The Less the Better?
This myth is favorite with those are in skin needling marketing business for the past several years. The theory behind it is as follows. Wide needles cause more pain and do more damage to the skin while thin microneedles are mild and gentle to the skin and to some degree are of higher quality.
The main myth that needs to be discredited here is the notion that thin microneedles are less painful. This is actually really easy because a direct scientific study on this subject has been conducted.
The subject of the study was to check how patients perceive pain form micro-needling. As you can see in the below reference the study showed that increasing microneedle width or its thickness 3-fold has in fact increased perception of pain by the study subjects (1).
This study in fact proves that thinner microneedles are not less painful. As a matter of fact the opposite is true. The thing is that thinner microneedles, due to their more fragile nature, are more likely to bend or become blunt very quickly. Bent needles obviously cause more pain and can even infect the torn skin which is counter productive because micro-traumas in the skin dermis can cause collagen lessening.
As a matter of fact wider needles of about 0.3 gauge are less painful than thinner microneedles. They are also less likely to damage the skin surface unnecessarily and serve longer.
In our next blog post we are going to discuss the myth about titanium rollers.
1. Gill, H. S., Denson, D., Burris, B. A. & Prausnitz, M. R. (2008). Effect of microneedle design on pain in human subjects. Clin J Pain. 24(7). 585-594.