It seems too good to be true: you can melt fat away by freezing them. It sounds amazing and the commercials make it seem so perfect. You will get rid of that stubborn fat. But, shouldn’t we ask some basic questions: Will it work for everyone? Or will it work for only some people? Who will it help? Who will it not? To what degree?
Be careful of Cool Sculpt and any other treatments that try and convince you that you can melt fat away by freezing them. It’s not that it doesn’t work for some people. I have met some who say it works well. However, it DOES NOT WORK for a lot of people also. I am seeing more and more people, who have had Cool Sculpt WITHOUT seeing ANY improvement. Now, the claim may be that these people didn’t go for enough treatments, but how much money are you going to plow through before realizing that it doesn’t work. I thought that having no improvement was the only negative outcome anyone could have until I treated a young man, who had Cool Sculpt a year ago to his flanks.
He had three sessions and saw no results. He came to see me, wondering if he would benefit from liposuction. Liposuction is the tried and true method for removing fat. I will go over liposuction in detail in the next posting. Liposuction eliminates fat directly. During the liposuction procedure, I can see the fat come out and know how effective the treatment will be. Can you get bad results? Yes, if it’s done by doctors who don’t know what they are doing. But, if it’s done right, then the results are good and predictable.
Guess what I discovered when I performed the liposuction on this young man who had Cool Sculpt to the flanks more than a year ago. A ‘brick’ of scar tissue. The fat did not go away after his three sessions with Cool Sculpt, but the freezing caused scar tissue to form as hard as a ‘brick’! At first, I could hardly pass any of the cannulas through to inject the tumescent fluid (the fluid we use for liposuction). Fortunately, I was able to persist and get the job done and remove the fat, but I couldn’t believe how much harder it was to perform the liposuction in this area. Yes, be wary of trying to melt fat away by freezing. It might be too good to be true.