started university and didn't want to have to deal with their scarring. And it

was so nice to send them off at the end of the summer when like

we finally got there. We worked together for about a year and a half and

that was kind of the final touches to get them there. So it's just,

it's a really nice tool to have. And as you said, like it's just

that mechanical injury primes the skin

and it's gentle enough, it's not as harsh as some of the more invasive devices

that we have. So it's quite a controlled response. And

then you can then because you've punctured those holes, you've

aerated the grass, you can then put on different

topicals afterwards depending on what you're trying to achieve. So I talked about the

NCTF which is that vitamin cocktail. But what Kim

Kardashian was doing with her vampire facial is really

if we extract some blood and spin it down and you're left with that

gold liquid which is your serum and has all the growth factors, those

then go into your skin and will stimulate

the cells and help the cells make back

what lies underneath your skin and give it its support, its

elasticity. So really multi purpose and you can do that even before

you start noticing those wrinkled and fine lines. That's almost

still baffles me why she was covered in red blood. But I don't

know. She's using a pen device that

was causing bleeding. Yeah, and, and I'm not,

I don't, I don't follow Kim and I'm sure she won't follow us. So

yeah, I, I, I didn't ever understand what was,

what the how that was supposed to be beneficial because you know, PRP is

as you mentioned, it's sort of a honey colored liquid. I think it's also really

important to mention there are devices that people can

get to use at home. Those

have always grossed me out for a couple reasons. It's one thing if it's

disposable, but if you know how would

you clean it to reuse it? Because you have to think you're actually making a

microscopic wound. So I'm

personally not really a big fan of the at home devices unless

they're disposable. And then I

worry that people are going to use something

alongside that. We talked about serums. You

know, you can cause real problems if you're using a topical

serum that is. Is only meant for topical use

in conjunction with something like microneedling. I've seen

some crazy stuff online. You know this, people just

rolling over their face, like, making holes galore and then

using some super harsh, like retinol that

has no business being introduced into the skin.

So I think again,

it's great. You just want to be smart about how you're going about it

and know that results take time. I think that's

the other thing to know for something like microneedling. As I

mentioned, it's not as exciting. As exciting as, you know, seeing

the results of a BBL Halo where like 10 days later we just had

one in the other day. It was as mind blowing. Microneedling is awesome, but

you have to be patient. Yeah. It's not a one

and done session. So I think microneedling is

the perfect treatment for prevention and

for treating fine lines. But it does require a lot of

patience. Absolutely. Because you need multiple treatments to get

optimal results. Having said that, you know, if you're very new

to aesthetics and you know, maybe you've done some

Botox or you're really committed to skincare

and you're great about your routine, you've loved

facials, but you're sort of curious about something a little bit

more. I think microneedling is the perfect treatment

because there's not a lot of downtime. It's

a very easy treatment to have done. It's not

uncomfortable. We do use numbing. So I would

say at the Most, you know, two out of 10, if that, if any.

Most people feel like they don't feel anything.

So it's really relaxing as a facial would be.

However, you get more, more effects,

in my opinion, because you do get that collagen induction. You

get this global stimulation of the skin, so you get

improvement in pigment over. People see

sort of a more resilience to their skin just from that

repetitive sort of stimulation. Just like going to the gym, you know,

you're building muscles. You're really building that skin's capacity to

turn itself over. So, you know, if you're curious and you're

wanting to step up your aesthetic scheme and do things that are preventive,

you know, and stave off having to do more

invasive things, it's perfect. And to your point, Amanda, you could

do that every six to eight weeks if you wanted to.

Yeah, yeah. And you can do it all Year round as well.

Yeah. And that's the other thing, is something you can do in the summer months.

And now if I had somebody that had a

highly melanated skin, I would want them to be pretty

darn sure that they were going to stay well and away from the sun for

at least 48 hours after. And you can, you know, use your

sunscreen and all that good stuff the next day and just

stay out of the sun. Absolutely. And be smart.

You had mentioned crystal that you can also use

things on top of the microneedling. Right. So that's.

It's so lovely that way. Yeah, it's a lovely combination and

you can tailor it that way too. I found, you know, on my

personal use the difference just using that nctf, it just got. Had a nicer

glow and gave the skin the nutrients because at the end of the day your

body's only going to be so good at healing and repairing

itself based on the nutrients you have within you. And you touched

on that harpreet where this is where your lifestyle, what you're

eating has a huge impact. And if you're someone

who say is drinking a lot, smoking a lot, under a lot of stress,

not sleeping well, you're not going to heal as well and you probably

won't notice much of a difference. But if you're providing

your body with the correct nutrients, the correct rest,

then you will notice an improvement. And then. Yeah, using that little vitamin

just. It's like the cherry on top. Yeah,

it's a great little blend. I mean, nobody's perfect in their diet. Right.

And we can all use a little external support.

Yeah. Particularly this time of year with Christmas. Yeah,

absolutely. So you're doing, if you're doing the microneedling and you're

taking the time, you might as well give the skin the building blocks it needs

to really respond well to that treatment. For sure. Yeah,

yeah. So a shorter episode today,

but if you were interested in this topic and you have specific

questions, let us know and we'll try to answer them in future episodes.

And if there's anything that you want to tackle in 2026,

it is the start of the year, so get in touch and we'll see what

we can cover for you this year. And remember, please like and subscribe

and. We'Ll see you next time. Bye for now. Bye.