SkinSelf Renewal Blog

Original Article by Alexandra Sifferlin. Though it’s best known for smoothing wrinkles, Botox, which is derived from one of the most deadly toxins known to man, has repeatedly stunned the medical community for its seemingly endless applications. Though the drug is approved for nine medical conditions and several cosmetic ones, Allergan, the company that owns Botox, holds close to 800 more patents for potential uses of the drug. Since it was approved nearly 30 years ago, Botox has indeed become a staple of cosmetic enhancement, but today, more than half of its revenue comes from its therapeutic uses for conditions as varied as chronic migraines and back pain to excessive sweating and twitching eyelids. Botox is generally considered safe if used in tiny amounts and administered by a licensed professional, but the drug is not without risks. In 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) required Botox carry a…

Original Article by Aviva Patz. I’ve always hated my arms. The hanging flesh over my triceps has stubbornly refused to budge since I was in my 20s, even with dedicated weight training. I’ve been known to wear long sleeves in 90-degree heat and am skilled at contorting to hide my arms in pictures. I once tried one of those noninvasive fat-melting procedures, but you couldn’t tell the after picture from the before picture. Then I heard about a new treatment that was actually supposed to help: liposuction 2.0. While the fat-sucking treatment dates back to the mid 1980s, new technology has radically changed the way it works, and enabled people of a certain age (ahem) to become candidates. So if you want to smooth out your jiggly bits for good, here’s what you need to know. It’s probably not what you’re imagining. The original liposuction Hoovered out excess fat—that’s what…

Original Article by Katherine Rentmeester. I set out to see if time travel was possible. It wasn’t a very long journey I was hoping to go on—backtracking five years or so — but then, a half decade’s not bad for an hour spent in a Midtown Manhattan dermatology clinic. I was there to get zapped with the latest beauty technology, an outpatient procedure that promised to kick-start my skin’s deadbeat collagen, putting it on a high-speed rewind that would reverse nearly a year’s worth of aging per month over the next half year. What led me to the practice of Dr. Francesca Fusco to test out Ultherapy was pretty standard stuff. For the past decade, the skin I’d known in my twenties had been on a slow slide that left my cheekbones a little lower, my jaw line looser, and everything settled just a couple tattle-tale millimeters below where it…

Original Article by Elise Minton. In the quest for perfection, the one part of the body that seems the hardest to get thin is the face. You can work out all you want, but the face is an area that needs special attention—usually from the help of a doctor. Unbeknownst to many, Botox can work wonders on more than just lines and wrinkles. “Facial shaping, which includes facial slimming, is a very popular Botox treatment,” says San Francisco dermatologist Vic Narurkar, MD. “It was initially used primarily in patients of Asian decent, but is now very popular in all ethnicities for creating a more heart-shape face.” When injected into the masseter muscles (the muscles on the jawline) in a circular manner, Botox can “slim the face.” Oftentimes, fillers are also added to the cheeks to create a balanced look. Different from something like liposuction or a noninvasive fat fighter, which…

Original Article by Brittany Burhop.We often hear complaints from women about under-eye puffiness and bags, but there’s another concern that’s cropping up more and more: under-eye hollows. More often than not, women who experience them say they feel like they look tired even when they aren’t. Yes, topical products can help to an extent with the appearance of the area (things like discoloration and crow’s-feet), but when volume loss is the reason for this less-than-desirable hollowed-out effect, fillers are the answer. Here’s why. For many women, they begin seeing hollows develop in their mid-30s, but West Palm Beach, FL, dermatologist Kenneth Beer, MD, says that if you got a lot of sun when you are young or if you smoke, it will be earlier. “From that point forward, especially if you have fair skin, the process accelerates,” he adds. Troy, MI, plastic surgeon and author of The Age Fix: How…

Original Article By Mackenzie Wagoner.Blame it on bikini season or the forthcoming gala circuit, but recently, at dinner parties across the country, a topic has been on the tips of tongues: CoolSculpting. Not an entirely new technology, the fat-freezing procedure formally called cryolipolysis was first discovered after, rumor has it, doctors noticed that children who ate a lot of ice pops experienced fat degradation in their cheeks. “Fat is more temperature-sensitive than your skin,” explains UCLA professor and plastic surgeon Jason Roostaeian. “It goes through the cell death process before your skin does.” CoolSculpting was first approved by the FDA in 2010, but recently gained attention when it was rebranded from minor spot treatment to a noninvasive alternative to liposuction, promising to eviscerate love handles and bra bulge with the wave of a cooling paddle. Sound too good to be true? According to Roostaeian and Manhattan-based CoolSculpting guru Jeannel Astarita,…