Which Cellulite Treatment Gives the Best Long-Term Results?

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At the hot topic sessions we like to explore both brand new things that are just being talked about, may not have even proved themselves yet and people want to know just what's new and hot. Every once in a while, we also like to look back and say, okay, what if we talked about over the past five or six years and are any of those still around, have they really proven themselves over time. This year we took a look at cellulite treatments, and we really first started talking about those seven or eight years ago. Even though it's a problem that affects so many women, there haven't been a lot of really good effective options.

We took a look back. We said that was then, this is now. There are some new things that seem to work. There are lot of things that work a little bit and some things that really just we don't talk about much anymore at all. Early on there were things that were massage-type treatments, roller massage and Dermology was the first one that really came in to use for that. Then that idea was combined with adding heat and to stimulate collagen remodeling so that you could get some skin tightening and now we've evolved to using lasers, which is more of an invasive procedure. The laser is actually put under the skin.

It's important to understand that it has multiple factors and unless you treat all the different things that cause cellulite, you are not really going to get an effective result long term. We have these connective tissue bands that cause the dimples in the skin. Then there is fat layer just under the surface and that pushes up into the skin and the skin itself gets thinner. Unless you address something that's going to release those connective tissue bands and reduce the fat in that superficial layer and get the skin to tone up and improve its elasticity, it's probably not going to have a long-term effect.

What we see is treatments in general that require multiple sessions, tend to have more of a temporary effect but treatments that actually go in and cut these fibrous bands and do something definitive to increase skin tightening, then you are not going to get the long-term result. On the other hand, the treatment that probably has the best long-term data right now is called Cellulaze and it does use a laser. It is an invasive procedure although we call it minimally invasive but it's very expensive machine. There is still a need, I think, in the middle for something that's going to be both affordable and tolerable for the patient but still very effective.