CoolSculpting Gaining in Popularity with Plastic Surgeons

Everybody seems to be  looking for a way to get rid of the extra weight many of us carry around our mid-section. “I’d like to know if there’s an easy way to get rid of those extra pounds around my middle; get rid of my muffin top,” says Linda, a middle-aged woman frustrated with what we often refer to as “middle-age spread” or “muffin top”. 

By Carolynn Grimes
ThePlasticSurgeryChannel.com

Middle-age spread or thickening around the waistline is a common problem for both men and woman. Many people often turn to a popular surgical procedure known as liposuction, when diet and exercise don’t give them the results they’re looking for. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), 313,011 liposuction procedures were performed in 2012, making it one of the most popular procedures for men and women.

Now, a non-invasive option for  fat removal is gaining in popularity, it’s called CoolSculpting, or cryolipolisis. “Never before do I remember a process that can make the contouring  process as easy as cryolipolisis does, “says Dr. Lou Bucky, a board certified plastic surgeon, who recently added the fat freezing device to his Philadelphia practice.

Plastic Surgeons are saying, CoolSculpting Works!

“CoolSculpting is a brilliant device, it’s non-surgical and it’s best suited for someone who is in pretty good shape. You can’t be thirty pounds overweight and think that this is going to help you,” says board certified plastic surgeon, Dr. Christine Hamori. Dr. Hamori uses the device in her Boston, Massachusetts practice and says it’s been a big draw for both women and men. “People want to have less fat, but no downtime. With CoolSculpting, there’s no downtime, it’s not as expensive as liposuction and it’s not painful.”  “Patients can come to the office, get treated and walk out that same day and go back to their normal life,” says Bucky.

Dr. Holly Wall, a board certified plastic surgeon from Shreveport, Louisiana says doctors are finding several different areas of the body to use CoolSculpting. “It’s ideally suited for the muffin top, the lower abdomen, and the upper abdomen. The abdominal areas have been approved by the FDA, but it seems to be very effective in other areas such as the  thighs and the back.”  “Now we have different hand pieces that can effect different parts of the body more effectively,” says Bucky.  “We now know that we can perform those treatments more frequently so you can get the outcome you need, in a narrower period of time, safely and effectively.”

Subcutaneous Fat vs. Visceral Fat 

Hamori explains the device will only work for fat outside of your body as opposed to intra-abdominal fat. Approximately 90 percent of the fat in our bodies is subcutaneous fat, (the kind you can pinch).  The other 10 percent is intra-abdominal, or visceral fat. Visceral fat lies beneath the abdominal muscles and can only be detected by (MRI) magnetic resonance imaging.

“There’s plenty of women that come in complaining of areas of fat on their waist and then they say, ‘Oh my husband wants to have it done – he has a really big belly,’ and I always explain to them – it doesn’t really access fat in men that’s deep below the muscle.” says Hamori.

Here’s how it works…

The suction applicator is placed on the area you want to treat and you need to be able to pinch at least an inch of fat and skin that can be suctioned up into the device.  The device freezes the treatment area during an hour long session.  Wall says on average, 25 percent of the fat cells in the treated area will break up and be destroyed.  “Your lymphatic’s take it away;  it goes to the liver, then you flush it out naturally. The whole process can take about 2-3 months.”