Are you BRAVE enough for the new kninkles treatment?
*That’s knee wrinkles — the curse of bare legs in midlife
So HOW are your kninkles today, if that’s not too personal a question? that is, if you even know what kninkles are.
I have to say I was blissfully ignorant of kninkle worries until my attention was drawn to a paragraph in tatler magazine’s annual beauty and cosmetic surgery guide extolling the virtues of a laser kninkles treatment for knees that have begun to look like an elephant’s.
Kninkles, I learnt, are those tiresome wrinkles above the knee that become more obvious in middle age.
Because of the way the knee bends, the skin over the front of it is always being stretched — and as we get older and our skin loses its elasticity and the collagen that keeps it firm, those kninkles become more obvious.
there is a whole raft of new cosmetic procedures for getting rid of these kninkles heading this way from hollywood, where no part of a woman’s anatomy is allowed to show its age.
Some of these, pardon the pun, cost an arm and a leg. Celebrated Beverly hills practitioners, including the Kardashians’ favourite, cosmetic dermatologist dr Simon ourian, offer a $4,000 (£3,100) treatment that involves heating the wrinkly skin with radiofrequency energy to encourage the growth of new collagen and elastin, then injecting the area with a patient’s stem cells to boost the skin rejuvenation process.
dr ourian has described the results as ‘phenomenal’.
on this side of the Atlantic, the go-to kninkle queen is cosmetic doctor debbie thomas. having built a reputation over 20 years as the laser guru for London’s bestkept faces, she has adapted a face-rejuvenating laser treatment to shrink skin around the knees into a more youthful shape.
Kninkles are an increasingly common complaint, according to debbie.
‘It’s a problem area for many women who want to hide their knees now summer’s here,’ she tells me.
‘this treatment is an effective way to target sagging skin around the knee that is hard to treat with exercise alone.’
GenerALLY, I’m a big fan of debbie and her treatments, but I can’t say I’ve really given much thought to my knees, let alone their degree of wrinkliness.
After all, there are so many more obvious signs of ageing that the knees are only a giveaway if you’ve successfully avoided or eradicated all the others — the wrinkles on face and neck, the slight droop in posture, the age spots on the backs of hands and the need to grab your specs before reading anything, to name but a few.
‘do you worry about how wrinkly your knees are?’ I asked one of my girlfriends, who is the same (approaching mid-50s) vintage as me.
‘no,’ she said. ‘But don’t you remember all that fuss about demi Moore’s knees?’
of course I did. Way back in 2006, Ms Moore was rumoured to have had a £5,000 knee lift to improve the look of her limbs, which, as unkind paparazzi shots revealed, were looking decidedly wrinkly and out of sync with the rest of her youthful physique.
It’s unlikely she had anything surgical done. You can’t ‘tuck’ the skin around the knees in the way you can tuck a tummy, without leaving a sizeable scar. But she could have been an early adopter of laser procedures because her knees did look a lot sleeker. So I examined mine. even though my knees are on the solid side, they are certainly not kninkle-free. I can’t say it’s something that has bothered me before, but in the interests of research, I was happy to give laser kninkle treatment a whirl.
A few years ago, I tried the version of this treatment that debbie offers for face rejuvenation and found it brilliant. the
results after three rounds of treatment were certainly impressive — my skin was smoother clearer and definitely tighter — and the lasers, though hot were tolerable. So I wasn’t unduly worried as I dis robed in debbie thomas’s central London clinic. Laser therapist Julie thomas (debbie's colleague, but no relation) began by cleansing the area she was going to treat — a section of skin 4in by 5in, just above left kneecap. that is the area she explained, where loose skin shows most. next, this square was treated to a chemical peel that barely tingled, to remove dead cells and make the skin look brighter My knee had never had so much
attention paid to it. Next came the actual lasering, which is all done using a top-of-the-range machine called the Fotona SP Dynamis, which can be used on a variety of settings to achieve different results in the skin.
First, my knee was given a quick once-over with a longwave Nd:YAG laser.
The longer wavelength allows it to penetrate skin at the precise depth needed to hit the deepest layer of collagen. It tightens the existing collagen and encourages the growth of new collagen to make the skin stronger.
It felt as if a hairdryer on a warm setting was being waved at my skin, and went on for about five minutes. easy peasy. I relaxed. This was followed by a shortwavelength version of the Nd: YAG laser to stimulate the middle and superficial layers of collagen, a process I could barely feel at all.
The final stage, though, was more of a challenge. To provoke yet more collagen remodelling, Julie swapped to a fraxellated erbium treatment head.
This made me a tad nervous because erbium lasers are ablative — they burn away the skin tissue where they land.
To soften this effect, the laser beam is ‘fraxellated’ — passed through a grid of pinprick holes, so rather than simply scorching away the skin tissue, it drills a mass of tiny holes down through the skin.
The damage this causes provokes a wound-healing response in the poor old skin, which throws up lots of new collagen to rebuild itself.
It’s a fascinating technique, but very uncomfortable. In fact, much as I tried to be grown-up about it, I was soon twitching, wriggling and yelping as Julie worked across the area.
‘The bonier your knees are, the more uncomfortable it is,’ she told me diplomatically.
Maybe my knees weren’t as well padded as I had presumed. It took less than five minutes, but I was mighty glad when it was over.
I could see a real difference immediately. even though the treated skin was red and a bit plumped-up from the treatment, the kninkles looked less wrinkly. A month later, there is still a marked improvement.
I know if I was to persevere with this — to get the best results takes between three and six treatments, each a month apart — I would end up much less kninkly, but it is one of the few treatments that is offputtingly painful.
‘The kninkles treatment is genius,’ says Jenny Gravely, 42, a client of Debbie Thomas, who has so far had four sessions of kninkles lasering.
‘When I turned 40 I noticed it was hard to tone that bit of skin above the knees.
‘It didn’t matter what leg exercises I did, the loose skin wouldn’t tighten.
‘It hurt a bit, but it was really effective for me, so the results mean it was definitely worth a bit of pain.’
All the same, I’m not sure I care that much about my kninkles to continue.
Would it work for yours? For Smooth knees: Demi Moore