Most of us have trouble spots on our bodies where we’d like to shape up or slim down. For some, it’s the middle (muffin top), for others it’s the back (love handles), and still others would like to tone their thighs. But for a patient who has already tried everything, what can help these stubborn places? The answer is CoolSculpting, and it’s available at Rejuvenate Med Spa in Oak Brook, IL.
What Is CoolSculpting?
This non-invasive technique helps reduce fat from specific, targeted areas. It was developed by Harvard University scientists because diet and exercise can only do so much. This grows more apparent with age, when weight loss becomes increasingly difficult and the body continues to change in ways you don’t necessarily understand.
The premise is fairly simple: with the application of cold, we can eliminate bulges, bumps, and rolls comprised of fat cells. Unlike other types of cells, including those of muscle and skin, fat cells freeze at a high temperature. You’ll feel nothing more than a little cold during treatment, which eventually passes so you can relax, read a book, or even sleep.
The Technique
During your appointment, we’ll use two cooling panels to sandwich a segment of fat. As the cold temperatures – around 14 degrees – penetrate fat cells, those cells develop tiny crystals before dying off. Keep in mind that, again, you feel none of this as it happens. The treatment is pain-free.
Meanwhile, other cells within the body help to break down those that were frozen. The dead cells are eventually eliminated through the lymph system. This process can take, in total, a few weeks or several months, depending on the number of treatments you receive and the area we target.
Treatment Areas
Common areas of treatment are those we briefly mentioned, where pockets of stubborn fat persist even when the rest of your body is lean and trim. These can include:
- Stomach
- Abdominal sides
- Lower back
- Thighs
- Buttocks
- Under the chin
Cellulite
Cellulite is not fat, but rather the appearance of dimpled skin. It is caused by fatty tissue underneath the skin and commonly appears on the thighs, arms, and buttocks. CoolSculpting can reduce the appearance of cellulite and, as such, is one of a few effective ways to smooth skin.
What to Expect
You should plan on spending about an hour in treatment for each body part. This makes the therapy ideal for a lunchtime break or morning stop-in. While you may need more than one treatment to fully target the fat cells, you’ll likely be able to see results after just one session. Full results may take up to three months to develop.
Do You Lose Weight?
CoolSculpting is not a weight-loss tool. It seems like it should be because it helps you lose fat, but there’s a distinct difference between targeting fat pockets and losing actual weight.
The Explanation
When you lose weight, your body doesn’t necessarily become sculpted. This is because fat is distributed differently throughout the body, meaning you can also lose it differently. Pockets of fat that remain in stubborn, hard-to-reach places can impact your overall appearance, causing some parts to look less toned than others.
To illustrate, you may lose fat more readily from your midsection than your buttocks. This is where CoolSculpting comes in; using it on a trouble spot can give you a more sculpted appearance in total.
Understanding Fat Cells
The number of fat cells you have within your body is determined early in life, in childhood and adolescence. This quantity changes very little throughout adulthood, a fact that comes as a surprise to most people. Fat cell quantities differ in each of us, and although these cells can shrink with weight loss, they never disappear.
Weight gain causes your fat cells to expand. This results in the expansion of certain body areas, like the thighs and waist. Healthy habits keep the fat cells at a manageable size; with a sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy diet, those cells again expand.
Treatment Details
CoolSculpting targets fat cells but not weight. It’s important to make this distinction so patients have a clear understanding of the treatment. It’s also important to understand that weight loss is not an elimination of fat cells. It instead is a process by which those cells become smaller, as we explained earlier.
In the months following treatment, you may lose a handful of pounds as your body eliminates the dead fat cells. But this loss is not significant. In addition, treatment will kill between 20% and 25% of fat cells contained within a specific area.
Precise Targeting
Because of the precision achieved with CoolSculpting, only one area is targeted at a time. But don’t worry; fat cells from another part of the body will not migrate to the treated area and replace those that were frozen. Nor will those cells regenerate. This means the fat cells will be permanently removed to give you lasting results.
If you should happen to gain weight in the future, it will still distribute evenly throughout the body. You will not, however, see much gain in the area previously treated.
Sculpted Results
This therapy is most ideal for patients who have already lost weight and simply want to tackle errant wobbles. We can treat multiple areas until you achieve the precise contours you want, but this therapy shouldn’t be used in place of healthy lifestyle choices. Instead, it can serve as a complement to exercise and diet to keep you looking and feeling your best.
We should also note that repeat treatments are safe. Many patients in fact need more than one session to achieve the look they desire. We will work with you to determine the optimal number of treatments to ensure you’re satisfied with your results.
Weight Management
After treatment, the key is to continue managing your weight. This will allow you to enjoy your newly-toned appearance for many years. Others will likely comment on the pounds you’ve lost because of the change in your appearance. They need not know that your weight has stayed the same.
Weight is an important topic, because the number you see on the scale after treatment will not reflect your true appearance. So, again, we wish to remind you that CoolSculpting does not promote weight loss. It does afford you a slimmer appearance so you look more proportionate and even more youthful. These improvements can help you stay motivated in your weight loss goals.
Benefits of Treatment
You already know that CoolSculpting is effective and pain-free, but what about additional benefits? We’re happy to say this treatment has many.
Safety First
As a treatment approved by the FDA, you can be assured it poses few, if any, risks. Those risks are further minimized by the fact that it’s non-invasive, meaning no scars and no recovery period.
You’ll also experience no downtime, so you can bounce right back once your treatment is complete. These facts are especially important to patients who don’t want to alter their schedules or take time off from work.
Boost In Confidence
The results of this treatment are obvious: a slimmer and trimmer you. But results go beyond aesthetics. You will immediately feel more confident, a trait that will carry into your work, relationships, and social interactions. You’ll also feel happier with your body, which others will instantly notice.
Natural Look
This therapy does not alter your appearance in the way cosmetic surgery might. Instead, it enhances your body’s natural curves and contours to give you a completely natural look. Nobody will know you’ve experienced cosmetic therapy unless you choose to tell them.
A Look At Fat
We talk a lot about fat as a society, but it’s not a topic that is well understood. This is because many myths surround fat, helping to keep the facts clouded in obscurity.
The fat cell has a primary objective in the body, and that is to hold lipids, or energy. Each cell can maintain a single drop of lipid. During weight loss, the body drains these reserves and uses them for fuel. The cell itself, however, remains fully intact.
Weight Loss Is Tricky
The failure of most diets can be traced to a simple biological fact: fat cells have a knack for retaining lipids. This is especially true when a person embarks on a fad diet, intense workout program, or another regimen in which pounds are shed quickly and recklessly rather than slowly and steadily.
But there’s another factor in this equation, and that is the body is designed to hold fat. You might immediately think of this as a biological flaw, but it is in fact a means of survival. Holding onto fat helps improve a person’s chances of survival in even the most dire of circumstances. Seen from this angle, the body is an energy-holding machine primed at all times to pull through.
Stubborn Spots
The above explanation helps us better understand why fat stubbornly persists in some areas of the body but not others. This can be especially true in lower parts, like the thighs.
The midsection is another common trouble spot because stress, which we all endure, prompts the release of cortisol. This, in turn, tells the body to cling even more relentlessly to energy reserves. It does this in anticipation of that moment when a person must survive on little or no nutrition and keep moving.
Weight-Loss Woes
To compound the difficult situation already posed by our bodies is an unhealthy preoccupation with the scale. This approach is not always ideal, as scale results immediately put an idea into your head of yourself. This idea may not always be positive; in fact, it can be downright negative.
In addition, weight is not necessarily an indicator of health or physical appearance. That’s because many components go into weight, including water and muscle. So it’s not a pure measure of fat, a fact that can be difficult to remember when you’re trying to eliminate an extra roll or two.
Changing Your Body
You can be at what equates to your ideal weight and still feel unhappy with your body. This has nothing to do with the scale, but rather the wobbles and fat distributions that cause minor disruptions like ill-fitting clothes.
You can change your body without undertaking an extreme diet and exercise regimen. In fact, we don’t recommend either of these because they can be unsafe and cause you to gain the weight right back again. What we do advocate for is a healthy lifestyle that you’re committed to. Once this is in place, CoolSculpting can be a wonderful way to finish achieving the body you want.
A New You
This therapy is pain-free, relatively quick, and delivers concrete results. If you’re ready to stop thinking about what you could do to sculpt your body and want to take action, we’re here for you. Call the staff at Rejuvenate Med Spa in Oak Brook, IL, today, and begin the journey to a new you.