Stretch marks first show up during puberty, and both girls and boys get them. They are caused by rapid gain weight or growth in an area of your body. Collagen, a protein that is partly responsible for skin strength and elasticity is stretched quickly and often leaves scars that are called stretch marks. People who are obese and weight lifters often have stretch marks as well.

Pregnancy is a very common time for a woman to get stretch marks. If she doesn’t have them already on her breasts, they can often pop up because of the rapid increase of growth and fatty tissue that develops as a woman’s breasts prepare to breastfeed her baby. However, a woman’s stomach is the most common place for stretch marks to appear during pregnancy.

Stretch marks generally show up during the third trimester when a woman’s belly begins to rapidly get bigger. During the third trimester the baby is gaining most of his weight, and it is then that he grows at the fastest rate during the pregnancy.

There are several products on the market for pregnant women to use to help avoid getting stretch marks, and to help them go away after your pregnancy is over. Some women swear by them, while others claim that they don’t work. In reality, whether or not you get stretch marks is determined by how much elasticity you have in your skin. If you have a lot of elasticity, you probably will not get stretch marks, or they will at least not be severe.

Stretch marks cannot be remedied gotten rid of by a simple cream. While they may start out a pink or purplish color, they will eventually fade to match the color of your skin, like other scars do. Some people will use artificial tanning sprays and lotions to help make them less noticeable. If your stretch marks really bother you, visit a dermatologist or plastic surgeon to see what options they can make available to you.

If you are lucky you will never get a stretch mark. However, if you do, remember that you are not alone and that most women in the world are just like you and have stretch marks too.

It is important that you remember that weight gain is a normal and healthy part of pregnancy. You have to gain weight in order to provide a healthy and comfortable home for the child that you will be nurturing for the next nine months.

Most women want to know what the ideal weight is during pregnancy. Honestly, there is no one answer. Weight gain will vary from woman to woman. There is no one “ideal” weight during pregnancy, just like there is no one “ideal” weight that is just right for al women.

That said there are certain guidelines that you can follow to ensure that the weight you gain during pregnancy is healthy.

First of all, most stretch marks do just fade over time, making them much less noticeable, and lots of people can live with them this way. You can also cover them up with make-up made especially for that purpose. For those who want to do better than just covering them up, other therapies are available, for example;

Laser Therapy
This type of therapy is promising option. The kind of laser a surgeon uses will be determined by the color and to a certain extent the age of the stretch marks. One type of laser will stimulate the production of cells that make pigment, another type of laser works by reducing the color of stretch marks.

The reason that stretch marks appear is because of the skin becoming stretched past it’s natural limit. Another form of laser treatment actually stimulates collagen production to restore elasticity in the stretch marks themselves. This stretching of the skin does not just happen in pregnancy, but can also occur when a person grows rapidly such as during puberty. The damage caused by this stretching is actually done in the skin’s middle layer, the dermis.

Blue Light Therapy
Another treatment for stretch marks is blue light therapy – this form of therapy can be helpful in treating acne as well as stretch marks. It works with a combination of gel and light, and together these are used to remove stretch marks.

Creams
A much well established and low tech treatment for stretch marks is to use creams that help moisturize skin, repair collagen and elastin growth. These creams will often contain combinations of cocoa butter, wheat germ oil, lanolin and vitamin E.

In reality though, these creams are at their most effective when used during the period that your skin is being stretched, as they will help keep your skin soft, supple, smooth and elastic. So ideally you need to apply creams during your pregnancy to help avoid the problem occurring in the first place – so treat them as a preventative measure. If you haven’t applied creams while the skin was being stretched, the sooner you begin afterwards, the better.

Who has to worry most about stretch marks? People who are genetically disposed to them – so see whether your mother has stretch marks and this might give you an idea of what could be in store for you. It has also been found that people who have darker skin tend to be less susceptible to stretch marks than those who have lighter skin.

Of course when you carefully monitor your weight gain during pregnancy, and apply creams that have been designed specially to help avoid stretch marks during pregnancy you should not find that stretch marks cause you such a problem once your bundle of joy has arrived.

At the end of the day there simply is not one fail-safe, 100 percent way to prevent or completely get rid of stretch marks, but a combination of some of these therapies should dramatically reduce their appearance or can eliminate them completely.

Do keep in mind that stretch marks themselves pose absolutely no threat to your health at all. They are more of a cosmetic issue, and they will fade with time.

About the Author
Cat writes many informative articles on subjects that are related to family and pregnancy. For more articles on pregnancy and Family Matters visit http://www.familyinformationsite.com.