Tweak of the Week: Moxi by Sciton

As autumn sets in, it’s a good time to treat any sun damage that may have crept into your skin over the summer, and this week’s Tweak of The Week brings you a laser treatment that can really help treat pigmentation from UV rays or melasma. TTG Editor, Georgia Seago, visited Dr Jennifer Doyle at The Clinic Holland Park to try Moxi, a non-ablative laser by Sciton designed to lighten, brighten and refresh the skin’s overall appearance. You can see the treatment – and the impressive results – on the video below, and the transcript provides full details of the conversation. 

Price: £1600 for three treatments
Downtime: 5 – 7 days
Pain Levels: Low

To find your closest Sciton Lasers provider and learn more about their machines, click here.

This video is sponsored by Sciton Lasers.

Alice Hart-Davis: We are doing a Tweak of the Week this week where G is trying a new kind of laser. So G what is this laser?

Georgia Seago: So this laser is called Moxi, and it’s from Sciton and it is quite a lightweight laser, which is perfect for resurfacing your skin in quite a kind of minimally invasive way. Perfect for brightening and tightening the skin.

Moxi

£400-£600

Non-aggressive with minimal to no downtime

12-15 minutes

Learn More

AHD: Who’s going to be doing your treatment?

GS: So I’m having my  treatment with Dr Jenny Doyle

AHD: Okay, well let’s go and find her and ask her a bit more about it.

Jenny, can you tell us a bit more about Moxi? Because it’s a laser, isn’t it? But it’s non-ablative. What does that mean exactly?

Dr Jenny Doyle: So, as you know, lasers are split into ablative and non-ablative. Ablative is when you’re making a channel directly from the skin surface down and destroying tissue from the top of the skin downwards. Whereas non-ablative is not disturbing that top layer of the skin, so we’re not actually disturbing the barrier of the skin.

The energy is being delivered below the top level of the skin. So that’s the difference.

AHD: Does it hurt?

JD: So for G, we’re going to put a full face of anaesthetic on her today, and actually, I don’t think she’ll feel anything really during the treatment. We have the benefit here of having a cryotherapy machine. So if you do feel any areas that are getting a little warm, you’ll be able to target cold air directly to those areas and take the heat right down.

AHD: G, have you had anything like this before?

GS: No. The only thing I’ve had before has been some IPL for spots of pigmentation. So I’ve not had anything like a full-face type of laser.

AHD: Okay. And this one is fractional or fractionated

JD: Yep. Fractional or fractionated. And that means that we’re targeting a particular percentage of the skin. So rather than it covering the entirety of the skin, we’re controlling what amount of the skin we want to target with this laser. Whether it be 5, 10, 15, or 20%, for example.

AHD: Which is what makes it more suitable for younger skin like G’s?

JD: Yeah, it’s a really versatile laser. Um, so it can, we can change the settings to really tailor it for the patient that we’re trying to treat. So for G,  she’s got lovely young skin as it is. So I imagine we’re looking for sort of a brightening freshen-up.

So we won’t need to go very high with the fraction, the amount of skin that we’re going to be targeting or with the laser energy on that. But that’s not to say it can’t be used for other indications so scarring, melasma. We can increase the settings and get really good results for conditions like that too with Moxi laser.

GS: What kind of downtime are we looking at with this?

JD: Very little downtime, especially because we’re going to be doing a fairly light to medium treatment. Even when we go heavier, if we were treating scarring or, or melasma, for example, I caution patients to give themselves five to seven days, but that’s probably being a bit generous.

I’d just like to make sure that everyone is over their downtime by the period I’ve given them. I’d expect you to be a little bit red after the treatment today. What we’ll get you to do is sleep with a couple of pillows just to make sure you’re not lying completely flat, and that’ll minimize any swelling that you’ll get overnight.

Um, after that, I’d expect it to pretty much settle down over the next couple of days. You might notice a little bit of dryness or flaking, but certainly, nothing that would prevent you from going out in normal society.

GS: Great. And so just staying out of the sun is the main thing to do afterwards?

JD: Yeah. So we send you home with aftercare. In terms of what skincare you should be using,  we just need you to be on some really gentle products with nothing active that could aggravate any inflammation or swelling that might happen. So that includes an SPF. So protecting your skin from any further UV damage while it’s healing is really important.

GS: Great. And how many treatments do people usually need with this?

JD: Most people go for a course of three treatments and that tends to get the best results. After that, the results are pretty permanent. We just ask that you maintain things with good sun protection all year round and pop in maybe once or twice a year for a little freshen-up.

GS: Okay, great. And how many weeks are those treatments sort of spaced apart?

JD: Ideally? Yeah, ideally about two to four weeks in between.

AHD: That was so quick. I mean, that was what, 10 minutes? Yeah. So quick. You are hardly even pink. Mm. Yeah. How’d it feel?

GS: Fine. The main thing that you feel is the numbness which, um, yeah, it was completely tolerable. A little bit of a prickly sensation, I think. Especially more around the hairline but completely fine.

AHD: A couple more treatments and then another Visia to see how you’re shaping up after that.

JD: Yes, so we will Visia each time to see improvement after each session. Um, and then, yeah, three treatments is what I’d probably recommend for you G.

AHD: So your skin is pretty fab already, so I think we’re gonna have to get you to talk about how it feels as well. Because I’m not sure there’s that much improvement that can be made.

JD: Yeah. I mean, we do, we’ve gone for a light treatment as well as you know, we can really pump the settings if, say, G had a lot of sun damage or other concerns, but she’s got lovely skin to start with. So what we’re trying to achieve is different.

We’re just trying to achieve brightening and ‘prejuvenation’ of the skin and so hopefully your skin should feel really nice and be and soft and you should have a lovely sort of airbrushed glow.

AHD: Terrific. Thank you very much.

JD: No worries. It was my pleasure.

AHD: That was this week’s Tweak of the Week. We’ll drop in them some pictures of G once we got the before and afters and thank you very much for watching.

The results

Okay, what sort of results is George seeing 10 weeks after her first treatment? These Visia images show what’s lurking below the surface of the skin. So even though in real life, Georgia’s skin looks amazing, here are the brown spots from sun damage revealed. Even with a quick glance, you can see there’s a huge improvement from the before image on the left to ‘after’ on the right, and what Visia does is compare your results to other people of your age and skin type on their vast database.

And when we look at the numbers, you can see just how big that improvement is. At the start. Georgia rated nine out of 100 – which in Visia terms is a bad score because it means that 91 out of 100 other people rated better, but after treatment, her score has improved massively to 71, so that’s really impressive.

This second pair of pictures looks at skin tone irregularities, and again, there’s a huge improvement. At the start, Georgia score is 52 and that has shot right up to 92, so you’re pretty well perfect, G!

To find your closest Sciton Lasers provider and learn more about their machines, click here.

This video is sponsored by Sciton Lasers.