We’re all happy to be putting another Pennsylvania winter behind us, but at Dr. Lee’s we never stray too far from freezing temperatures, at least when they’re delivered by the cooling panels during a CoolSculpting procedure in our beautiful Bryn Mawr offices. CoolSculpting, now a decade old, remains the world’s most popular non-invasive body contouring procedure. At Dr. Lee’s, we’ve performed over 1500 CoolSculpting treatments and our patients love the fat reduction and body contouring they’ve provided.
Most people with even a passing interest in the aesthetic industry have heard of CoolSculpting, as the procedure has been incredibly successful due to its results and non-invasive nature. But do you really know how CoolSculpting works? Here’s some background on the science behind the procedure and how CoolSculpting came to be.
On a hot summer day, we all love a good Rocket Pop or Creamsicle. That’s where CoolSculping actually has its origins. 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 growing up developed dimples in their cheeks more than children who didn’t eat lots of popsicles. Dimples are depressions 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. They called this Popsicle Panniculitis.
They theorized that what seems to happen in the cheeks could happen elsewhere. So, they investigated selectively freezing fat cells in a process they called cryolipolysis. CoolSculpting was born. That led to the eventual approval by the FDA of CoolSculpting for treating the flanks in 2010 (since then the FDA has approved CoolSculpting on a total of eight different areas).
There are three steps involved in cryolipolysis. First, 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.
The result? A 20 to 23% decrease in fat cells in the treatment area over the months following your CoolSculpting session.
The cooling is a key difference between other non-invasive fat reduction methods. In those applications, either laser or high-intensity focused ultrasound energy are used. Unlike CoolSculpting’s precise, targeted freezing of only the fat cells, these other methods cause damage to surrounding tissue. This leads to burning, pain, and other issues.
Now you are an expert at the science behind CoolSculpting. Ready to shrink those pockets of unwanted fat on the eight locations approved by the FDA — the abdomen, flanks, thighs, bra line fat, banana roll, upper arms, jowls, and back fat? Contact us at Bryn Mawr Facial Aesthetics Center, [flc-phone], to schedule your CoolSculpting session.
