My Botox With Dr Max Malik at Elate Health.

Some photographs from 3 weeks upwards after.

I make no secret of my thought on ageing, in that I will do everything in my power to avoid that whole ‘looking old’ thing as time creeps on. I also make no secret of the fact that I’m a bit partial to botox, having had my first injections a few years ago; I admit it, I love the stuff and have had nothing but good experiences with it. I see it as a preventative measure as well as a curative one for the few lines/wrinkles I already have developing and visible when I frown/smile etc, so that they don’t further develop and become deep set, staying visible whilst I’m not frowning or smiling… which would give me a big reason to frown even more.

I should add that whilst I’ve had Botox a number of times before, I haven’t been a rigidly regular user of it. However now I’m heading towards my mid-thirties, I’m thinking that I should up my treatments as if this can prevent more invasive treatments later in life, then for me, it’s worth doing.

Dr Max Malik, owner of Elate Health is a highly trained doctor (who just happens to train other doctors too), specialising in facial aesthetics, with clinics on the prestigious Harley Street in London, and also in the Birmingham area, with more locations coming soon. This is a guy who can give you a brow lift under local (not general) anaesthetic, who can sculpt your face using non-invasive procedures and generally make you look like the best version of you with minimal interruption to your normal life – so less invasive treatments are always preferred, unless absolutely necessary. He’s a wizard at his art with over 20 years of experience in medicine; and, having seen some of his before and after images from previous clients I’m thoroughly confident in his skills to make dramatic and positive changes that look totally natural.

Before treatment - ignore my unkempt brows, I was trying to grow them out. Forced faces to show extent of movement.

So, when I was presented with the opportunity to visit Dr Max back in September, I quickly accepted and off I trotted to visit him at his Birmingham clinic to see what magic he could work. The clinic is a modern, clean environment and Dr Max has his consultations up quite a large amount of stairs – although I’m sure this could be worked on for those who have more limited mobility. Whilst in his care, I was injected across my forehead to give my brows some lift, something I felt worked extremely well and would be quick to have again, rather than jumping in with a full brow lift – at least until I felt I needed a bit of extra oomph. ;-) I was also injected in-between my brows to combat my Glabella frown lines, and around the area to rid me of crow’s feet that I was beginning to notice when I smiled. Something that, whilst not extreme was really starting to affect my confidence quite a lot, especially when I noticed them in photographs.

The treatment wasn’t overly painful, with fine needles being used to inject in precise locations, obviously this also depends on your sensitivity to needles and pain, but I felt it was totally bearable. It was also over very quickly, so if you do have an aversion to needles, at least it’s over with pretty quickly.

Around 10 days after treatment.

As usual with Botox, I started to see results after about 3-4 days, with my muscles slowly starting to freeze, I love this part – it’s great to see the movement decrease, and I found myself checking the mirror each day and pulling faces, to see how much I could move the areas that I’d had injected. Full results are to be seen up to 14 days after treatment, where you’d normally go back to your practitioner for them to check their work, correct any asymmetries, and top up Botox where needed. Unfortunately I was unable to get back to Max due to illness, so I didn’t have my top up… but I was still quite pleased with the results I had, feeling whilst I think a top up would have been beneficial to my end results, that I had definitely benefitted from the injections regardless of having not had the usual top up.

More from after treatment 4 weeks+ - the top right shows some of the lift of my brows, along with the forehead line reduction.

My apologies for the lack of after photographs of any close up or non grainy quality, these were due to my technical issues, however I hope you can see that I do look more rested in them, despite the quality and at times, some funny face pulling.

If you’re in, or available to get to any of his clinic locations, then I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend him to you. More information on treatments, and Dr Max are available on his website, here.




There has been a delay in posting this (and a number of upcoming articles) due to both technical issues, and also having been through a sexual assault, which if you follow me on Twitter you'll have probably seen me tweeting about. Hoping that I have my mojo back now, and that technology starts to hate me slightly less. x

This post originated at www.thebeautyscoop.co.uk

Non Invasive Skin Tightening Treatment, Pellefirm Launches in the UK; Plus My Experience So Far!

Me having a treatment at Dr Rita Rakus' Clinic in London.

We've all got our body hangs ups... you know those parts of the body that you desperately try to cover, conceal, hide and generally prevent others from seeing, or noticing! I personally could quite easily tell you at least one thing that I didn't like about pretty much any part of my body that you named; and would definitely struggle to find something overly positive to say about pretty much any other part too.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has this eternal life struggle either; and whilst there may be greater issues going on in the world, when something makes you unhappy about yourself and you have to 'put up with it' every day, it does become a larger issue to you. To name just one of my many, many body hang ups, it would be my 'sorry for itself' state after my 6 stone weight loss. I'm talking about the slightly loose, somewhat flabby skin that covers areas such as my stomach, bingo wings, bottom... in fact; it would probably be quicker, and easier for me to list the places that weren't affected, ha. You get the idea.

However, I'm also a big advocate of changing the things that make you unhappy if you can... in all aspects of life; and so when I'm faced with treatments, products and procedures that can change, or at least improve things then I'm all for giving them a go. Why carry on suffering if you don't have to, right?! That's why I was extremely happy to have been invited recently to attend a demonstration of Pellefirm, a high tech, non-surgical skin tightening treatment that has only just hit UK shores, as I’m always interested in this kind of thing on a personal level as well as to be able to tell you guys about it too.

Now don’t think that this treatment is to help you lose weight, as it isn’t for this purpose at all. Nor is it a one stop ‘quick fix’ in an emergency ‘I might be seen naked/semi naked imminently’ panic, as a course of around 6 (depending on each client and their start and desired finish points) is recommended to see results.

It’s a treatment for those who have may have lost tone/tightness in their skin to help to tighten and smooth it out. This is skin that may have been stretched through weight gain, pregnancy and/or ageing that will not just ping back into place, no matter how much you exercise, or how healthily you eat. It's skin that would normally require surgical intervention to rectify, in the form of tummy tucks and other such skin reducing procedures.

Before & after images, and the Pelleve machine with Pellefirm handpiece from the Ellman website.

The claims by Ellman International, are that by raising the temperature of the skin through the use of a hand piece that is attached to the main Pelleve machine (which has multiple functions, I should add), delivering radiofrequencies into the skin and heating it to temperatures of around 45 degrees that this will in turn heat the dermis and sub dermis to a higher level and trigger collagen synthesis… which basically (as far as I understand it) causing the collagen to break down, and then reform, thus creating the skin tightening effect that occurs afterwards.

Whilst at the demonstrations (one in London at the clinic of Dr Rita Rakus, and another in Birmingham with Dr Hugo and Dr James Kitchen of the Stratford Dermatherapy Clinic taking charge) I was also lucky enough to get the chance to trial the procedure as their case study, so I got to experience it first-hand.

Me having the treatment in Birmingham with Dr James Kitchen from the Stratford Dermatherapy Clinic.

The treatment itself wasn’t painful, although I was told that I appeared to deal with the heat exceptionally well (the heat was increased gradually, which I think helped a lot), and I didn’t experience a great deal of reddening of the skin either which is something that can happen during/afterwards, (but causes no ill effects and does disappear relatively quickly too, should it occur to you), so I was all good with that too. The treatment lasts around 40 minutes per area, depending on the size of the area and also how long it takes your skin to reach the optimum temperature too.

Results aren’t immediate either, as mentioned… although on my short trial so far, I did notice a slight change in the appearance of my skin, so I’m hopeful that with further sessions (something I’m also told I can continue with), will increase and become more noticeable – expect further updates in due course.

Is this something that you’d try out? Do you have many body hang ups?

This post originated at www.thebeautyscoop.co.uk

A Few Beauty Deals For Today!

We all love a bargain; it gives us the buzz of buying new things but without so much of the guilt associated with actually laying out the dosh! This post has some of the best beauty bargains I’ve found on the net recently that I think you’d be interested in.

Truth be told, I can never resist a bargain which can get to be quite an expensive trait to have, even at bargain prices, so I must admit that I do still feel twinges of guilt if I’m spending instead of saving for my wedding – they don’t last too long though! ;-)

On Wahanda for £22 you can get an Exclusive 3-piece Makeup Hero Collection from New CID Cosmetics plus Free Delivery (saving you 62%). The set contains the i-smoulder pencil and shadow to create fabulous smoky eyes, a limited edition baked bronzer and highlighter duo for beautiful glowy skin, plus the i-gloss light up lipgloss for perfectly pouty glam lips!

This is a National deal so you can buy it wherever you are in the country but stocks are limited so could sell out at any time! A big bonus with this deal is that you can also get a £5 discount voucher to use on this deal if you sign up to the Wahanda newsletter (if you’re not already subscribed) so that would take this already fabulous deal down to £17!!

Groupon Manchester have a great microdermabrasion deal (FOUR microdermabrasion sessions for £39.95 instead of £150 – plus £50 off any other treatment there, to be precise) that I am definitely looking into for myself; I need to look into it because I have psoriasis that I don’t want to make worse, but if they don’t advise against me having it done then I will purchasing this without any hesitation. 

Microdermabrasion is basically a form of exfoliation that sloughs away dead skin but also uses an adjustable suction to help to remove the outer layers of skin. With microdermabrasion you could see a reduction of fine lines, wrinkles and shallow acne scarring; it could also help to decrease the appearance of superficial hyperpigmentation.

On the Groupon London Specials page there’s an interesting offer for semi permanent makeup (eyebrows, or eyeliner) at COSMEDOCTOR for £149 instead of £450. I say interesting because COSMEDOCTOR is actually located inside Superdrug on Kensington High Street. I only really found out about this new venture in Superdrug yesterday on Twitter so it seems very coincidental to see this on Groupon today.

COSMEDOCTOR also offer other non surgical treatments such as botox, fillers, laser hair removal, and chemical peels etc within their Superdrug location and there’s also a fish spa in there too (although I’m going off on a tangent here so more about all that in another post).  I quite fancy having a bit of semi permanent makeup – maybe on my lips or brows, have any of you had it done?

On the Birmingham Groupon page you can get a voucher for £180 worth of facial injection treatments that will cost you just £59! Now this will cover things like botox and fillers I’d expect so on face value (as I’ve never been to the clinic in question) this seems like a really, really good deal. The offer covers 1 area but you can purchase more areas for £60 each – so only £1 more than the deal price, which is rather good. I would quite like to try botox to be honest, I wouldn’t want the full on no movement effect but just enough to prevent any wrinkle damage occurring – as they do say that prevention is better than cure!

My final deal for today is on Superdrug, 3 Accessorize nail polishes in a set for £1.99. There are 2 sets available but they can’t guarantee which set you will be sent. I’ve heard good things about Accessorize polish (and the range in general) so this seems like a very good deal to me (as there’s no point in spending the money, however cheap on products that are no good)!