MANILA, Philippines - Nature can be quite stubborn sometimes. No matter how much we diet, work out or pray, there are just some areas of our bodies that refuse to shape up. A tiny tummy bulge, little love handles, some back fat — these are just some common challenges that many people face on the road to physical perfection.
Now, Marie France introduces a treatment that helps get rid of stubborn bulges. CryoSculpt is the latest in body contouring. It uses controlled cooling technology to selectively eliminate fat cells safely from the body. “The areas that are ideal for this procedure are love handles on the hips, stomach areas — but not totally obese — and the back,” says international CryoSculpt expert Dr. Michael Gold. “We’re looking for people that have what we call bulges. The simple way to describe that is, ‘If I can’t grab it, I can’t treat it.’”
The love handles you love to hate
CryoSculpt takes one hour for each side. If a person has two love handles treated, it will take two hours and so on. First, a cooling gel is applied to the area to be treated. Then the Cryolipolysis machine, which has a vacuum nozzle, is attached to the area. The two sides of the vacuum have a cold plate that delivers cold air very slowly, very safely into the skin, hitting the fat cells and destroying them over a period of two-three months. “The fat cells that you’ve lost are gone,” Dr. Gold says. “But it doesn’t mean that other fat cells won’t get bigger... if you don’t take care of yourself.”
The treatment is safer than other “seek and destroy” treatments which kill fat cells in one go, making them release cholesterol and triglycerides.
“For the first 30 seconds, the skin is taken into the vacuum and gets numb (due to the cold). The patient sits there (for an hour). It doesn’t hurt and we tell them to bring something to do,” Dr. Gold says. “When you take the machine off at the end of the hour, if you’ve ever taken your finger and put it into butter, you have this gooey thing, that’s what your skin feels like. But that settles back in less than a minute or two and you can go back to business.”
Most people see results in two to three months, with an average loss of one to two centimeters, about 25 percent on the treated area, not bad when you consider that that love handle was impossible to get rid of in the first place. However, Dr. Gold emphasizes that the treatment can only do so much. It is always up to the patient to maintain a healthy lifestyle in order to keep the inches off. “This is a procedure that works really well with people that exercise a lot and take care of themselves and just can’t get rid of that bulge,” Dr. Gold says.
Firsthand experience
It’s hard to talk about something without trying it out first; plus, the prospect of losing hard-to-battle bulges was too good to pass up, so I headed to the treatment room. The doctor declared that my love handles were too small for the treatment (yay!), but my lower tummy area was perfect for it which was bad for me but good for this article.
After applying the gel, I was hooked up to the Cryolipolysis machine via what looked like the nozzle of a heavy-duty vacuum cleaner. It felt like my midsection was being sucked in by a strong vacuum. There was some discomfort at first, but that quickly subsided once I got used to the sucking effect. So I sat there for an hour, transcribing my notes from Dr. Gold’s interview. After 30 minutes, I could feel a slight tingle in my belly — the machine massaging my skin. This went on for about 15 minutes before it went back to suction mode. After the hour was over, the vacuum was removed. My skin was cold and pink and felt like a stick of butter, exactly like Dr. Gold said. It was slightly raised from being vacuumed for an hour, but was brought back to normal with a couple of minutes of gentle massaging. There was some slight pain as my skin began to thaw, no different from when you come into a heated house from a cold winter day. The doctor said I was to expect some slight discomfort in about four days as the process began its work. He also told me to come back in two months so we could measure the results.
“The three things that patients ask are is it painful, how much down time and is it invasive?” Dr. Gold says. “It’s not painful, there is no downtime, and there are no needles.”
And he’s right. There was no pain (well, a slight discomfort, but you are warned about that), no downtime (I met up with friends after), and no needles. My belly was pink for a couple of days, but that was to be expected as well. I’m looking forward to returning after two months to see how many centimeters I’ve lost.
Yes, Mother Nature can be stubborn, but sometimes, even she succumbs to the persistence of science.