Taking chances with dangerous cellulite/skin tightening treatments for “instant” results? Good luck with that...

Playing literally with fire for beauty? It is just not worth it.

The body, including the skin, needs regular strong-but-safe stimulation to change. Plus it needs time between sessions of stimulation to recover and built stronger issue.

This is how building muscle at the gym works and this is how skin tightening / cellulite reduction treatments work: by providing regular, strong-but-safe stimulation to tissues: muscles or skin, respectively.

However, the body has its own limits, which precludes too intensive stimulation:

• If you suddenly use 150kg weights for your squats you will not build a more toned butt faster, you will end up in hospital with a knee or back injury

• Likewise, if you use an aesthetic treatment which is three times stronger than what your body can take, you will not get firmer/smoother skin, you will get skin injury

The body has its limits and cannot change overnight, no matter how much money you throw at a dangerous treatment

So there is a limit to how fast you can tighten your skin or reduce cellulite safely. Hence the need for 5, 10, even 15 sessions, even with the best technology available today.

Trying to cram the effect of 10 safe sessions into 1 or 2 unsafe, invasive, painful, very expensive ones is really, really stupid.

It quite often ends up in tears, with scar tissue lumps that don't go away, post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, more skin looseness/cellulite than before and all sorts of other complications and adverse reactions.

By going against nature you are not smart. You have not just discovered the amazing beauty secret which has eluded everyone else, an ingenious shortcut. You are just taking chances with your health.

Yes, 95% of people do not have any severe complications with these treatments. But, believe me, you do NOT want to belong to the other 5% who do. And there is no good way to know if you will end up being in the 5% or the 95%.

Any cellulite / skin tightening treatment provided with anaesthesia is a red flag

The pain threshold is a very accurate way to determine the limits of a safe and effective skin tightening / cellulite treatment: if it is so painful that it requires anaesthesia, it is just not safe.

This is because with an anaesthetic cream or injection you miss the pain signal to determine what is safe and the whole treatment becomes a shot in the dark, with adverse reactions determined by luck.

Everyone is different. Each person’s skin has its own limits.

Adhering to the pain threshold is necessary because everyone’s skin is different and has its own limits, its own reactivity mechanisms and its own reactivity threshold.

For example, at our clinic when we apply 200 Watts of deep tissue radiofrequency treatment on a client’s right thigh (just under the pain threshold and of course without anaesthesia), another client of exactly the same body type may need 250W and yet another one may need 150W of power.

Even the same client may easily fluctuate between 175-225W between visits. Even the left thigh of the same client may need 225W.

Providing 250W on a client who needs 150W will almost definitely lead to some sort of skin injury.

How can you tell what is appropriate for each person, without the pain threshold principle?

• A thermometer? No matter how useful temperature measurement is, it is just a guide. Some clients can easily tolerate epidermal temperatures of 42.5º C, while others flinch at 38.5º C. Attempting to bring the latter clients to 42.5º C would be an absolute disaster.

• Electrical impedance measurement? Same. Skin electrical impedance varies wildly from person to person, from day to day from area to area and also naturally changes during treatment. It’s useful as a guide but that’s all.

• A machine algorithm? Give me a break…

No AI machine algorithm, temperature measurement or skin electrical impedance measurement can determine your own skin’s limits and reactivity, so without the pain threshold principle it all comes down to “let’s hope it works and nothing bad happens”. Literally.

Simply put, anaesthesia-based treatments deprives us of such feedback and are the equivalent of shooting in the dark.

In contrast, the pain threshold principle has been tried and tested for decades in physiotherapy with energy devices.

The pain threshold feedback protects us from such reactions and ensures 99.5%+ safety at our clinic, with the remaining 0.5% being minor and temporary irritation.

You have just paid £3,500 for a treatment that needs to be repeated 6-12 times - not just once as they promised you

Plus even when an anaesthesia-based treatment is at the exact right intensity not to burn the skin and to be effective, it is never the one-off miracle promised to you.

You have just paid £3,500 for something that still needs to be repeated several times for good, long-term results - not just “once or perhaps twice with a six month gap inbetween” as they have told you.

With skin tightening and cellulite reduction, you NEVER need just one treatment. Such a claim is pure hype.

Apart from fillers, botox and surgery (all of which are provided with anaesthesia but in a very predictable, structured way - and still things go horribly wrong), there are no shortcuts in beauty.

And, of course, fillers and botox also need to be repeated every few months - and sometimes even cosmetic surgery needs to be repeated twice or three times on the same body area.

Radiofrequency and ultrasound treatments provided with anaesthesia

The discussion here is for non-surgical skin tightening / cellulite treatments that claim to “get rid off” your cellulite or lift your skin in one or two sessions.

These treatments aim to burn the inside of your skin with an energy device and are provided:

• beyond the pain threshold with the aid of anaesthetic cream or an anaesthetic injection

• and in a STAMP-LIKE action (as opposed to CONTINUOUS MOVING action)

Such technologies currently comprise:

• HIFU, set at extremely high intensity (At low intensity HIFU treatment is safe but nothing happens with one session. You need 6-12 anyway, even though you paid 5-10x times more per each miraculous, very painful, “shortcut” treatment on a small area.)

• Radiofrequency, set at extremely high intensity. (At low intensity treatment is safe but nothing happens with one session. You need 6-12 anyway, even though you paid 5-10x times more per each miraculous, very painful, “shortcut” treatment on a small area.)

• Microneedling radiofrequency, set at extremely high intensity. (At low intensity, treatment is still not safe due to the deep needle punctures. Also nothing happens with one session. You need 6-12 sessions anyway, even though you paid 5-10x times more per each miraculous, very painful, “shortcut” treatment on a small area.)

• Ultrasound-assisted liposuction (AAL), laser-assisted liposuction (LAL) and radiofrequency assisted-liposuction (RAL). (This technology aims to tighten the skin by literally burning it from the inside with an ultrasound / laser / radiofrequency tip, respectively, during liposuction. At low intensity AAL/LAL/RAL is safe (as safe as liposuction can be) but you don’t get much skin tightening. At high intensity the chance of scar tissue bumps is very high. At just the right intensity you get some uniform skin hardening (basically uniform scar tissue), which is baptised as “skin tightening” and which lasts 12 months max.)

Anxious, desperate and distressed

At the clinic we regularly see clients asking us whether we can repair scar tissue, crepey, damaged skin, more visible cellulite and all sorts of other damage caused by such procedures.

People are distraught, desperate and anxious and by the time they come to us they have already done the rounds at Harley Street, multiple times: consultant dermatologists, MRI scans, ultrasound scans, more consultants, plastic surgeons, more invasive and dangerous treatments to repair the initial damage (which sometimes cause further damage).

And after all that distress and money spent, there is the pressure and the anxiety on the therapist to SAFELY reverse with £100 treatments something that was broken with an unsafe, “one-off” £3,000 treatment or a £10,000 surgery.

Whichever way you see it, it is just not worth it, so we don’t do it.

Nothing is 100% safe but 99%+ safety rate would be nice, thanks

Sure, all treatments have some danger inherent in them.

The human body is unpredictable and nothing biological can be guaranteed, either in terms of safety or effectiveness - even something as simple as a massage.

People from time to time can have some minor or temporary reaction to any treatment of any kind.

But reactions to aesthetic treatments should be just that, minor, temporary, rare or all of the above, not major scar tissue that lasts for years, permanent skin laxity or worse cellulite than before, and definitely it should not happen more often than 1%.

Inserting hot needles into the skin with zero feedback possible from the client due to anaesthesia, is like looking for trouble. And the same applies to literally any anaesthesia-based / very painful skin tightening / cellulite removal procedure, current or future.

And that is why we don’t do those procedures, even though they are 5-10x times for profitable than the safe and natural ones

Yet, this 4-10x times more profit is why so many practitioners do them. Good for them but we will pass because with any anaesthesia-based treatment, you play with fire. And we like to sleep well at night.

Natural skin tightening / cellulite removal treatment

As explained above, the best way to improve skin tone and reduce cellulite SAFELY is with regular, high intensity but always under the pain threshold stimulation.

Currently, the strongest such technologies are deep-acting, high-power radiofrequency and deep acting, high-power ultrasound cavitation - if provided by a knowledgable practitioner.

Yes, with treatments just below the pain threshold you typically need repeated treatment (6-12 sessions for best results), just like you need repeated training sessions at the gym.

But despite not being instant miracles, they have been proven very safe, effective and predictable.

And sustainable too, meaning that you can safely repeat them now or in the future 5, 10, 20 times, without the downtime, pain and chance of adverse reaction.

I mention “in the future” here because life changes: people put on weight, they get pregnant, they can’t exercise due to work, they indulge too much in food/alcohol etc. These life changes lead to body changes, which mean you may have to redo a skin tightening / cellulite reduction treatment several times in your life.

How many times do you think you can puncture the same piece of skin with 3mm, 5mm or even 7mm long hot needles without getting a bad reaction?

It’s just not sustainable.