It was a pretty cold and snowy winter in Grand Rapids, made colder when the Red Wings missed the playoffs for the second straight year! But now that we’re headed for summer, we only want to think of freezing in one way — freezing your unwanted fat with CoolSculpting®.
You’ve probably at least heard of CoolSculpting®, but you may not fully understand how it works. Here’s some information of this most chill method of losing the fat at Elite Plastic Surgery.
Popsicles first. Fat second.
CoolSculpting® wasn’t the original intention when two scientists studied the effects of freezing on the cheek area. Two doctors at the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Drs. Dieter Manstein and R. Rox Anderson, were doing a study that theorized children who ate lots of popsicles developed dimples in their cheeks more than children who didn’t eat lots of popsicles. Dimples form in the cheeks where the muscle isn’t covered with much fat, so when the muscle contracts a dimple forms. The idea was that the cold in the popsicles somehow affected the fat cells in the cheeks. The doctors called this Popsicle Panniculitis.
Once they saw what was happening with fat, popsicles, and dimple formation, the two doctors thought the same could happen with fat in other areas, such as around your belly. They investigated selectively freezing fat cells in a process they called cryolipolysis. The end result of those studies was CoolSculpting®.
How CoolSculpting works
To freeze the fat, CoolSculpting® uses a three-step process. First, a cooling panel applies suction and draws the target area skin into solid contact with the cooling plates. Next, the cooling is directed downward into the skin. The temperature is precisely equal to the freezing point of fat cells, while not freezing adjacent tissue cells that freeze at a higher temperature. Exposure to this freezing causes fat cell apoptosis (a natural, controlled cell death). The body sends cytokines and other inflammatory mediators to the area to gradually digest the dead fat cells in the weeks following the CoolSculpting session. Lipids from the dead fat cells are slowly released and transported by the lymphatic system to be processed and eliminated from the body, in the same manner that fat in food is eliminated. It takes anywhere from three to 12 weeks for the body to permanently remove the dead fat cells.
The result? A 20 to 23% decrease in fat cells in the treatment area over the months following your CoolSculpting session.
Non-invasive and not painful
The entire CoolSculpting® is not painful. There is a sensation of intense cold when the freezing is first delivered down into the tissue, but this passes in a few minutes as the area becomes numb. There isn’t any downtime afterwards, either.
Maybe a good way to bid adieu to another Michigan winter is to put unwanted fat in the deep freeze with CoolSculpting®. Call us at Elite, (866) 331-0612, to set up a consultation.
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