Understanding The Ageing Process and Non-Surgical Treatment Options

Tring’s Elementary Skin & Body has recently added a new treatment to its offering of options to reverse the signs of ageing. Called HIFU (High Intensity Focused Ultrasound), it rejuvenates the skin by stimulating collagen, which reduces the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, improving the look and feel of loose skin.

Owner of the Akeman Street salon, Lucie Fountain, said: ‘We have been offering CACI Facials for over 10 years, which have provided amazing bespoke treatments, keeping skin looking and feeling wonderful alongside our holistic and natural approach.

‘Recently we’ve been reflecting on our treatment menu, and we want to build on our treatment offering to provide a range of highly effective treatment options that will match our ethos as a salon. Our passion is to work with high performance brands, offering alternatives to injectables and surgery, providing amazing results for our clients.’

We all notice the signs of ageing creeping in, especially on our faces, with most of us starting to notice this in our 30’s. Collagen is the main building block of the body’s skin, muscles, bones and tissues. Many people find it shocking to discover that starting between the ages of 21 – 28 we lose 1% of collagen every year.

Collagen is a tri-helix structure, it’s helpful to visualise it as a piece of rope, as we age it starts to come apart from itself, like an old rope unwinds. It becomes brittle meaning that the structure breaks up into smaller pieces. This process is what starts to show the signs of ageing such as thinning and sagging skin, lines and wrinkles. Skin elastin also decreases which effects the contours of the face.

Alongside this we have the deepest layer of the dermis, the SMAS layer. SMAS, is the layer of tissue or membrane that connects your lower face and neck muscles to your skin. It includes muscles, fibres, collagen, and fat.

As we age, our skin and the SMAS lose its elasticity. These changes result in sagging cheeks along the jawbone, excess skin, and often a ‘double chin’.

Many of us find ourselves looking in the mirror and pulling up the face to where we feel it should be sitting and many people think that surgery is the only option to tighten this skin.

There are many things we can all do to help reduce signs of ageing, some as simple as, drinking plenty of water, getting plenty of sleep and trying to remove as much stress from our lives as possible. All of these things do have an effect, as our body works to repair itself while we are sleeping and so the body needs the best conditions to be able to work most effectively.

An option that is becoming increasingly popular for reversing the signs of ageing are HIFU Treatments.

HIFU works to rejuvenate the SMAS and layers of the skin through High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) energy. HIFU causes collagen stimulation which reduces the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, improving the look and feel of loose skin. Treatment can be done over the whole face or targeted to certain areas such as the jaw line or forehead.

During a full face HIFU treatment, 3 different cartridges are used each penetrating the dermis at different levels.

These cartridges can be thought of as letting off heat bombs that are being dropped into the skin targeting down to the bottom layers of the skin and repairing the SMAS layer.

The heat bombs are ultrasound that generate heat of approximately 65oC in the dermis. This heat causes cellular friction in precise target-point areas which cause spaced ‘wounds’ in the dermis. This stimulates the skin’s wound-healing response that in turn stimulates tissue repair leading to lifting and tightening in the skin. The repair of the skin can take 90-180 days as the rejuvenation process works.

After treatment there is an immediate plumping in the top layer of skin due to the heating of the collagen line in the epidermis this results in dewy, glowing skin for 4 – 6 weeks post treatment. Following on from this, there is a weekly skin tightening effect, the optimal results are seen at 12 weeks as the skin structure tightens.

HIFU is placed just below surgery in the results that treatment offers as it works on the deepest layers of the dermis. HIFU is not suitable for everyone so it is important to have a consultation and talk through your treatment goals and medical history with a therapist before making the decision to have treatment.

HIFU is available now at Elementary Skin & Body in Tring and prices start from £220 for a Jaw Line & Neck treatment.