How to choose the best cellulite / skin tightening treatment

How do I choose a cellulite treatment?

Hundreds of salons and clinics in London now offer cellulite reduction and skin tightening with some sort of machine and everyone seems to be claiming instant, amazing and permanent results that will last until the end of time with something like 1.5 miracle sessions, at a cost of anything from £75-£3,500 each. Obviously, it cannot be all true. And with each of them using a different machine and technique, they cannot all be right.

So the consumer is utterly confused:

How do I choose? How do I know who’s telling the truth? How do I know these people even have a clue what cellulite is? How do I know they know how to use their “miracle machine” effectively? How do I know they care about me and not just my wallet?

These are common questions, especially from our readers in the US, to which our answer is very simple:

• Get educated on the basic science of cellulite and skin laxity and their treatments

• Ask clinics some simple key questions

• When deciding, take into account many different factors, not just reviews or just a press article

• Use your common sense to put it all together and decide which is the best clinic in your area

21 tips to choose the perfect clinic for your skin tightening / cellulite treatment:

1. Do you research extensively, including our specialised blog and our How to get rid of cellulite guide.

2. As a shortcut, look for deep-acting, high-power radiofrequency and deep-acting high-power ultrasound cavitation, the two strongest, SAFE skin tightening /cellulite reduction technologies. Strong, cellulite-specific massage is a decent compromise for lower budgets or if RF/ultrasound are not available in your area. Ideally look for a clinic that can offer both RF and ultrasound to suit your specific needs.

3. Don’t bother with low/medium intensity HIFU (doesn’t work), extreme intensity HIFU (unsafe, doesn’t work well either), RF microneedling (very unsafe, doesn’t work well either), acoustic wave therapy (doesn’t really work), low-power RF/cavitation (definitely doesn’t work unless you treat tiny areas), superficial RF/cavitation (doesn’t work well except the face). If any of those technologies worked, we would be offering them at the clinic decades ago (we theoretically researched and practically tried all these technologies years before they became known to the general public or even to most clinics).

4. For RF/cavitation, ask a clinic simple questions such as, “What is the maximum power of your RF?”, “What frequency is your cavitation?”, “Is your RF capacitive or resistive?” or “On which skin layers does your treatment act?”. If they don’t know these basic facts, they most probably don’t know what they are doing either. Look for people who take pride in their education and training.

5. Ask “How does the treatment work?”. If they start talking about “toxins”, “melting the fat which is then naturally removed via your kidneys” and “breaking down the cellulite”, run away…

6. Ask “How often do I need to have treatment?”. Treatments less often than every two weeks are pointless yet many clinics claim you only need to have treatment once a month, just because it suits their schedule. Treatment should be every 2-15 days to be effective. Of course those ones who say you only need to have treatment “Once, that’s it, period”, are really taking you for a fool.

7. Stay away from exaggerated claims. If it sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true, especially in beauty and aesthetics where BS is the norm (sorry but BS is the appropriate word).

8. Stay away from painful / semi-invasive / invasive procedures that need anaesthetic injections or numbing cream to mask the extreme pain: these are usually ineffective, in addition to being dangerous.

9. Don’t even think of believing that your cellulite will “go” in 1-4 sessions. Look for clinics honestly talking about good results with 6-12 sessions instead.

10. Stir clear from overly cheap or overly expensive treatments. A £75/session treatment will probably not help while on the other hand a £3,500/session treatment is definitely a rip-off not nearly worth its money.

11. Check which clinic focuses on their science and which focuses on shallow marketing directed to the naive and gullible on tiktok and instagram

12. Check “before and after” pics, but - with caution. 95% of them are fake, one way or another, so use common sense.

13. Check reviews. However, use common sense, as many are fake.

14. Sure, take into account published research but take it with a large pinch of salt. Much of the “peer-reviewed”, so-called “research” published in cosmetic dermatology journals is made up, low quality and not worth the paper it is written on.

15. Take most press articles with a pinch of salt too - in most cases they are just copy-paste PR “blurb”

16. Prefer specialised clinics/therapists than the “We offer 50 different treatments with 30 different machines” ones. No-one can be an expert in 50 things.

17. Do not be swayed by aesthetic surgeon-led clinics. Aesthetic surgeons know how to do surgery but most are quite clueless when it comes to cellulite reduction or non-surgical skin tightening. Plus the main aim of such huge clinics is to make tons of money, not to provide the best treatment at the best price. 

18. Do not even think of being swayed by shallow bloggers, vloggers, tiktokers, YouTubers, B-list celebrities and other so-called “influencers”. No one who has time to do social media all day also has the time needed to read hundreds of research papers or apply themselves thousands of treatments every year, in order to know what works. Plus they only promote what they get paid for - not necessarily the best companies/clinics.

19. Don’t bother with articles in snobbish magazines, such as Vogue or Tatler. Only aesthetic manufactures or clinics with huge PR budgets can get through to them - not necessarily the best companies/clinics.

20. And, of course, don’t bother with A-list celebrities either. Only aesthetic manufactures or clinics with huge PR budgets can get through to them - not necessarily the best companies/clinics.

21. And finally: actually talk to three clinics in your area. Have a consultation with all three of them and use your common sense to see who is serious and competent and cares about you and who is all about sales, commission and a quick buck.