“In the last 24 years I have worked in the field of cellulite reduction I have seen many fads come and go, some much more ludicrous than dry brushing. But dry brushing for cellulite seems to be the most persistent one, despite not making any sense and not working. I have seen women dry brushing their legs to bleeding or others developing post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation from extreme dry brushing and - predictably - still no results. Despite what tiktok and instagram says, cellulite is primarily a (hypodermal) fat tissue problem and no caressing it with a dry brush can make adipose tissue “break down” and “go away”...”
Dry brush, body brush, cellulite brush, whatever you name it, it only works for exfoliation, nothing else - and definitely not for cellulite
Dry brushing, cellulite and lymphatic drainage | In summary
Does dry brushing help with cellulite?
Dry brushing: the yearly springtime cellulite removal delusion
Using the body brush for lymphatic drainage
Even plain massage with your hands is far better than skin brushing, so why waste your time and money to apply an inferior massage with a body brush?
Dry brushing for cellulite: working in the wrong way
Dry brushing for cellulite: working on the wrong skin layer
Body brushing for cellulite cream absorption?
Whatever reason you use it for, do not become overzealous with the “cellulite brush”
Have you ever wondered why more and more women complain about sensitive skin? It’s called too much exfoliation.
Hyperpigmentation from excessive body brushing
Dry brushing cellulite before and after pictures
Skin brushing with coconut oil
Flushing out the cellulite/toxins with dry brushing
Have a skin tightening/cellulite treatment in London with the cellulite experts
The Cellulite School™: Get advanced training in cellulite reduction and skin tightening
Dry brushing, cellulite and lymphatic drainage | In summary
Dry brushing is often promoted as a quick fix for cellulite, especially in the spring, when beauty advice ramps up. However, its effectiveness is little more than a myth. The idea that brushing the skin stimulates lymphatic drainage or circulation enough to reduce cellulite has no solid foundation.
At best, dry brushing mildly exfoliates the skin and offers a negligible lymphatic effect if done in the right direction – but even then, it doesn’t reach the deep tissue layers where cellulite lives.
Real cellulite treatments target the hypodermis, the deeper layer of the skin, while dry brushing merely scrapes the epidermis. In fact, a simple massage with your hands and some oil does a far better job than any body brush. Vigorous brushing can even damage the skin, leading to sensitivity, dryness, or hyperpigmentation, while over-exfoliating the protective top layer can cause long-term issues.
Although dry brushing is useless against cellulite, it can still serve a minor purpose: preparing the skin to absorb creams more effectively, provided it's done gently and not more than once in a while. But using it to “flush out toxins” or melt cellulite is wishful thinking, not science. Save your money – and your skin – from yet another beauty fad.
Does dry brushing help with cellulite?
Dry brushing (aka skin brushing or body brushing) for cellulite is the immediate, go-to advice by “beauty experts” the world over.
“You want to reduce cellulite at home? Hey, dry brush! BTW, here is a list of overpriced body brushes below, for you to consume…”
But does this advice stand to scrutiny? Will dry brushing the cellulite make it go away?
Read all below.
Dry brushing: the yearly springtime cellulite removal delusion
Every year, come spring, millions of women get misled by countless articles, on the web and in print, that suggest "dry brushing" as a method to help you "rid of" cellulite.
In the past, due to our limited knowledge of the problem, cellulite was assumed to be just a circulation and lymphatic drainage impairment.
That assumption lead to the myth that manual lymphatic drainage massage (MLD) can "get rid of" cellulite.
Or to the even more ludicrous claim that dry/body brushing, which allegedly helps with lymphatic drainage, can also achieve the same thing.
Using the body brush for lymphatic drainage
However, this could not be further from the truth.
Dry - or even wet - skin brushing is not even a valid lymphatic drainage method. This is because all that skin brushing can do is exfoliate the skin. And that's all. Not much else.
If you follow the direction of the lymph flow when you dry brush your skin, you may be able to achieve a VERY WEAK lymphatic drainage effect.
However, that doesn't even come close enough to the strong, cellulite-specific lymphatic stimulation massage needed to significantly boost the body's natural lymphatic drainage and blood circulation.
And it doesn’t even come close to the systematic manual lymphatic drainage achieved by a good pressotherapy machine.
In fact, dry brushing does not even come close to the lymphatic drainage achieved by your very own hands and a tiny bit of oil.
Even plain massage with your hands is far better than skin brushing
The truth is that normal upward massage movements with your lovely hands and a little bit of oil will do a far better job at boosting circulation and lymphatic drainage than dry skin brushing.
And use a plain oil, don’t be a victim and spend £30 for those ridiculously overpriced 30ml oils.
And if you alternate those upward movements with some strong skin kneading with your fingers and palms you will give your legs a ten times better massage than with a "body brush".
So why waste your time and money to apply an inferior massage with a body brush?
Dry brushing for cellulite: working in the wrong way
In fact, you would need to bring your skin to the point of bleeding from all the dry brushing, if you were to provide the same results as a strong cellulite massage, provided by yourself or by a therapist.
This is because skin brushing is just exfoliation and exfoliation does nothing for cellulite and lymphatic drainage.
As we discussed above, dry brushing is not an effective lymphatic massage method and besides, lymphatic massage itself is not that amazing for cellulite, anyway
Don't waste your time and energy doing the wrong things.
Dry brushing for cellulite: working on the wrong skin layer
Dry brushing literally scrapes off the epidermis, i.e. the top layer of the skin, while for cellulite reduction the hypodermis (i.e. the bottom layer of the skin) needs to be manipulated.
Totally wrong skin layer.
Dry brushing is yet another example of the many cellulite "cures" (microneedling, coffee scrubs, exfoliation, bipolar RF, lasers etc) that involve working on the epidermis (most superficial skin layer, 0.1-2.2mm depth) to treat the exact opposite layer of the skin (deepest skin layer, 3-30mm depth).
It is a bit naive to believe that with a 10-minute, superficial exfoliation of the epidermis you can treat deep tissues on the hypodermis, which 60-minute, deep, professional cellulite massages treat with difficulty.
That’s wishful thinking at its worst.
Body brushing for cellulite cream absorption?
In summary, dry brushing for cellulite is a waste of time, no matter what the ‘beauty editors’ say.
However, if you have bought into the hype and purchased a body brush, all is not lost.
Dry skin brushing can still be used to exfoliate the skin prior to applying a good, concentrated cellulite cream, so at least you can use your “cellulite brush” to boost the effectiveness of a more valid cellulite reduction method.
Just do the body brushing first, have a warm shower afterwards (not the other way around) to remove the dead skin cells from the surface or your skin and to open the pores and then apply the cream.
And don’t brush more than 5-10 minutes.
More dry brushing is not better, it’s injurious to the skin.
Whatever reason you use it for, do not become overzealous with the “body brush”
Mother nature gave you an epidermis for a reason: to protect your skin from external aggressions:
Natural and artificial chemicals
High/low temperatures
UV/infrared light
Mechanical damage
Transepidermal water loss (TEWL), i.e. skin dryness
Protection from bacteria
…to name but a few.
If, with daily or aggressive dry brushing / exfoliation, you continuously slough off your ‘stratum corneum’ (i.e. the so called ‘dead skin cells’, what a stupid name for something so useful), skin allergies and sensitivities are guaranteed to follow.
Have you ever wondered why more and more women complain about sensitive skin? It’s called ‘too much exfoliation’.
Yes, quite often sensitive skin is the result of constant exfoliation, the cheap trick to look beautiful for a day or two (another favourite of beauty “experts”).
Frequent chemical peels, AHA serum applications, ablative laser treatments, dermaplaning, microdermabrasion, microblading, dermablading, dry brushing and the like destroy the epidermis, consequently opening the door for allergies and sensitivities.
But that is hot material for another article.
Hyperpigmentation from excessive body brushing
In fact, a few days before first first writing this article I treated a client who caused quite severe skin damage to her thigh skin with intensive dry brushing.
Her skin was dry and visibly damaged and also suffered from post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, as a result of skin damage from too much body brushing.
All in all, dry brushing is not smart:
When you do it lightly, nothing happens (for cellulite, at least)
When you do it vigorously, you get skin damage
So do it lightly for gentle exfoliation, once in a while.
And that’s it.
Dry brushing cellulite before and after pictures
A lot of women look for before and after pictures of something that does not have a chance in hell in working.
So the end result of such a search would be to find fake “before and after” cellulite pictures (as is the case with 95% of so-called “before and after” cellulite pictures on the web, instagram and tiktok).
Don’t be naive and fall for fake.
Skin brushing with coconut oil
Some people use “dry brushing” for “cellulite removal” with coconut oil, whose addition actually actually makes it “wet brushing”.
Oh well…
Just to say that coconut oil does NOT help with cellulite, either applied externally or taken internally. And combining it with brushing is a total waste of time: no real massage effect and not even exfoliation.
However, if you apply some coconut oil in your hands, you can indeed give a nice massage to your legs, as mentioned above.
But you don’t necessarily need coconut oil for that - any decent oil will do.
Flushing out the cellulite/toxins with dry brushing
As explained above, dry brushing is not even a valid method for lymphatic drainage so it does not flush out any “toxins”.
Furthermore, cellulite itself is a tissue, an integral part of the deeper layers of skin itself, not something that can be flushed down the toilet by brushing the most superficial skin layer.
You cannot, and even if you could you should not, “flush out the cellulite” through your kidneys and into the toilet (thank goodness this is biologically impossible).
Phrases such as “flush out the cellulite” are just vacuous beauty writer talk and mean absolutely nothing.
Have a treatment in London with the cellulite experts
At LipoTherapeia we have specialised 100% in skin tightening and cellulite reduction for more than two decades and 20,000+ sessions.
This is all we study and practise every day and have researched and tried hands-on all the important skin tightening equipment and their manufacturers.
As strong, deep acting radiofrequency and deep-acting, high-power ultrasound cavitation are the technologies of choice for skin tightening and cellulite reduction, we have invested in the best RF/ultrasound technologies in the world.
(Of course, we keep looking for new technologies every day and if/when a better technology materialises we will be the first to provide it. However, we will never follow the latest ineffective gimmick, just because it’s good marketing to offer the latest hyped up - yet ineffective and/or unsafe treatment.)
Furthermore, over the last two decades we have developed advanced RF and cavitation treatment protocols in order to make the most of our technologies, for maximum results, naturally and safely.
And for even better, faster results, we now combine our RF/ultrasound treatments with high-power red/infrared light LED treatment.
Our radiofrequency/ultrasound/LED treatments are comfortable, pain-free, downtime-free, injection-free, 99.5%+ safe and always non-invasive.
(No unsafe and ineffective RF microneedling or HIFU and no safe but ineffective acoustic wave therapy, superficial RF (bipolar/tripolar/multipolar etc), low power RF/cavitation, electrical muscle stimulation, lymphatic massage, cupping, dry brushing and no ridiculous bum bum creams.)
Our focus is on honest, realistic, science-based treatment, combined with caring, professional service, with a smile.
We will be pleased to see you, assess your cellulite, skin laxity or fibrosis, listen to your story, discuss your case and offer you the best possible treatment.
The Cellulite School™: Get advanced training in cellulite reduction and skin tightening
Why train with The Cellulite School™?
We all know that training in cellulite reduction and skin tightening is as basic as it gets. It is typically a 4-6 hour training, involving only basic instruction from the manufacturer on how operators can use the machine; lots of myths, erroneous information and misconceptions; and some basic health and safety on how to use the machine.
There is no proper, real training in the science or cellulite, skin tightening, radiofrequency, ultrasound and all related technologies is non-existent - worldwide.
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