The GlowUp: Why We Combine Microneedling, PRP and LaseMD

The GlowUp is a single-visit combination of microneedling (plain, or with radiofrequency when laxity is part of the picture), the LaseMD Ultra thulium laser, and PRP drawn from your own blood. It’s built for skin that has more than one problem at more than one depth, which in my experience is most skin.

Patients rarely come in with one complaint. They say “texture,” and when we look closely there is sun pigment on the surface, some enlarged pores, a few shallow acne scars and, past forty, the beginnings of laxity. Each of those sits at a different depth in the skin. A single treatment aimed at one depth leaves the others where they were.

We sell the GlowUp as a package, and it costs more than any one of its parts. So the question this article tries to answer honestly is when the combination is worth that, and when one of its parts on its own is the better spend.

What is in the GlowUp, and what does each part do?

Microneedling works mechanically, into the dermis. Fine needles create controlled micro-injuries and your skin responds by laying down new collagen. That’s the part that addresses texture, pores and atrophic scarring. When early laxity is a concern, we use Morpheus8, which adds radiofrequency heat through insulated needles; when it isn’t, plain microneedling is often the better tool.

LaseMD Ultra is a 1927 nm thulium laser, non-ablative and fractional. Its energy is absorbed strongly by water near the surface, in the epidermis and superficial dermis, which is where sun damage and unwanted pigment mostly live. It’s a pigment and tone laser rather than a tightening one.

PRP is the glide medium for the microneedling and goes into the channels both treatments open. It comes from your own blood, so there’s nothing in it to react to on freshly treated skin.

Why combine them in one visit instead of doing them separately?

The practical argument is recovery. Done separately, these are two or three treatments with two or three recovery periods. Done together, it’s one.

The clinical argument is depth. The needles and the laser are working on different layers, so they’re not competing for the same job. The laser addresses what sits near the surface; the needling drives collagen deeper down; the PRP goes in through both.

That’s the reasoning. Now the evidence, which deserves its own heading because it’s more modest.

What does the evidence actually show for this combination?

Each part has published support. The combination as a single-visit package has never been trialed, as far as the published literature goes.

For the laser, a 2025 systematic review in Lasers in Medical Science pulled together 17 studies and 448 participants treated with 1927 nm thulium across a range of skin conditions, pigment among them. The authors rated the risk of bias in the underlying studies as moderate to high. So the direction is encouraging and the quality is what you would expect for a relatively new device class.

For microneedling with PRP, a 2022 meta-analysis of 14 studies and 472 patients with acne scars found that adding PRP roughly tripled the odds of a better-than-50% improvement compared with microneedling alone. Most of those studies weren’t randomized, so treat that as a strong signal rather than a settled number.

Fact vs. Fad: “Stacking treatments multiplies results” is a marketing line, not a finding. Nobody has shown that the GlowUp produces more than the sum of its parts. What we can say is narrower: each component has evidence for the problem it targets, and doing them together saves you recovery time. If someone offers you a combination with a percentage improvement attached, ask where the percentage comes from.

How many GlowUp sessions will I need?

Unless you’re coming in for maintenance after a course you’ve already done, plan on two to three treatments for the best result.

That figure is our practice experience rather than a number from a trial, and I want to label it as such. Collagen builds over weeks, and pigment clears in stages, so a single session tends to show you the direction rather than the destination. Every course is planned around the person in front of us. One of the cases in our results gallery needed an extra session of microneedling on its own, purely for the depth of the lines, before the GlowUp could do the rest. That is a different course from the one most people need, and it is why we don’t sell a fixed number up front.

We set the spacing between sessions at your consultation, based on what we’re treating and how your skin heals. Once you’re where you want to be, one or two sessions a year is usually what it takes to hold the result.

What is the recovery like?

Use the laser’s timeline as the guide. Expect one to three days of redness with a fine sandpaper texture as the treated columns work their way out. Most people are comfortable socially by the third day, with full healing at around five to seven days. The microneedling adds its redness inside that same window rather than in a second one later.

Makeup can usually go on after 24 hours. Daily sunscreen afterward isn’t optional: treating pigment and then exposing new skin to the sun is the quickest way to undo the work.

Who is the GlowUp not right for?

Here is where I’d talk some people out of it.

If your concern is purely pigment, with good texture underneath, the LaseMD Ultra on its own may be the more sensible spend. If your concern is purely acne scarring, a microneedling series may do the job for less.

If you have melasma, we treat cautiously and often in stages. Melasma responds to over-treatment by coming back worse, and a combination session is not automatically the right first step.

With deeper skin tones, any treatment that inflames the skin carries some risk of post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation. We assess first and may treat more conservatively, or pre-treat.

And if what bothers you is lost volume, or loose skin that has genuinely descended, this isn’t the tool. Volume is a question for filler or a biostimulator. Significant skin excess is a surgical question, and we’ll tell you so and refer you.

Who performs it here?

The GlowUp is one session with one provider, from the first pass of the needles to the last pass of the laser. We don’t hand you to someone else halfway through. Like our injectables and other regenerative procedures, it is performed by Dr. Raneiro or me, unless you select Martha Villarin, APN, at booking. Laser hair removal and facials are performed by our licensed medical aestheticians.

The GlowUp is booked and priced as a package, and a consultation comes first so we can tell you whether the package or one of its parts is the better fit.

References

Modena DAO, Yamamoto APM, da Silva TBF, Guirro ECO. Thulium laser (1927 nm) for dermatological conditions: a systematic review. Lasers in Medical Science. 2025;40:518. doi:10.1007/s10103-025-04781-5 (17 studies, n=448; moderate to high risk of bias)

Kang C, Lu D. Combined effect of microneedling and platelet-rich plasma for the treatment of acne scars: a meta-analysis. Frontiers in Medicine. 2022;8:788754. doi:10.3389/fmed.2021.788754 (14 studies, n=472; mostly non-randomized)