Ask Alice

Oh heck you poor thing. You can have it all dissolved straight away if you’re sure you want that done. (There is no need to wait. If the practitioner had injected the filler into a blood vessel during treatment, they wouldn’t have to wait to dissolve that). If you just want hydration, better — another time —  to try an ‘injectable moisturiser’ type treatment like Profhilo or Belotero Revive or Juvederm Volite as these are placed just below the surface of the skin, and just add hydration rather than volume, more info about injectable moisturisers aka skin boosters right here.

Hi, yes, the Dermalux Flex is expensive – it’s brilliant for improving skin quality, hydration and firmness, it takes down skin redness, reduces inflammation and will help reduce pigmentation from age spots… BUT it can’t help restore lost volume in the face. Nor can collagen supplements; they too help the strength and quality of the skin, but can’t make the face regrow the fat pads or restore the bone mass that has been eroded by the years. Nothing can do that except fillers or fat transfer – and I know those are not something you want to do. Sorry.

Hi, I had a straightforward clinical treatment to create damage in the skin in order to make the skin regenerate/ tighten etc which worked well (you can read about it here). An  ‘open channel’ Tixel treatment uses the Tixel on a very light setting to push serums or treatment products more deeply into the skin – but no, you don’t get the heat/ burning/ skin regeneration from that.

I think that negative feedback is so unfair. Let me explain.

I was sent by one of the papers to be the first person to get a toxins treatment at Superdrug  – and the only reason I didn’t get the treatment was because they (quite rightly) turned me down because, working through the very detailed questionnaire that you have to fill in before treatment, they discovered I’d had a toxin treatment only two months before and they correctly insist there should be a three-month minimum gap between appointments.

It maddens me that the feedback is so negative because Superdrug has done everything very correctly. They have partnered with the leading brand of botulinum toxin and fillers, they are only employing practitioners who are well trained in cosmetic injectables and have a good deal of experience, they check everyone’s birth-date and won’t treat under 25s and they insist on an initial consultation and a cooling-off period before they will treat anyone.

… all of which puts them streets ahead of all the non-medical and barely-trained people who are already offering injectable treatments in back rooms on the high street at other chemists, beauty salons and hairdressers.

People complain – wow, shocker – that this is bringing toxins to a high street chemist. They forget that Boots introduced toxins to its treatment offerings in leading branches back in 2002 (it was ahead of its time, wasn’t all that popular, and was dropped).

What these people don’t see is that toxins is already on their high streets, though it’s not usually offered in an upfront, clear, medically-based sort of way,

Here’s a link to the blog post I wrote about it at the time

Hi, it sounds like you are taking great care of your skin. I’d always suggest a consistent skincare regime with active ingredients like vitamin C serum in the morning to brighten and strengthen the skin, plus a hydrating sunscreen, and retinol or another kind of retinoid at night to stimulate collagen boosting and improve skin texture.

CoolSculpting aka fat freezing or crylipolysis can be really helpful for shrinking fat below the jaw – you need an expert practitioner to assess your face and jawline and see if you would be a good candidate for this. They also need to explain the potential complications of the procedure, which is something lots of people are asking about since Linda Evangelista has talked about how CoolSculpting went wrong for her.

When it comes to finding a practitioner in your local area, have you taken a look at the practitioner finder on the site here?  These are all people whom I would trust with my face. You can put in your postcode and see who comes up.

Hi, there are a few treatments you could try to tighten the skin on the eyelids and around the eye area. None of these will give as quick, clean or definitive a result as eyelid surgery (blepharoplasty) but they could help.

• Ping, a radiofrequency skin-tightening protocol put together by Dr Sach Mohan, which is specifically designed for non-surgical skin tightening around the eye
• Laser skin tightening, with a fractional laser – practitioners including Dr Maryam Zamani can offer this with the Sciton laser, other practitioners will have their own favourites. You do need to wear intra-ocular shields for this procedure, which are like metal or plastic contact lenses slipped into the eye to protect it while the laser light works on the skin.
• Tixel, which is a device that generates plain heat energy (as opposed to light energy or radiofrequency energy) can also be used on the eyelids as well as around the eye. I had good results from just one treatment of this a few years ago.
• You could also try anti-wrinkle injections in the forehead, to raise your eyebrows a bit, which can make saggy eyelids look less saggy.

I’ve had three successful treatments over the past 8 years with Ultherapy, which is a branded version of HIFU (which stands for High Intensity Focused Ultrasound).

Here’s a video where I’m talking about the treatment in general.

No, it’s not dangerous to the underlying muscle – it is aiming its focused point of ultrasound energy at the collagen layer surrounding the muscle, and it needs to strike that precisely in order to damage that collagen and stimulate new collagen growth, which is what delivers the tightening to the skin over time.

The thing with HIFU treatment is that you want to be treated by someone really experienced with the machine and the techniques needed. The Ultherapy device has an ultrasound scanner built into it, which helps because the practitioner can see exactly where/ how deep in the skin each shot of focused ultrasound is being delivered.

Hi, yes, try Hirudoid cream – which you can find at a pharmacy or online. It’s brilliant for reducing bruising.

Other things which I reckon help to speed up bruising include Altrient liposomal vitamin C, very good for all sorts of healing; sessions of LED red light therapy eg Dermalux which you can find at salons and clinics or even buy your own for home use, and the NuFace Fix – it’s not an official use of the gadget but because it improves the microcirculation in the skin and lymph drainage I am pretty sure that it speeds up the dispersal of pooled blood that is causing the bruise, to send it on its way that bit faster.

Hi, all of these injectable moisture treatments such as Profhilo and Belotero Revive and Juvederm Volite are great for delivering a deep and lasting hydration which enables the skin to rejuvenate itself  (make more collagen, tighten up a bit etc) and Pluryal is a decent brand though I haven’t tried it myself. It’s different in that it contains a cocktail of antioxidant ingredients as well as hyaluronic acid, which makes it a bit more like a mesotherapy mix, but a properly hydrating one. Ask your practitioner why they are suggesting that particular brand, and if you are satisfied with the answer give it a try.

Hi, short answer – no. these are two very different treatments. Yes they both work by stimulating collagen production in the skin, but they work in different ways.

The Dermalux Flex is using red LED light to gently rejuvenate the skin, by improving hydration, prompting the development of more collagen and reducing inflammation in the skin so it takes down redness and also reducing uneven brown pigmentation. As you say, the benefits are cumulative, so you need to use it consistently – and the more the better.

Morpheus8 and other forms of radiofrequency microneedling  cause huge immediate damage to the skin, by creating thousands of pinprick holes with the needling (so your skin races into healing mode, to repair that damage which results in fresher, stronger skin), and by heating the collagen within the skin with radiofrequency energy, which causes it to shrink, and then regenerate over the next few months, so you get a much more drastic tightening and smoothing than with Dermalux

Having said that, Dermalux will – as you may have seen on my videos — give you terrific results over time and is something you can use as regularly as you have time if you have the device at home. And it’s great for accelerating the healing process after any other tweakments.

Q&As on Dermalux Flex here 

Why I’ve added Dermalux Flex to the shop on TTG

Yes I do. I totally understand why you’re cautious about having filler in your tear-trough area to treat under-eye hollows, but if it is well done, this is a brilliant treatment to disguise the appearance of those hollows.

Take a look at this video where Dr Saleena Zimri is demonstrating a tear trough procedure

And take a look at this page which is all about hollow eyes and what you can try – scroll down the page to see all the FAQs

Your poor thing, huge sympathies, I completely understand how distressing this is. I would strongly suggest that you just leave well alone and let it wear off. Yes, technically a really skilled and experienced practitioner might be able to achieve some improvement – but the trouble is that the muscles that lift your eyebrows are already disabled for the time being, and nothing can change that. But hang on in there, your forehead muscles will regain their former movement. How long will it take? That depends on how much toxin the practitioner used, but your normal movement patterns should start to return between 6 weeks and three months.

Sorry, but no. If you have a retrognathic chin, i.e. overbite/weak chin, you can have fillers to advance the profile a bit, but not the other way round.

I prefer Ultherapy (Ulthera) to other types of HIFU skin tightening as it has a visualiser in the device so the practitioner can “see” into the skin and position each pulse at the right depth so it hits the collagen layer, not the fat.