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

Flash Photography & Your Foundation!

These are old images of myself, that, due to technical and life issues I never got around to posting within this article that I planned a year ago... it's weird to think that I don't actually look like that any longer.

There are a plethora of foundations on the market to choose from these days, all of which with their own skin perfecting properties. Whether you need pore perfecting, redness reducing or something completely different, there will be a foundation to suit your needs. I, myself have a plethora of foundations just in my own makeup collection, because, depending on how my skin is on any given day, I may need to tackle a different 'issue'!

Most foundations these days seem to come with SPF already built in, which is great for those who wear foundation during the day and want to skip the whole SPF application step (let's face it, anything time saving is usually preferable when you lead a busy life, like most of us do)! However, it's not so good when it comes to the evenings, where you may be being photographed with flash enabled on a camera. You see SPF has the tendency to react with the flash, and make you look like Casper the ghost in the finished image.

Take for instance the foundation I'm wearing in the above images. It is actually one of my favourites, Lancome's Teint Miracle; but with the SPF AND light reflecting particles (that without the flash photography actually makes my skin look brilliantly radiant), I have no chance of avoiding that ghostly hue when being photographed with direct flash whilst wearing it.

The images above were taken on the same night, in the same room, with the same lighting, makeup and camera (phone) with the only difference being that the first was taken without flash, and the second, with flash. There's a huge difference, as you can see.

So, when choosing a foundation for the day, you really need to be thinking about what your day/evening will entail. If you think there's a chance of you being photographed in the evening, here are some ways to avoid the casper 'white face' effect:

• Choose a foundation without SPF in it.
• Choose a foundation without light reflecting particles.
• Use a matte bronzer/tinted setting powder over the top of your foundation - this will add colour to your skin, plus the matte finish should help with the flash reflecting off those pesky reflective particles.
• If you have a DSLR camera, use an external flash where you can deflect the flash off another surface, rather than your face, or use a flash diffuser.
• If you have a normal camera or no external flash for your DSLR, use one-ply of tissue (just one layer, not one sheet) over the actual flash, this will act as a makeshift diffuser.

There's not a fool proof way of knowing how much any given foundation will react with the flash of a camera, I've had some foundations with SPF in them that haven't photographed as badly, I'm not sure if that's due to the foundation itself, or the conditions where the photographs were taken... but on the whole, I'd recommend trying to avoid any products with SPF in for evening wear, just in case.

Do you know of any foundations that photograph well? Or, do you have a foundation that gives you a particularly ghostly face when faced with the flash of a camera? Let me know. x

This post originated at www.thebeautyscoop.co.uk

The Eucerin Range!

Eucerin is a brand that has been around for years, over 100, actually... and is the creation of Dr Lifschutz who developed their first, very basic ointment which was named ‘Eucerin – the beautiful wax’ that didn’t actually have this name printed on it when it was released, since that wasn’t really necessary back then. As time has moved on, so have their products and there is now a vast range of products suitable for all kinds of skin!

The range isn’t one that would jump out at me normally, as they are quite a basic brand that have a fairly low price point, however after seeing some fabulous reviews on some of the range, I am now looking to try a couple of products out.

The main product I’d like to try is the Hyaluron-Filler Serum (and other products from within the Hyaluron range) after seeing numerous reviews praising the product. Eucerin say it “Enhances daily Anti-Age care’s plumping up effect of even deep wrinkles from inside out.” and I've included a screenshot about what they say about the active ingredient in the product:

Now I know thay Hyaluronic Acid can work wonders on the skin, so this has got me very interested indeed. Have any of you tried it out?

Available to buy from Boots along with the rest of the Eucerin range!

*Sponsored Post!

Psoriasis, Kim Kardashian, and Me!

The news that Kim Kardashian has recently been diagnosed with psoriasis may not seem of that much importance to much of the world, but that has really struck a chord with me, and probably a large percentage of the (approximately) 125 million other suffers worldwide.

You see, I’ve always seem Kim Kardashian as being pretty perfect, as I’m sure many of you have too; and whilst I am sorry that she has this condition, I think she’s got real guts to put it out there for all to see, and judge, and judge they have.

I’ve seen some awful comments on the online stories about it; people believing that Kim is being ‘shallow’ and ‘vain’ and should ‘get over herself’ and on the surface I can understand why somebody (who has no immediate compassion) may just think that this is another celebrity overreaction to something fairly minor – but I really don’t believe this is the case, and I’ll explain why.

Psoriasis is an autoimmune disease, one that I have had since about the age of 8, it’s a skin condition that can occur at any age and on ANY part of the body; from the scalp to well... anywhere that you have skin, and it can spread from small patches to almost full body coverage. It’s such an awful thing to suffer with, and is something I have never completely learned to live with, and probably never will, and is also a huge reason why you’ll probably never see my right hand doing a NOTD shot.

The reason for this being that I am very conscious of, and paranoid about what my psoriasis looks like, and more importantly how other people may view my psoriasis (will they wonder if it's contagious etc, it's not by the way, although it can be hereditary) – especially since getting into beauty blogging. I’m always very self conscious about the ugly psoriasis on the fingers of my right hand, and aware that even on my left hand, my skin isn’t always a picture of perfection (which is why, sometimes I may leave a finger out of shot).

My psoriasis goes around the edge of my hairline and ears, I have it on my elbows and also (as mentioned) my fingers. The symptoms (so to speak) are unsightly patches of red skin, often covered with dry skin that usually needs exfoliating on a daily basis. It can be painful, especially when I knock it and end up breaking the skin – and this is especially the case on my fingers where the skin can get particularly weak and where the knocks are more frequent.

If the weak skin and unsightly nature of psoriasis wasn’t bad enough, then the fact that it can cause psoriatic arthritis is just another kick in the teeth to those, who like me, have both conditions; adding severe pain all over the body into the equation.

There is no cure, and any treatments that are available to try to alleviate symptoms usually come with their own set of problems – but I won’t go into all that as it’s quite in-depth (and boring) and this isn’t a medical blog. I just really wanted to explain the condition a little bit more from my own personal experiences, and hopefully soften the view of those people that thought that Kim Kardashian was being a diva over something minor.

Make-up can slightly disguise, but never fully cover the condition!

I hope you don’t mind me posting such a personal and potentially boring post up, it took a lot of guts for me to put it out there about this as it’s something I would usually rather avoid acknowledging, and actually get embarrassed about.

What do you think about Kim having this condition? Do any of you suffer with psoriasis too?