Doctors’ offices used to be cold, clinical places, until the medical spa movement turned their waiting rooms into New Age healing sanctuaries. But the atmosphere isn’t the only thing that’s had a facelift—so have the treatments.
Innovative technologies like radio waves to tighten the skin, semiconductor chips to reduce wrinkles, and long-lasting, nonallergenic wrinkle fillers are moving in, threatening to displace Botox, microdermabrasion, and collagen injections as the most popular cosmetic procedures in the United States. The advent of these new “lunchtime” procedures increases the possibility of improving complexions with minimal pain, redness, and time. Now, derms say, all you have to lose is...some years off your face. And if someone asks if you’ve been to a spa, you can say yes. No one has to know it was a medi-spa.
Fill ’er Up
Known as wrinkle fillers, injectables help replace the connective tissue that is lost over time by elevating lines and furrows to match the level of the skin around them. These gels and liquids are injected with a small needle into the lower half of the face (the place where we’re most apt to lose volume over time) in the creases from nose to mouth, lipstick or pucker lines, smile lines where dimples once were, and marionette lines that run from the mouth to the chin. Fillers can also add fullness to lips by returning them to their youthful, pillowy contours and lift up the corners of a mouth that’s starting to turn down due to the pull of muscles and gravity.
“Restylane is going to revolutionize this industry in the same way Botox did,” says Dr. Rhoda S. Narins, president elect of the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery. One reason is that it lasts twice as long as collagen (some say three or four times as long—about 6–12 months). At press time Restylane was on the verge of being approved by the FDA. Until that happens, though, you can only try it if your doctor has access as part of a clinical trial—or if you happen to bring some back in your suitcase from Canada, Europe, or Australia, where this filler is judged safe and has been used for years.
Another reason docs are high on Restylane (and its sister Perlane for deeper lines) is its low rate of allergic reaction. “Restylane is a synthesized form of hyaluronic acid, which is a substance we already have in our skin but that we lose over time,” says Dr. John D. McCann, codirector of the Jules Stein Eye Institutes’ UCLA Aesthetic Center. “If a youthful face is like a blown-up ball, an old face is like a deflated ball—it looks like somebody’s let all the air out of it, and much of that has to do with the loss of hyaluronic acid. So it makes sense to be adding something back to the skin that was naturally present.”
Another “natural” solution, Radiance, is a synthetic form of the calcium found in our bones and teeth. FDA-approved for use in throat, leg, and ankle tissue, it has been injected by some doctors for about a year now. Under “off-label use” provisions, doctors are legally allowed to inject it into facial wrinkles and are having good results. “Radiance has a gelatin-like consistency that gives you a nice restoration of whatever collagen or elastin you’ve lost, without giving you an artificial look,” says Dr. Simon Ourian, a Beverly Hills dermatologist. “I use it on myself, in my nasolabial folds and upper lip.”
Radiance works by causing the body to grow collagen around the tiny drops of calcium, in the same way a pearl forms around a grain of sand in an oyster. But what may appeal most to those of us who hate going to the doctor (that is, paying for constant touch-ups) is that the effects are semi-permanent, lasting from three to seven years—much longer than most other fillers. “It’s the next ‘wow’ thing we’ve been waiting for,” says Ourian.
Artefill, also awaiting a final OK from the FDA at press time, pushes the longevity issue even further—its results are permanent, which can be both good and bad. Good because one or two appointments can fill your wrinkles forever, and bad because if the doctor’s skills aren’t up to snuff, or if you develop tiny bumps, your face will show it—forever. Still, it’s been widely used in Europe, Canada, and South America under the name Artecoll since 1993. Made of microscopic plastic beads suspended in cow collagen, Artefill is injected under the wrinkle to fill it immediately. In the time it takes for our body to absorb the cow collagen, we have replaced it with our own, which forms around the micro-beads. Artefill is a same-day fix only with some advance planning: It requires an allergy test first due to the cow-collagen component.
Not many doctors will admit to using this permanent filler (or won’t use it because of the higher malpractice-insurance premiums it can incur), but liquid silicone is recovering from its bad reputation for migrating from the injection site or forming inflamed lumps, which caused the FDA to remove it from the market in 1991. Since then, though, the FDA has approved an injectable silicone oil called Silikon 1000 to treat certain eye conditions, which means doctors can legally use it off-label on wrinkles. Done properly with the micro-droplet technique and a tiny insulin needle, doctors and patients are reporting excellent results. “Silikon 1000 is a very pure form of silicone, and if you use this very safe method of injecting it, it just sits in the skin and forms collagen around it and doesn’t go anywhere,” says Dr. James E. Fulton, a Newport Beach, California, dermatologist and one of the original developers of the landmark acne drug Retin-A. “In my practice I use Silikon mostly for enhancing the lips and for filling in acne scars.”
Lunchtime Lasers
To improve the overall texture and color of skin, the new non-ablative (non-wounding) lasers are drawing in the lunchtime crowds. They work by heating up the water or pigment in skin cells to the boiling point, vaporizing it in a puff to improve wrinkles, scars, brown spots, and broken blood vessels. Unlike the ablative CO2 laser that leaves the skin red and weeping and involves weeks of recovery time, these new lasers work from the inside out, cooling the top of the skin while burning subsurface cells—forming new collagen in the process. With no visible wound, there’s no recuperation involved, except a little redness for an hour or two, but you will need four to six treatments to see a change (versus just one with a CO2 laser). And non-ablative doesn’t mean pain-free, though the sting of each “hit” can be lessened with anesthetic cream. Since different laser wavelengths target different cells, we’ve matched up the skin problem with the device that can best correct it. Source: Radiance Medspa Click Here For More Information on the Radiance Medspa Franchise Opportunity |
