• Video
  • CoolSculpting Expectations and Post-Procedural Concerns
{{ showTranscript ? 'HIDE' : 'SHOW' }} TRANSCRIPT
Hey, it's Dr. Lowenstein. I want to talk about CoolSculpting expectations. CoolSculpting is one of our favorite procedures. It's extraordinarily popular both here in Santa Barbara and everywhere, and has juts a remarkably high level of patient satisfaction. There are two types of applicators. There's an applicator that is a suction applicator. It's used on the abdomen and love handles and medial thighs and extra fat around the bra as well as a couple other areas that we can do it, but what happens is that the applicator's applied, the skin and fat is sucked into the suction cup for an hour. That applicator takes an hour to work.

It feels like somebody's grabbing you a little harder than you want to be grabbed, and then the cooling starts and things go numb, and then it's just managing your boredom for an hour while you're being treated. We have an iPad here with 150 movies in it. Everybody seems to watch the same Bridesmaids movie, despite the fact that I have so many. However, that's not what we're here to talk about.

After an hour, the applicator is taken off, and you'll see that there's like a frozen stick of butter that's actually on you that looks really strange. You're going to get that massaged. That feels really strange, and then afterwards you'll have a couple of weeks to months of, it's called paresthesia, or numbness and tingling. You'll have some immediate bruising that'll go away in a couple of days. Rarely, less than ten percent of people who get treated in the abdomen complain of pain in the abdomen. They say it feels like they've done 100 sit-ups or they're bloated, also at worst a couple of days, and it goes away, but over 90 percent of people don't complain of any pain like that.

And what's happened is you're getting ice crystals forming in the fat cells that's triggering an intracellular mechanism called apoptosis, and apoptosis is natural cell death, so what happens is you get death of the fat cells and involution and disappearance of these fat cells that's permanent. You're going to start to see results after about three weeks, you're going to see your final results at about eight weeks, and each treatment should reduce the bulge that we're treating by about 25 to 35 percent, in our experience.

There's also a flat applicator now that's used for the outer thighs, or saddlebag areas. Very, very similar sensations and things, but that applicator takes two hours to take effect, so when we're treating two legs, you're talking about two hours on each side, as opposed to all of the other applicators which are the suction applicators, do their thing in one hour. Happy to answer more questions about CoolSculpting. Feel free to give us a call or email us or certainly come in for a consultation. Thanks!

CoolSculpting Expectations and Post-Procedural Concerns

Dr. Adam Lowenstein explains the process of CoolSculpting with each targeted applicator and what a patient can expect days and weeks post-procedure.