October 2024
Stylenest
Always up for a facial tweakment to help banish the ageing process, I had an online consultation with Dr Hanson in Harley Street to discuss how to tighten my sagging jowls!
With any doctor you have to feel at ease, as you are being open and honest with your personal concerns – and Dr Hanson made me feel comfortable immediately. He assured me that drooping skin was normal for a woman of menopausal age as thanks to all the other delightful things that start to happen, collagen that keeps us plump in starts to deplete and make the skin look baggy too!
He recommended a high-tech Endolift® treatment – which uses state of the art, laser technology to stimulate beneath the skin and target the mild to moderate soft tissue that causes submental jowl fat. Like a targeted face diet where you can choose which bit you want to shrink – generally on the lower half – cheeks and jowls, the precise laser-emitting thread is inserted under the skin using a small cannula in order to zap the tissue below the skin.
With target areas mapped out pre-treatment, the fibre-emitting laser directs the energy to heat specific underlying tissues and stubborn pockets of fat in the lower face (or body) to ‘melt’ them away – resulting in a dynamic collagen re-boot and improvement of skin ‘architecture’ as proteins such as collagen and elastin are naturally produced in response to Endolift.
The actual procedure takes less than an hour and lasts from two to five years and is performed at the Clinic under local anaesthesia with no down time and early signs can be seen as soon as 4-8 weeks, but the process continues to work over time with ‘peak’ results 9-12 months after the procedure. I made an appointment – ensuring that I didn’t have any trips directly afterwards, as although you can leave directly after the treatment. I was advised to protect my face from the sun for at least ten days as it may be sensitive.
Having ‘met’ Dr Hanson via Zoom, he had a great bedside manner and made me feel very relaxed as he explained what would happen during the process and he promised that the initial injections of anaesthesia would probably be uncomfortable, but were necessary to numb before the main event! I will be honest, this was quite an icky experience, but once I was in, I was in.
The actual procedure took place once I was sufficiently numb and the next 45 minutes actually passed fairly quickly as my face was punctured with a revolutionary laser-emitting wire, just 0.2-0.4mm in diameter. With precise and delicate movements, the laser energy targeted my highlighted problem zones which were lower cheeks and jowls. Thanks to the anaesthesia, the process was pretty painless – however there was the occasional crackle and sharp pain which passed in an instant – however if I did get a bit twitchy I was able to signal to Dr H to take a break.
Once I had been blasted, my skin felt quite taut and sensitive – unsurprisingly as this was a completely alien procedure to me, so I took advantage of the anaesthetic and had some Botox in my upper face, to complete my new look!
Obviously the Botox has an immediate effect, and try as I might I couldn’t really see a difference with my lower face – apart from it still being delicate from all the jabs; but a month later and I am feeling slightly more contoured, as the collagen is starting to rebuild.
I went back for my check up and was pleased to see there was a result – and I was looking fresher than my ‘before’ pics already, with a tighter fishy gills! My final tweakment was one of the most exciting new developments in skin injectables. Polynucleotides (AKA salmon sperm) are made up of stretchy molecules from fragments of fish DNA which closely resembles human DNA and its purest proteins and are injected under the skin to act as a ‘biostimulant’ in order to boost the fibroblast cells including collagen and elastin, without adding any volume – just the good stuff!
I left the Clinic feeling confident that there was a lot of positive cellular production going on under the surface of my visage, and after six months my face should be at its prime.
Worth the investment? Yes, I think so – if you’re looking for something subtle but long lasting, this combination definitely archives results.
