Freeze Away Unwanted Fat
CoolSculpting, a non-surgical fat reduction treatment, uses controlled cooling to efficiently target and eliminate unwanted fat cells.
Created by Harvard scientists, the CoolSculpting treatment takes advantage of the fact that fat cells freeze at a higher temperature than surrounding tissues. Through a process known as cryolipolysis—the fat-freezing science behind CoolSculpting—the treated fat cells are crystallized, causing them to die off without harming the surrounding skin or tissue. Over the next few months, the body processes the frozen fat cells, and they are gradually eliminated through the body’s normal metabolic process.
What happens to those frozen fat cells?
The process of freezing the fat cells to the point of cell death is called cryolipolysis. It’s the secret behind CoolSculpting. Fat cells freeze at a higher temperature than muscle tissue, blood vessels, skin, and other tissue. Once the fat cells are frozen, they die and the body gets about the business of removing them from the system, as it does with any waste products. The lymphatic system is responsible for this cleanup job, and it breaks down and flushes these dead cells from the body over the course of the next few weeks and months.
What are the benefits of CoolSculpting?
The benefits of CoolSculpting are numerous.
- FDA-Cleared
- Eliminates stubborn fat in 9 different areas of the Body
- Eliminates up to 20-25% of treated fat cells
- Little to no downtime
- No surgery
- #1 Non-Invasive Fat Reduction Procedure
- Freezes twice the fat at once with our new dual applicator*
- Advanced non-invasive body contouring technology.
- No injections. No incisions.
- During your session, you can read, take a nap, watch videos, whatever.
- There is no recovery.
- There are no reactions.
- No danger of skin burning or damage.
Is CoolSculpting safe? What are the side effects?
CoolSculpting is completely non-invasive. After treatment, patients usually have some degree of redness, slight swelling, bruising, and skin sensitivity on the areas where the CoolSculpting applicators drew the skin onto the cooling panels. These after-effects are due to the outer skin reacting to the intense cold delivered in a CoolSculpting session. They usually pass within a couple days to a week at most. At Renaissance, we’ve found that these feelings and sensations don’t keep our patients from returning to work or their normal activities immediately.
Although very rare, more serious side effects such as extreme pain, severe numbing, and bloating along the area of contact with the cooling panels is possible.
At Renaissance, we’re big fans of this non-invasive fat reduction treatment. CoolSculpting is the most popular non-invasive fat reduction treatment in the world — to date over 6,000,000 CoolSculpting treatments have been performed around the world. This innovative treatment has proven to be a safe and effective way to reduce fat.
Safely Target Your Trouble Spots
CoolSculpting is an effective solution for eliminating frustrating pockets of fat. It is ideal for treating areas that are commonly resistant to a healthy diet and regular exercise and contouring specific problem areas. These include:
- Abdomen (Including Love Handles and Muffin Tops)
- Upper Back Area (Bra Bulge)
- Inner and Outer Thighs
Zeltiq® has continued to design a number of specialized applicators to better treat specific trouble spots. Released in 2015, CoolSculpting CoolMini™ quickly gained notoriety as an effective treatment for minimizing submental (below the chin) fat.
Who is a good candidate for CoolSculpting?
Some people believe CoolSculpting can be used as a weight-loss procedure, but that’s not the case. CoolSculpting is meant to remove unwanted pockets of isolated fat, not to reduce overall fat across the body. At Renaissance, we want our CoolSculpting patients to be within 10 percent of their ideal body weight to have this procedure. Other than that, there really aren’t many restrictions on who can have CoolSculpting done. The only people who absolutely cannot have CoolSculpting are those suffering from cryoglobulinemia, cold agglutinin disease, or paroxysmal cold hemoglobinuria.
Is CoolSculpting painful?
You’ll feel some intense cooling, but you won’t feel pain during your session. At the onset, you’ll feel a pulling sensation as the suction draws your tissues up to the cooling panels. Once the cooling is delivered, at first you’ll feel an intense cooling sensation for a few minutes. Most people don’t describe this as painful, just very cold. Then the area becomes numb, and the sensation passes. From there, you’ll feel little. You can read a book, answer emails, watch videos on your laptop, or take a nap during the procedure.
Is there any preparation necessary before a CoolSculpting session?
There isn’t any preparation necessary at all. Also, there isn’t any recovery afterward. That’s part of what’s so cool about CoolSculpting at Renaissance Plastic Surgery.
A Quick Treatment with Minimal Downtime
After assessing your areas of concern, our CoolSculpting specialists will develop a treatment plan personalized to your goals. All of our CoolSculpting treatments are performed at our St. Peters practice. Treatments take about one hour per treatment area, during which a gel pad and applicator are placed on the targeted area.
You are likely to experience a slight pulling and mild pinching at the start of your treatment. Along with the cool sensation, these will subside as your treatment continues. A relatively comfortable treatment, many patients take this time to read, check emails, watch a movie, or enjoy the chance to unwind. With no incisions or anesthesia, there is little to no recovery time and you are able to return to your normal activities right away.
Will I need more CoolSculpting treatments in the future?
CoolSculpting destroys and your body removes just under a quarter of the fat cells in the treatment areas. These fat cells are gone for good. Our bodies usually have a set number of fat cells, and these fat cells expand with weight gain and shrink with weight loss. The decrease made by CoolSculpting’s controlled freezing is permanent. Those fat cells won’t be coming back.
Whether you choose to have additional treatments on the same area is up to you. But subsequent treatments don’t remove the same number of fat cells as the 20-25 percent reduction in the first treatment. Still, you can further slim an area with another treatment.
More often, once patients see their results having CoolSculpting on a single area they opt to have it used on additional areas in the future. Thus far, CoolSculpting has been cleared by the FDA for eight areas on the body — abdomen, thighs, back fat, bra line fat, flanks, underneath the buttocks, double chin, and the upper arms.
At Renaissance we have multiple CoolSculpting machines, so we can treat two different areas at once, DualSculpting.
Results are visible as soon as three weeks after your initial CoolSculpting treatment with more dramatic results appearing after two months. Results continue to reveal themselves as your body naturally processes and flushes out the excess fat cells for the next four to six months.
With CoolSculpting, you can expect to experience a 20 to 25 percent reduction of fat in the treated area. While two treatments may provide you with great results, many men and women may benefit from additional CoolSculpting treatments moving forward.
CoolTone®
- For most patients, 4 to 8 treatments are recommended over the course of 2 to 4 weeks to reach their body contouring goals
- Maintenance treatments are recommended. Talk to your provider to learn more
- Follow your usual diet and exercise routine to maintain treatment results
CoolSculpting and CoolTone in St. Louis
To Schedule your CoolSculpting consultation, please give our office a call to speak with one of our coordinators who will schedule an appointment with one of our specialists at Renaissance Plastic Surgery.