Tweak of the week: the thread lift

When your face is starting to sag, but you’re not ready for a face lift, which tweakment can bridge the gap?

Increasingly, cosmetic doctors are offering thread lifts as an ‘in-between’ procedure. These take a very different and more direct approach to rejuvenation from wrinkle-relaxing toxins and shaping and volumising fillers.

I haven’t yet wanted to try a thread lift though I’m told I’m a good candidate for it, so I’m not this week’s TOTW patient. But I’m increasingly curious about threads and exactly what they can do.

A thread lift uses soluble suture-type threads to lift and reposition the tissues of the face, holding these in place with cones spaced along the threads. The results should last for 18 months.

It’s a more invasive procedure than most, as these threads need to be placed carefully into the skin with fine needles.

For this week’s Tweak of the Week, I meet Dr Victoria Manning of River Aesthetics at the Cosmesurge clinic in London, to watch her demonstrate a thread lift using Silhouette Soft threads. As she works, Dr Victoria explains how these threads stimulate collagen production in the skin during the six months before they dissolve, to help provide a longer-lasting improvement in the structure of the face.

‘All we’re doing is lifting the tissues to try to put them back where they started off,’ says Dr Victoria. ‘The threads I use a lot are Silhouette Soft and they’re made of Poly Lactic Acid, and what they do is quite unique, as they actually stimulate our own collagen, so it’s like putting a scaffolding into the face, then letting our body do it’s own work.’

How are the threads placed? What does it feel like?

‘What happens is the threads are placed in the superficial fat layer beneath the skin,  above the muscle and above the fibrous layer in between the muscle and the fat. It’s a painless layer so you shouldn’t feel a thing. Quite a lot of my patients actually fall asleep…’

What are the results like? Take a look at the video, and see for yourself.

This video is sponsored by Sinclair Pharma, the makers of Silhouette Soft threads

You can find Dr Victoria Manning at River Aesthetics in London, Hampshire and Dorset – when she’s not training other practitioners in how to use Silhouette threads.