Polynucleotides for the face or a skin booster: choosing between repair and hydration

A skin booster puts hyaluronic acid into the skin so it holds more water. Polynucleotides put a signal into the skin so it repairs itself. Both are done with fine injections across the face. Both take a couple of sessions. That is where the similarity ends.

When the skin needs hydration

Tight after washing, dull by afternoon, fine lines that vanish with a good moisturiser and come back by evening. This is water, and a booster is the direct answer. The change is quick and visible within a few weeks.

When the skin needs repair

Thin, crepey, slow to heal, marked by sun or by years of inflammation, with a texture that boosters improve but never quite fix. This is the skin’s own structure, and polynucleotides speak to it. The change is slower, builds over three months, and holds longer.

• Booster: hydration, faster, brighter. Ejal 40 or Profhilo.
• Polynucleotides: repair, slower, deeper. Face, or the under-eye specifically.
• Both: repair first, then hydrate, for skin that needs each. Three to four weeks between.

What each appointment is like

Both begin with numbing cream and both involve a series of small injections across the face. A booster uses fewer points spread wide, because the gel travels; polynucleotides use more, placed closer, because the solution stays where it is put and works on the cells around it. Both take about twenty minutes, both leave small bumps for a day, and neither keeps you from work the next morning. The difference is in what the skin does afterwards, and over how long.

How to think about the choice

• If the complaint is tightness, dullness and fine lines that vanish with a good cream: hydration, so a booster.
• If it is thinness, crepiness, sun damage or a texture that boosters have improved but not fixed: repair, so polynucleotides.
• If you are unsure, the scan’s hydration and elasticity readings usually make the decision for you.
• If both are needed, repair comes first, and hydration follows a month later into skin that can hold it.

Cost, honestly

Per session the two are priced close together. A booster course is two sessions and holds for four to six months; a polynucleotide course is two or three and holds for six to nine. Over a year the spend is similar, and the choice is about what the skin needs rather than what the price list says. Where a person wants both, the consultation sets out a year with the dates, so the cost is known in advance rather than discovered one visit at a time.

Questions people ask

Which hurts less: they are much the same, a series of small scratches after numbing cream. Which lasts longer: polynucleotides, usually, because they change the skin rather than fill it with water. Which should I have first if I want both: polynucleotides, with the booster a month later. Can I tell from the mirror which I need: rarely, which is why the scan measures hydration and elasticity separately and decides in a minute. Will either change the shape of my face: no; both work on the skin and nothing else.

• Dehydrated, dull, fine lines: a booster.
• Thin, crepey, sun-marked, slow to heal: polynucleotides.
• Both: repair first, hydration second, three to four weeks apart.

The consultation writes the course down with its dates, and the progress scan after it shows what each treatment did.

For the under-eye area on its own, the polynucleotide eye treatment is the smaller, more targeted version of the same idea.