Are you brave enough to burn your wrinkles away?
A new treatment uses metal rods hotter than your oven to blitz crow’s feet. ALICE HARTDAVIS takes a deep breath...
WHAT’S this, then?’ I asked Dr tapan Patel, pointing out the brochure on his desk. I’d dropped by for a chat (OK, for a quick shot of face-filler) and spotted a picture of a device I’d never seen before, topped with a mass of tiny metal rods arranged in a neat square.
‘ah. Now that,’ he replied, ‘is what you might call a waffle iron for your crow’s feet.’ ‘Is it any good?’ I asked. ‘We’re getting nice results,’ he said. so I booked myself in to try it — as simple as that.
two weeks later when I turn up at the PhI Clinic on harley street, Dr Patel calls me in and sits me down. this worries me. Usually, I just hop on the couch and am treated. What hasn’t he told me yet about tixel, as this little device is called?
he shows me the device and points out that those rods are made of titanium. there are 81 of them and they heat up to 400c, at which point they will be lightly applied all around my eye area.
they can also be used across my eyelids, to give a mini eyelift effect. Wow. Part of my brain is fascinated. the other half is appalled: 400c? that will hurt. that will burn. that will show.
‘Yes, it’s a light, controlled burn,’ says Dr Patel. ‘Where the tip of each rod touches, it will burn away skin. But you have anaesthetic cream to dull the sensation and unlike a laser, where the heat spreads more widely, there is less risk of injury.
‘ the burned spots produce collagen and elastin to repair the damage and rejuvenate the skin.’
Most of today’s non- surgical cosmetic treatments have become so complicated, involving, say, plasma energy, radio-frequency or ultrasound, that tixel, which just uses heat, seems basic.
‘It makes me think of that story told about the space Race in the sixties,’ says Dr Patel. ‘the americans spent $1 million developing a pen that could write in zero gravity, that was robust enough to withstand space travel. the Russians used pencils.
‘that’s how I feel about this machine. Lasers have become so sophisticated and high-tech. this device is brutally simple, but elegant with it. It just uses heat energy to rejuvenate the skin.
‘It seems very safe and very effective. I’m getting results as good as I’d get with a laser, but which would require seven days’ downtime. With this, you can put make-up on tomorrow.’
I have 20 minutes to think about this while the clinic’s superstrength anaesthetic cream, applied in a mask shape around my eyes, takes effect.
‘some numbing creams only have 4 per cent lidocaine [anaesthetic],’ says sarah, the nurse who applies it. ‘this is 23 per cent lidocaine. You’ll be fine.’
the point of tixel treatment is to strengthen the fragile skin around the eyes. this skin is thin in the first place, and, after menopause, collagen production tails off, meaning the skin’s ability to repair and regenerate itself is very limited. AS DR Patel described, damaging skin with tixel’s hot rods has been shown in trials to stimulate the production of both collagen, the protein that keeps skin firm, and elastin, which gives skin its bounce, so should translate into firmer, springier skin around my eyes, and less obvious crow’s feet.
When it’s treatment time, I’m more than a bit apprehensive — 400c is pretty damn hot. Much hotter than a waffle-iron, and I wouldn’t fancy touching one of those onto my skin. Dr Patel
marks out the treatment area with white lines of chinagraph pencil like a huge pair of goggles. Then he fires up the Tixel, warns me it will flash when it touches my skin, and we’re off.
I have to admit that, even with the anaesthetic cream and Dr Patel’s zen- like couch- side manner, it stings — and the closer he moves the device towards my lower lashes, the more intense each little sting gets.
‘ How’s the pain level?’, he murmurs quietly.
‘Six or seven,’ I hiss through gritted teeth. ‘Out of 10.’ ‘Hmm,’ he replies thoughtfully. The one saving grace is that each sting is just a momentary flash of pain. It feels exactly how you might imagine a tiny, unbelievably hot thing being touched on your skin might feel. I mention this just because it’s more agreeable than some lasers I’ve tried, which have a way of delivering a really biting pain just after the initial sting.
But after the patch under my lower lashes; the rest of the treatment is very comfortable. It doesn’t hurt half as much around my crow’s feet, and I can’t feel the bit above my eyebrows at all. Dr Patel then lowers the temperature of the device, asks me to shut my eyes and works lightly across my eyelids.
I keep very, very still and it’s over before I can imagine holes being burned in my eyelids, and before I remember that I’m still wearing my contact lenses (to my amazement, they don’t melt, but it would have been better to take them out beforehand).
Afterwards, it looks as if I am wearing a pink eye mask and if I look closely, I can see the pink bit is made up of a grid of thousands of tiny burn marks. Yikes! But Dr Patel is pleased. He tells me to leave the area alone for the rest of the day and gives me a vial of high-strength vitamin C serum to help heal the skin — the tiny burn marks create channels into the skin, so products penetrate much better — and advises me to use lots of sunscreen.
I have supper that evening with a friend, who winces when she sees my face. ‘But it looks like a sunburn — and you’re always saying how bad sunburn is for the skin,’ she says. ‘So how is this a good idea?’
‘Er, because it’s a controlled burn?’ I guess, which is correct, though Dr Patel later tells me the full answer. ExPlAInIng
that sunburn is the result of severe damage to the skin and its DnA, Dr Patel points out that the underlying process here is not the same. The damage is controlled, and does not travel as deep or affect the skin’s DnA. ‘Although we use the term “burn” in both cases, they are very different’, he says.
For the next two days, my eyes are puffy and distinctly baggy — but no one can see that behind the huge sunglasses which are glued to my face.
By day three, the tiny dots of burn marks feel rough and raised, and I have a friend’s silver wedding anniversary party to attend at lunchtime. I apply foundation — after all, Dr Patel says you can apply make-up the next day — but peering in my magnifying mirror, I see that each little scabbed-over dot is raised, poking up out of the sea of makeup pigment.
I sigh, wipe it off and apply sunscreen. And as the people at the party are all my oldest friends and we’re all getting a bit longsighted, nobody notices.
Over the next fortnight, the skin heals up nicely, and my trusty magnifying mirror reveals that the area of treated skin is a good deal smoother and fresher-looking than the skin on my cheek, which wasn’t treated. Hmm.
Are my crow’s feet less obvious? I’m sure they’re softer. And when I go back to the PHI Clinic for ‘after’ pictures, Dr Patel professes he is ‘astounded’ (although let’s be honest, he would say that, as he’s selling the treatment) by the improvement, particularly given that it is just three weeks since the procedure.
But I have to agree. The heavy hooding on my eyelids looks noticeably lighter and, yes, the crow’s feet are definitely reduced. To get the best results — which should last at least a year — will take three rounds of treatment, each a month apart.
Dr Patel tells me the device can be used all over the face. Perhaps I can take this freshening further — as long as I can find a clear day or three afterwards to hide my scorched face. Tixel, from £495, phiclinic.com