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  • CoolSculpting vs. Vanquish: Is Cold or Hot Technology Better For Fat Reduction?
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Cool Sculpting Vs. Vanquish: Is Cold or hot technology better for fat reduction?

There is a plethora of non-invasive devices on the market right now. But really I think what the consumer needs to know about is the differences between the devices for body contouring that are effective and comfortable and have reproducible results. So, we've been the base provider of cool sculpting in Newport Beach for the past three years. So, we've been with the company for a very long time with Zeltiq. We have very good relationship with them. Zeltiq works on a concept of using cold or cooling to freeze the fat. So, the concept is called cryolipolysis. It's coined cryolipolysis. But, essentially what that is, is that it's a vacuum applicator that was designed at Harvard and it sucks the fat into this applicator, drops it down to a certain preset temperature by the manufacturer that's not alterable by us and it's a preset time that's not alterable by us. It's one hour and once you get the fat down to that certain temperature, you're going to cause the fat to freeze and turn it into fat crystals and then we take the applicator off. The staff massages it down, breaks off the ice crystals and it causes the body to take away the dead fat cells and the fat away naturally. So the process is very easy to do. What you can expect to lose with any one treatment of an area or one cycle is anywhere from 25 to 40% of the fat permanently with that one treatment. So it's very exciting because you can do lots of different areas, actually physically contour a person's shape what they want to be. I had patients that come in that are models. Obviously, they will have a lot to shape but there are certain areas that they want to slim down even more and you can do that with cool sculpting.

On the polar opposite, in terms of looking at non-invasive permanent body contouring, we have Vanquish, which was debuted in September of last year. So, Vanquish is a technology that uses radiofrequency. It does not even touch your skin which is truly innovative. It has three panel head that goes over the area that you want to treat, which is a bigger advantage over cool sculpting in the sense that you can treat the entire abdomen and love handles in one treatment and it's a half hour treatment. It doesn't hurt at all. All it feels is like you're lying at the beach and you feel the sun beating on you. It feels like a warm heat sensation and you have a fan blowing on you. And with Vanquish, typically we do a series of five treatments and patients will lose anywhere, believe it or not, one to five inches after their treatments are over. And I actually track the patients in terms of how they improve because she does three measurements with each treatment and their weight and we track those from visit to visit to see how much they improve.

Which technology will work better for me?

I have patients that come in all the time that they come in and they say, "Okay well, I came in for cool sculpting but I see that you have Vanquish information. I don't know much about it." So, I usually go through a very thorough medical questionnaire for both types of procedure with the patients and make sure there's no contra-indications. So, for Vanquish, the main contra-indication is that you don't want to do it over anyone that is either pregnant and nursing or they have metal implanted in the area that they want to treat, say for example, say if they have hip replacement. If you're looking at the two different procedures with no contra-indications, what you're looking at is the type of fat that they have. And this really can't be assessed until you actually see the patient because if you look at the mechanics of cool sculpting, it's dependent on the vacuum of an applicator that suck the fat in. If that fat is very thick and fibrousy, you're really not going to get that much of an applicator and I show patients that when I do a consultation. I show them the template and I show them how much fat we can conceivably draw into the applicator and if I can't get that much in there, I tell them I'm pulling really hard, the machine's going to pull even harder than I am. If I can't get that much up in there, then you may be a better candidate for Vanquish or let's say I pull on them and they start like, "Oh, oh, that hurts, that hurts." Then I say, "Okay well, Vanquish doesn't hurt at all. You're a better candidate for Vanquish." So, Vanquish is better for people that have larger areas and it doesn't hurt at all. But, it is a series of treatments so patients will have to be okay with that.

CoolSculpting vs. Vanquish: Is Cold or Hot Technology Better For Fat Reduction?

Two popular body sculpting technologies and we have to choose only one? Dr. Grace Liu gives us the skinny on these two amazing machines.