Here’s uplifting news

Until recent­ly the main method of address­ing slack and droop­ing skin, which char­ac­teris­es an age­ing face, has been to plump it out arti­fi­cial­ly. But how much bet­ter would it be if we could encour­age the body to replace its own dimin­ish­ing col­la­gen, so we regain our own youth­ful appear­ance?

That is the prin­ci­ple behind the next gen­er­a­tion of dual-act­ing regen­er­a­tive treat­ments, which are chang­ing the way pro­gres­sive aes­thet­ic doc­tors are reju­ve­nat­ing age­ing faces. Two of the most con­tem­po­rary – Sil­hou­ette Soft skin-lift­ing treat­ment and Ellan­sé der­mal filler – work by stim­u­lat­ing our own col­la­gen pro­duc­tion by pro­vok­ing the body’s nat­ur­al reac­tion to for­eign bod­ies.

Accord­ing to Dr Ian Straw­ford: “Col­la­ge­n­e­sis is the process of stim­u­lat­ing the body to replace lost col­la­gen, which starts to ebb away in our 20s and gal­lops by the time we reach our 40s. With­out the under­ly­ing col­la­gen, ‘age-slid­ing’ of the skin tis­sues results in nose-to-lip folds, lip-to-chin lines, jowl­ing jaw­lines and pool­ing neck skin.”

As clin­i­cian train­er Dr Straw­ford, who was an ear­ly advo­cate of the dual treat­ments from Sin­clair Phar­ma, explains: “Col­la­gen stim­u­lat­ing treat­ments offer the poten­tial of regen­er­a­tive lift­ing and vol­ume restora­tion, allow­ing us to cre­ate a far more nat­u­ral­is­tic appear­ance. The results are so impres­sive, no one will notice that ‘work has been done’, rather they will think some­one looks pro­gres­sive­ly bet­ter over a peri­od of months.

“At dif­fer­ent stages in our lives we may need one or both treat­ments so I clas­si­fy my patients into four types accord­ing to their facial degen­er­a­tion, droop­ing or excess of skin to help me deter­mine when to lift or com­bine the treat­ments. With these com­bi­na­tion treat­ments we can achieve nat­ur­al regen­er­a­tive results akin to facelift surgery, with­out the risks of going under the knife, and achieve impres­sive­ly sus­tained results.”

Skin lift­ing with Sil­hou­ette Soft sutures involves a unique two-stage process – an imme­di­ate lift and grad­ual col­la­gen regen­er­a­tion. Think of it as the cre­ation of scaf­fold­ing for skin, revers­ing the south­ward droop of necks, jowls and cheeks. The sutures are pep­pered with a series of tiny cones and intro­duced just under the top lay­er of the skin. The cones are bi-direc­tion­al, which secures the sutures in place in the sub­cu­ta­neous lay­er and allows them to be pulled in two direc­tions to lift the skin.

The results are so impres­sive, no one will notice that ‘work has been done’

The sutures and cones are made from poly­lac­tic acid, which is the same mate­r­i­al as dis­solv­able stitch­es, and in the ensu­ing three months before they are absorbed by the body they bring about the process of col­la­ge­n­e­sis. This is the method the body uses to repair a dam­aged area, in this case cre­at­ed by the agi­ta­tion of the cones. This brings about a bio­log­i­cal lift, where the skin becomes firmer and tighter as a result of the aug­men­ta­tion from new­ly laid down col­la­gen under­neath the sur­face to fill it out nat­u­ral­ly.

Sil­hou­ette Soft has been cho­sen to hold back time by a raft of celebri­ties thanks to the sub­tle nature of the results it achieves. Those who have spo­ken pub­licly about it include actress Gillian Tayl­forth, pre­sen­ter Meg Math­ews, and Olympian and TV sports inter­view­er Shar­ron Davies.

Holy Grail of facial reju­ve­na­tion

“The Holy Grail of facial reju­ve­na­tion would be the abil­i­ty of a skin injectable to stim­u­late con­trolled, last­ing col­la­gen pro­duc­tion.” So says one of Europe’s lead­ing con­sul­tant der­ma­tol­o­gists, Dr Nick Lowe. Grat­i­fy­ing­ly this Holy Grail has been achieved with the devel­op­ment of Ellan­sé from the Sin­clair Phar­ma sta­ble. It is the first der­mal filler that pro­vides both instant and grad­ual results; increased vol­ume occurs imme­di­ate­ly post-injec­tion, how­ev­er volu­mi­sa­tion con­tin­ues to devel­op for up to four months. The results can be tai­lored to last between one and four years.

“I still look like me… just a bet­ter ver­sion of me”

The 42-year-old mod­el, actress and pre­sen­ter Nan­cy Sor­rell, who is also the wife of come­di­an Vic Reeves, is a firm Ellan­sé fan. She says: “I was start­ing to see the lines from my nose to my mouth deep­en­ing. My doc­tor advised that a lit­tle Ellan­sé filler would lift and smooth out the lines, and it worked instant­ly and got even bet­ter over time.”

Dr Kuldeep Minocha, who trains oth­er doc­tors world­wide for Sin­clair Phar­ma, con­cludes: “Where­as once upon a time the aes­thet­ic com­mu­ni­ty was focused on fix­ing lines and wrin­kles, we now have a shared under­stand­ing of the many fac­tors that con­tribute to facial age­ing, not least of which are loss of vol­ume and skin qual­i­ty.

“A more holis­tic approach, appre­ci­at­ing the three-dimen­sion­al nature of age­ing, is more like­ly to achieve the effect of a more youth­ful appear­ance. Using mus­cle-relax­ing injec­tions as the only treat­ment modal­i­ty for clients as they age can be lim­it­ing, espe­cial­ly when we have treat­ments such as Sil­hou­ette Soft and Ellan­sé in our armoury of min­i­mal­ly inva­sive pro­ce­dures.

“Both these treat­ments encour­age the body to pro­duce type 1 col­la­gen, which is the most flex­i­ble type, com­pared with type 3 which is scar tis­sue. This allows full facial move­ment, and as a con­se­quence brings about flex­i­ble, nuanced and nat­ur­al-look­ing results.”

For more infor­ma­tion please con­tact:

Dr Ian Straw­ford www.skinexcellenceclinics.co.uk
Dr Nick Lowe www.doctornicklowe.com
Dr Kuldeep Minocha www@minochahealth.co.uk
Sil­hou­ette Soft and Ellan­sé www.Sinclairpharma.co.uk