Family Practitioner Questions Family Practitioner

CoolSculpting?

I was told it takes a very long time for the results of coolsculpting to manifest, as well as several treatments, as well as very expensive, moreso that liposuction. Is this true?

Female
Complaint duration: 20 years

3 Answers

FamilyPractitionerFamilyPractitioner
Thank you for asking me!
Hope you are having a good time this holiday weekend!

Your questions are very specific and on one technique, the CoolSculpting. I could give you a yesorno answer or just admit I dont really know.

Still I want to share with you here what I have learned and my experience in body contouring. After you have got your medical training to understand how your body works and learned the techniques to intervene and modify some physiological process, body contouring is still more an art than a science. You know, we havent really done any study to compare different body contouring techniques that medical doctors now perform. And they report their results based on the cases they have done.

You know, body contouring is a medical procedure. Most techniques, invasive or non invasive are safe now but few are really effective. And we mostly target the fat tissue, rarely muscle or bone since that requires invasive and complicated surgery.

Body contouring is a process of removing or adding yes, in some case it is necessary volume to some body part. If someone is overweight, they should diet and exercise to burn and reduce fat production before we attempt to reduce fat cells by killing or removing them from the their body.

In CoolSculpting technique we want to reduce fat volume in some areas of your body. We believe we could kill fat cells and reduce fat production by cold treatment through your skin to the fat underneath itcool idea, isnt it?You know, we have also tried other devices, most oftenly ultrasound, to deliver heat to the fat tissue for the same purpose.

So you want to reduce fat cells and fat generation with this CoolSculpting technique. You may injure those fat cells adipocytes by repeating these cold treatments and reduce the fat production synthesis of lipid lobules. Your fat cells are damaged and shrinking but they usually survive and reproduce, or the surrounding undamaged cells may grow and replace them. I dont know for sure but this may be the reason that you need several treatments repeatedly in a period of time to keep these cells from regenerating and producing more fat. Another reason, I think, is that you feel some improvement after a few treatments and motivated to diet and lose weight. It also takes time to lose weight.

Yes, it can be expensive since your doctor has to invest to buy the machine and the consumables. When you add up the cost of these treatments, it may be more expensive than a liposuction procedure. And in my opinion liposuction gives you better results. With liposuction you do remove fat cells from your body in a controlled manner. Now you also have fat to put back to other areas that may need volume.

Liposuction is a surgical procedure. It is minimal but invasive since you break your skin with punctured holes and remove fat through these holes with a canula. It is a safe and effective way to take fat away and reduce the volume of those parts of your body. So it can be a more precise technique to contour your body. You dont just remove fat but you reduce the volume to create a shape with pleasing curves. Doing this may take a lot of time, since you have this shape in your mind but you may need to keep adjusting when it is being formed as you are removing fat little by little. You know, its not just the fat but other soft tissue like muscle and your bone structure that make your body shape. And every human body has different form in some details. So you can express yourself with your body curves but you can only shape it that much. This is truly an art. For some you may think this part of your body looks so big as you want to look as thin as you can, but you may not notice you have some reduced volume from fat or muscle or bone or all in the adjacent areas. So you want to remove just enough, not too little and not too much, to get the shape. You know, this is subjective. So you need to communicate with your doctor to see if he or she is confident to give the best shape that is unique to your body form.

I hope I have shared with you my thought on body contouring regarding your question. I have tried these medical devices, not just CoolSculpting, but I did not get the results. I dont do it now. To be honest, I have not done a lot of these treatments either, so I have tried to give you something to think about.

Thanks again for your question!

Khiem Lai, MD
Aesthetic Physician and Surgeon
Short answer, YES! Reason I do not offer it. For further information, you can visit my website, at Drroya.com. Good luck!
I do not have enough experience with cool sculpting to give you a good answer. However, you should not have bad results if the practitioner has experience. Ask about their experience. Ask to see pictures, and if possible, to talk with a patient who had the procedure.