Why Superdrug’s £150 Botox jabs may be too cheap

Would you consider popping into Superdrug for a spot of Botox or laser hair-removal?

Now you can, as the High Street chain rolls out its  in-store Pro Skin clinics, offering anti-wrinkle injections, laser hair-removal and microdermabrasion.

Prices start at £49 for laser hair-removal and rise to £149 for Botox or fillers, with peels for £69 and Dermaroller treatments at £138.

In Harley Street, you’ll pay around £250 for Botox, upwards of £350 for fillers, and £325 for Dermaroller.

Superdrug’s Lisa Pellizzon says they can offer treatments at such a low price because they’ve slashed the mark-up.  At Superdrug prices start at £49 for laser hair-removal and rise to £149 for Botox or fillers

It’s also because, with the exception of Botox and fillers, treatments are carried out by beauticians, not medical personnel.

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SOURCE Daily Mail

The rising trend for 'Bro-tox': Meet the men becoming hooked on cosmetic fillers

As far as Simon Cowell and David Hasselhoff are concerned, Botox is de rigueur if one is in the public eye. But now it seems more and more non-famous men are turning to the needle in an effort to slow the ageing process too.

Dubbed 'Bro-tox', this new age of male grooming is not limited to image-conscious metrosexual types - indeed, 300,000 men in the U.S. had Botox injections last year alone.

In a feature on Good Morning America today, a group of rather unlikely male candidates revealed why they were bucking stereotypes and had elected to use cosmetic fillers.

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SOURCE Daily Mail

Want to look younger? Forget the Botox and just eat less

Forget Botox and facelifts - if you want to slow the ageing process just eat less, scientist have claimed.

New research reveals that consuming fewer calories can help slow both the ageing process and the onset of age-related diseases such as dementia, cancer and type-2 diabetes.

And the earlier a person's calorie intake is reduced, the greater the effects on their long term health.

Swedish researchers discovered that reducing your consumption of sugar and protein while maintaining a healthy intake of vitamins and minerals could add years to your life.

The team, from the University of Gothenburg, analysed previous research which showed that monkeys fed a healthy, reduced-calorie diet could live several years longer than their expected lifespan.

They also looked at other studies done on an array of animals ranging from fish, rats and flies, all of which had similar results.

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SOURCE : Daily Mail

Anti-Aging Techniques Not Yet Viewed as Acceptable

Studies from the University of Toronto's psychology department show that people who use more invasive anti-aging methods such as Botox injections or surgery are viewed more negatively than those who use milder techniques such as sun-avoidance and facial creams and younger adults are more negative about using anti-aging methods than older adults. 

"These results suggest that despite the rapid growth of the anti-aging cosmetic industry, age concealment has not yet become universally accepted," said lead author and associate professor, Alison Chasteen. "This is important because it shows that despite the emphasis on looking younger in society, there are possible negative social consequences to fighting the signs of aging by engaging in cosmetic age concealment." 

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SOURCE: MedicalNewsToday

Study Compares Injectables Aimed at Reducing Wrinkles

According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, more than 2.4 million people got injectables of Botox or Dysport last year to reduce fine lines on the face.

For the past decade, Botox, which is a version of botulinum toxin type A that temporarily weakens or paralyzes muscles that cause wrinkles, has been the most popular cosmetic nonsurgical procedure.

However, a new version of the drug, called Dysport, was recently found to deliver better results in some cases.
A study conducted by scientists at the University of California San Francisco and published in the Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery compared the effectiveness of the two injectables in reducing the appearance of crow's feet, or the small wrinkles that are common around the eye area.

For the so-called "split face" study, 90 volunteers had Botox injections on one side of their face and Dysport injections on the other. After one month, 67 percent of those who received the injections said that the Dysport side of their face looked better.

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SOURCE: ASAPS 

Beauty Buzz: Lavender and Botox a Good Combination

Thinking about trying some anti-wrinkle Botox Cosmetic injections, but feeling just a bit squeamish about needles in your face?

Try inhaling some lavender essential oil just before you hit the dermatologist's office and the whole treatment may seem a lot easier to endure.

That’s the suggestion of a new study just published in the June issue of the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology by doctors from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and the Baumann Cosmetic and Research Institute , both in Miami Beach, Florida.

Here, the researchers found that patients who were treated to the scent of lavender essential oils just before receiving their injection for wrinkles had a significant reduction in heart rate both pre and post treatment, when compared to those treated with a placebo scent.

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Having Botox too soon could make you look old before your time

Cosmetic specialist Darren McKeown on the pros and cons of this treatment

When Alastair and Jean Carruthers published their first paper on the anti-wrinkle effect of Botox, the average age of their patients was 41 years. That was in 1992. I wonder if they ever thought back then that their new wonder drug would one day allegedly be used on little girls who take part in beauty pageants.

Earlier this month, a pageant mum from California, Kerry Campbell, shocked the world when she went on American TV and claimed to inject her eight-year-old daughter, Britney, with Botox. She said her daughter asked for the treatment to take away the wrinkles she gets when she smiles, and insisted that plenty of other pageant mothers do the same. An international media frenzy transpired, leading Californian authorities to take the child into care. The mother subsequently retracted her statements, claiming it was all a hoax to attract media attention.

But this is not the first time the issue of under-age Botox has hit the headlines. Last year, there was another media storm when a British mother, Sarah Burge, the self-proclaimed "Human Barbie", told the world that she was giving her 15-year-old daughter Botox injections, coining the phrase "teen-toxing" in the process.

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Would you risk a Botox boob job? It costs just £700, gives an instant lift without surgery and claims to have no side-effects.

The effects of gravity can be cruel to women, especially when it comes to breasts.

Even with a good bra, the ravages of time combined with breastfeeding and yo-yo dieting conspire to make once pert and firm breasts go droopy.

And then there’s sun damage, which results in crepey, blotchy skin on the decolletage.
In the past, a woman who wanting a breast lift had only one option: a major surgery known as a mastopexy.

This involves removing excess skin and repositioning the breasts. It’s very expensive at £3,000, requires several weeks of recovery time, and can result in a loss of sensation in the nipple area.

Now, however, a new treatment — the Botox breast lift — is available in the UK. This new treatment promises instant results with no side-effects and no recovery time.

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A little lipo with your facial, madam?

The number of people having both cosmetic surgery and beauty treatments such as botox are increasing.

But in this week's Scrubbing Up, consultant plastic surgeon Fazel Fatah, president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), warns lines between the two are being blurred, and more effective regulation is needed.

You wouldn't trust your boiler to an unqualified engineer - so why do people continue to trust their face and body to untrained practitioners?

There is a difference between plastic surgery - facelifts, breast enhancement, tummy tucks, liposuction, etc - and cosmetic salon treatments such as lasers, peels and injectable fillers.

But the two are being confused in a way that trivialises surgery and puts patients in real danger.

Alarmingly, there are many practitioners offering procedures that require specialised surgical training and expertise which they do not have - and there is no regulation whatsoever to protect the public.

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Do you Need 'Blackberry Botox'? How squinting at smartphones causes premature wrinkles

Women heading into middle-age may find themselves self-consciously checking their faces for signs of frown lines and crows feet.

But now younger women may have reason to worry according to one top cosmetic doctor, who found many are developing premature wrinkles from staring at their smartphones.

Dr Jean-Louis Sebagh said peering at a small screen causes your face to scrunch up, creating an area of tension around and between the brows. The London-based anti-ageing expert said women were then resorting to Botox to smooth out the fine facial lines.

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Cheap Botox - How low can it go?

The following advertisement was recently spotted on the well known special offer site Groupon. It features a dentist led clinic in Wales offering Botox® for £40!

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Why mice are being gassed so YOU can look younger

Most people thought animal tests for cosmetics had been banned - don't be fooled...

When Jenny Brown agreed to go undercover to investigate the testing of a rival to Botox on animals, she knew it might be unpleasant, but nothing had prepared her for this: highly trained lab technicians kneeling on the floor while they tried to break the necks of mice with a ballpoint pen.

Even worse, having to watch as those technicians botched the job — and broke the creatures’ backs instead. Jenny’s secret filming of the operation shows the mice still alive and writhing in agony with broken spines. It also shows others being poisoned with deadly injections and, if they survived, being gassed to death by the hundred.

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Bye bye Botox? These celebrities claim to have given up their frozen faces - but have they really?

After years of claiming her perfect, wrinkle-free features were totally natural, Nicole Kidman finally admitted last week that she has tried Botox in the past. However, the 43-year-old actress swears she no longer uses it because she didn’t like the results.

And she wasn’t the only one who thought this. In 2008, one cosmetic surgery expert told a medical conference that the Oscar-winner was so ‘over-Botoxed’ she was giving the industry a bad name.
Nicole is the latest in a long line of stars who swear blind that they’ve said bye bye to Botox, but can we really believe them?

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Why ARE so many men going under the knife?

There was a time when the only things that made Gordon Ramsay’s face puff out and his hair stand on end was the sight of a soggy soufflé.

But last week, as the celebrity chef went on a New Year’s walk with his friends the Beckhams, there was another reason for his unusual appearance.

Ramsay, the Rottweiler of the kitchen, has undergone a £30,000 hair transplant to thicken his thinning pate. Surprisingly, the supposed hard man, who peppers every sentence with at least four F words, actually seems to care what other people think about his appearance — and he’s not alone.

According to the latest statistics from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), demand for surgery among men grew by 21 per cent last year, despite the economic downturn. The number of gynaecomastia — operations to deal with the dreaded man boobs, or ‘moobs’ as they’ve become known — soared by 80 per cent alone.

The procedure ranks alongside rhinoplasty (nose job), liposuction, otoplasty (ear correction) and blepharoplasty (eye bag removal) as one of the five most popular surgeries for men.

Duncan Bannatyne of Dragons’ Den has been open about having his eye bags removed a few years ago, U.S. actor Mickey Rourke is unrecognisable thanks to his facelift, while actor Rupert Everett has clear signs of wind-tunnel effect.

Dr Daniel Sister, of BeautyWorksWest, a specialist in aesthetic medicine and non-surgical procedures, says: ‘Men now account for 30 per cent of my work. Because of the economic crisis, they are either seeking jobs or trying to keep them, so they want to look good — not too tired or worried.’

Giving themselves the edge at work seems to be the key for many men going under the knife.

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Carey Mulligan: Hollywood doctor told me to have Botox

At just 25, Carey Mulligan is one of Hollywood's freshest-faced stars.

Yet the British actress was told to get Botox in order to look more youthful, she has disclosed.

Of her visit to a Los Angeles dermatologist, Mulligan recalled: "I said, 'I have some lines here under my eye and they're annoying, what can you do?' He looked at my face and said, 'We'll just drop some Botox in here and here...'.

"I said, 'What the ----? I'm only 25, are you joking?' So I can't move my face? Isn't that, well, the antithesis of what I'm trying to do as an actress? Only in LA would someone try and give you Botox when you're 25 years old."

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Do-it-yourself Botox injections risky business

Do-it-yourself Botox injections are the latest wrinkle in the pursuit of beauty on a budget.

Catherine Maiorino, 54, started thinking about buying Botox over the Internet when the creases between her eyebrows began to needle her. "So I went and found a website where I could order it," recalls the vocational school teacher from Pennsauken, N.J.

She paid $200 to a spa in California for a vial of what was labeled as Dysport, which contains the same active ingredient as Botox. The price was about one-third of what she expected to pay at a physician's office. Maiorino figured her daughter, a phlebotomist, could do the injections. "She is the most excellent sticker in the whole world."

When the substance arrived in the mail, Maiorino was disappointed to find only a few freeze-dried crystals in the vial, to be reconstituted with saline solution.
"There were no actual instructions in the package, no way to determine what the proper consistency should be," she says.

Her daughter balked - "she said I was crazy" - and insisted Maiorino take the vial to a doctor.

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Botox Could Cause Muscle Wastage

Submitted by Ria Patel

According to a new study carried out by the researchers from the University of Calgary, the botox injections that are employed to get rid of wrinkles and plump-up lips could lead to wastage of muscles into fat.

The researchers claim that the cosmetic jab if used over long periods of time could harm any part of the body and not just the area where injection is given.

The findings of the study are based on the experiment of Botulinum toxin A, a substance used in the medical profession on a group of 18 rabbits for a period of up to six months. It was discovered that the limbs of the animals, where the shot was given had endured muscle wastage of up to 50%. The loss of muscle was not just confined to limbs where injection was given but also affected other limbs.

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Botox to be tested for Treating Herpes

Submitted by Ria Patel

A treatment used to get rid of wrinkles is being used for other purposes as well. Apparently, Botox is being used to treat the cold sores that occur in people suffering from the herpes simplex virus. The sores usually appear around the lips of people suffering from the condition.

Though, the infection does not appear in its nascent stages, yet once it's activated, people end up suffering from cold sores, which appear on a regular basis.

The cosmetic procedure is being currently scrutinized to check, whether it can help people suffering from herpes. The research is being conducted by a group of researchers from the Chicago Centre for Facial Plastic Surgery in the United States.

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Botox or no-tox... How high-maintenance is YOUR beauty regime

By Elsa Mcalonan

The Big British Beauty Poll, commissioned by Olay, is one of the biggest beauty surveys ever conducted in the UK  -  20,000 women, aged 18-65, were asked about their beauty habits, covering everything from how much they spend to how they feel about Botox.

The results are in, and here we can exclusively reveal what British women really think about beauty.

BOTOX VERSUS NO-TOX?

Botox is out! Now it’s official — women prefer ‘Super Facials’ as the top anti-ageing treatment. The ‘frozen look’ has been given the cold shoulder as women opt for the needle-free method of turning back the years.

When asked ‘Would you consider having, or have you had, any of the following anti-ageing treatments?’, 67 per cent chose anti-ageing facials, 43 per cent micro-dermabrasion, 27 per cent facial peels, 25 per cent laser re-surfacing and 24 per cent cosmetic surgery.

Botox was least popular, scoring only 21 per cent. As high-profile celebrities such as Dannii Minogue say ‘no more’ to Botox, women are following the trend and turning to super-charged facials as alternatives to firmer, younger-looking skin.

A-list facialist Anastasia Achilleos says: ‘I’ve noticed more and more women switching from Botox to high-performance facials.

'They’ve heard about the rejuvenating effects you can achieve from new facial techniques and are looking for a softer, more individual approach to anti-ageing. Now that celebrities are ­coming out against Botox, there’s a growing trend for a more natural look.’

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After 18 years of Botox, how I finally unfroze my smile...

Was it the day I looked in the mirror and saw an unfamiliarly, glassy face staring back at me? Or was it the humiliating moment in A&E when the young doctor treating me for a cut on my forehead asked me to raise my eyebrows and I simply couldn’t do it?

Either way, after nearly two decades of having Botox, I’ve decided to quit. And as I hit send on the email cancelling my latest appointment — saying that I wouldn’t be rearranging it — I felt wonderfully liberated. Hell, I even raised an eyebrow in celebration.

My Botox days started 18 years ago, when, at the age of 29 I was asked by a magazine to test this radical new treatment. It really did seem to work magic, and although I wasn’t plagued with wrinkles, I had injections sporadically over the years, when I started to look tired.

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