Related Facelift / Beauty Treatment Articles
Reuters Life - May 21, 2010
Japanese pin hopes on acupuncture as beauty secret
TOKYO - Forget cosmetic surgery. The ancient treatment of acupuncture is gaining new popularity as a beauty secret in Japan about 1,500 years after it first came there from China.
As aesthetic sessions increasingly go organic or employ traditional remedies, women at the "Beauty World Japan" exhibition this week lined up to try acupuncture, long known for its health advantages.
Inserting tiny needles into faces, boosts natural facial healing powers, says therapist Takeshi Kitagawa.
"This is not a medical or surgical procedure," said Kitagawa, acupuncture therapist and owner of Yojo spa.
"We use the healing powers that a person's body naturally possesses, and within the general trend toward a more 'natural beauty' our acupuncture is very well accepted."
Japan is the world's number two market for beauty products and services, with sales estimated at over $15 billion last year alone.
Acupuncturist licensing began during Japan's Meiji Era, about 130 years ago, and Kitagawa says his clients, mainly in their 30s, are increasingly pinning their hopes on the treatment, seeing cosmetics or facelifts as pricey and not as healthy.
"It's different from plastic surgery, it doesn't have the risk of failure. Besides, it uses the innate power of human body to create beauty, and that's the reason I like it," said Rie Hayashida.
Japan has an estimated 40,000 registered acupuncturists and over 150 schools, mainly focused on traditional uses
Posted by Daily Break News on Apr 9, 2010
The Boom of Cosmetic Acupuncture
Physical appearance is on everyone's mind. As we age, collagen production slows to a crawl, making it increasingly difficult to maintain skin tone and elasticity. Luckily, you have a variety of options for looking your best. For those who prefer a more natural approach to fighting the signs of aging, the booming cosmetic acupuncture industry is becoming a popular choice. Learn more to find out if cosmetic acupuncture is right for you.
Cosmetic Acupuncture is a practice handed down from centuries of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The philosophy of cosmetic acupuncture incorporates a whole-body approach. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, physical appearance is a manifestation of internal health. Internal rejuvenation will eventually extend to physical beauty.
The Benefits of Cosmetic Acupuncture
The cosmetic acupuncture facelift is a method for restoring a vibrant glow to the face. The acupuncture facelift can improve skin firmness, while softening wrinkles and fine lines. Eyes and skin tone return to a more youthful radiance. Common health benefits associated with cosmetic acupuncture are better sleeping habits and internal vigor.
Cosmetic Acupuncture an Alternative to Plastic Surgery
The cosmetic acupuncture facelift is a gentle alternative to plastic surgery. However, the acupuncture facelift is not a proxy for facial plastic surgery. In general, results for the acupuncture facelift are not immediate and not nearly as dramatic as facial plastic surgery. Cosmetic acupuncture produces results, but over time and with much less magnitude than a surgical facelift.
Facial plastic surgery can dramatically improve appearance. It not only reduces fine lines and wrinkles, but also strengthens the muscles around the face. As a result, sagging skin and jowls are lifted. When combined with other cosmetic surgical techniques, like laser skin resurfacing, skin retains a natural firmness and even tone. But as with all surgical procedures, facial plastic surgery will incorporate some risk. Additionally, results may not match your expectations.
No Recovery Period With Cosmetic Acupuncture
Keep in mind that a somewhat lengthy recovery period may be necessary for facial plastic surgery. Where cosmetic acupuncture requires no recovery period, healing from a facelift can last up to four weeks. In addition to lost time at work, the healing process can also be a source of discomfort.
Cosmetic Acupuncture and Affordability
Cost is another thing to consider. Plastic surgery cost varies depending on the type of procedure you have. The cost for cosmetic acupuncture varies, as well. But acupuncture costs substantially less than most plastic surgery procedures.
How Does Cosmetic Acupuncture Work?
Cosmetic acupuncture treatments focus on restoring circulation in the face, which promotes the natural production of collagen. In addition to fine acupuncture needles, some practitioners combine treatment with holistic moisturizers and oils. Sometimes light pulsations and electric currents are also used. Your practitioner will set up a treatment plan for you. The treatment plan typically consists of at least 10 sessions, with subsequent follow up treatments.
Finding a Cosmetic Acupuncture Practitioner
If you're interested in cosmetic acupuncture find a licensed practitioner to provide a consultation and individualized treatment plan.
ShowbizSpi - March 16, 2010
Sandra Bullock Keeps Young With Acupuncture!
SEXY Sandra Bullock has a sharp new beauty regime!
The Hollywood superstar — who recently won an Oscar for her role in The Blind Side — has regular sessions of acupuncture.
“Sandra gets the treatment three times a week whether she’s at home on or on set” a source revealed.
“It’s in her contract that studios have to pay for it!”
The source ads that Bullock, 45, gets pricks to her forehead, face, stomach and feet.
“It’s her secret weapon,” explained the insider.
Fashion & Beauty Home - October 05 2009
Fit to be tried: Cosmetic acupuncture by Amanda Phelan
FIRST, a confession: I've had a facelift. All this healthy eating, exercise and drinking water just wasn't cutting it.
It could be winter, the recession, financial woes or a low stress threshold. OK, maybe a few too many Sunday fry-ups as well. Whatever the reason, it's been causing stress lines, crow's feet and tired eyes.
But no going under the surgeon's knife for me. Try the needle -- 45 of them to be exact. That's what it takes to undergo "cosmetic acupuncture", a non-surgical face boost that's popular with the likes of Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and Cher (although the Moonstruck star may need a few needles just to hold her face up at this stage).
And we have the man who can do it right here in Dublin. Dermot O'Connor, author of The Healing Code and the newly published The Immortality Code, is one of a handful of people qualified to perform cosmetic needling.
O'Connor (40) says he is proof of the power of acupuncture. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 11 years ago and told he would be paralysed within a year, he fought back by dropping his stressful 12-hour working days and completely changing his lifestyle.
The father of three girls says he has been symptom-free from MS for the past 10 years -- a reprieve he credits mostly to his use of Chinese medicine and acupuncture.
O'Connor now runs a popular acupuncture clinic in Haddington Road in the city, as well as making CDs and writing books.
He says cosmetic acupuncture smoothes facial lines, improves skin tone and reduces bags around the eyes, but without the aggression of a surgeon's knife.
"The treatment addresses the underlying causes of ageing, and that's preferable to masking the symptoms with invasive procedures," he says.
Ten minutes later, laying in the gentle atmosphere of O'Connor's clinic, the first of the fine needles goes in and even though it measures a fraction of an inch, you sure feel a sting.
The 45-50 sterilized needles are inserted into specific acupuncture points and manipulated to encourage blood and energy to flow.
Despite the slight bite from the needles, the 30-minute treatment is relaxing. The process aims to invigorate the face and reduce bags under the eyes. As well, O'Connor says the treatment increases moisture and skin elasticity and tightens pores.
While acupuncture is relatively new to us, the use of this procedure to improve your appearance has been around for centuries in China.
The tradition dates back more than 800 years to the Sun dynasty, when the empress and the emperor's concubines believed it maintained their youthful looks.
O'Connor says you need 12 sessions to improve your whole face and rejuvenate the skin. While that's nothing like as expensive as conventional face surgery, it's certainly not cheap.
But after a couple of sessions, backed up by Chinese herb treatments, there's definitely a more relaxed look to my face.
I reckon I do look a bit younger afterwards -- maybe not by years, but at least I won't get needled about having plastic surgery.
TODAYshow.com - Marisa Belger - October 01, 2009
Facial acupuncture: An alternative to Botox
Ever since natural childbirth made its way onto my list of accomplishments, I have a new relationship with pain. The injuries of everyday life - scrapes, cuts, burns and bruises - barely elicit more than a wince from me these days. Bikini wax? No sweat. Slicing a finger while chopping garlic? Please. But when the first needle began its short journey from my acupuncturist’s hand to my face, I found myself wondering how tough I really was.
I was a seasoned acupuncture recipient, having willingly - and enthusiastically - accepted the thin needles between my toes, on the top of my head, across my stomach and pretty much everywhere in between for years. Acupuncture had helped soothe my chronic back pain, regulate a wonky menstrual cycle and manage bucket loads of stress. And I didn’t doubt that the ancient Chinese treatment could take on laugh lines and crow s-feet. So why was my heart beating so fast as the first needle nestled into one of my stubborn forehead wrinkles?
I trusted this woman with my face
I had been tipped off to the wonders of facial acupuncture in 2004, but it had remained on my life’s to-do list next to bungee jumping and visiting the Great Wall of China until this summer. And though my stomach was gently flip-flopping with nerves, I was excited to be lying on a table in Beth Hooper’s softly lit office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Hooper and her partner, Laura Kauffmann, are the acupuncturist and Chinese herbalist masterminds behind She Essential Beauty, a Chinese medicine-inspired line of beauty treatments that I had been applying to my parched skin since my son was in utero. I trusted this woman with my face.
The plan was to receive 10 sessions - I squeezed in six - that would focus on the spots that reminded me, every time I looked in the mirror, that I wasn’t 25 anymore. I am 34. And those spots make themselves clearly known as an expanse of wrinkles across my forehead, rapidly deepening lines next to my mouth and two significant dents between my brows, the mommy lines, as Hooper, a mother of two, calls them.
I believe in aging gracefully, but I don’t believe in aging without a fight. And if there s a way to engage in that fight without the synthetic assistance of wrinkle fillers like Restylane and Botox or without undergoing cosmetic surgery, I want to know now before things start sagging and crinkling up permanently. This is what I told myself as tiny needle after tiny needle (facial acupuncture needles are much smaller than those used on the rest of the body) was inserted into my face.
I think it is important for people to know that while it isn't a pain-free treatment, the needles only hurt a little and just on insertion, explains Hooper. It is a low-pain treatment. Having recently subjected my face to more than 30 needles a session, I agree with Hooper s assessment. There can be a slight pinching feeling when needles are inserted into certain areas of the face - the upper laugh line is particularly tender - but the sensation quickly subsides. And once the ache dissipated I was left with a warm, almost tingly feeling rolling across my cheeks and brow.
Does the pain result in gain?
Though there is still no definitive research on the benefits of facial acupuncture, those tingles could be the result of an increase in qi (energy) and xue (blood) to the area. When I asked Hooper to tell me more about how it really works, she explained that the needles also cause a micro-irritation under the skin, which helps to reduce wrinkles. Even with all that qi, blood and irritation, acupuncture, like most natural therapies, is subtle. This is not a face-lift or a shot of Botox to the brow. After each session, my skin would be notably brighter, but it was difficult to see a clear reduction in the intensity of my wrinkles.
Most facial acupuncturists recommend a series of 10 successive sessions (every week or twice a week) with monthly follow-up sessions for maintenance. My schedule rarely allowed for weekly sessions,I was on the every-other-week plan, but the one time I went two weeks in a row, I noticed that the wrinkles in my forehead, etched there from more than 30 years of brow arching, were lighter, less significant somehow. And my mommy lines were no longer the focal point of my face, seeming to have softened back into that place above my nose.
Facial acupuncture costs around $125-$200 a session and should be administered by an acupuncturist who not only has training in this area, but who has graduated with a master’s degree from an accredited Oriental medicine school and passed the national board examinations. Hooper recommends finding such a practitioner through the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. And if you find that acupuncturist, but are still freaked out by the idea of needles in your face, take it slow and begin below the chin. For people trying for the first time, I’d recommend that they start with body acupuncture and then add facial acupuncture, she says. You can also ask the practitioner to use fewer needles in the initial treatment to see how you react.
Straight.com Sept 05, 2009
Cosmetic acupuncture targets tiny wrinkles by Gail Johnson
Nicole Stefanopoulos has an eye for detail. The freelance photographer, who used to split her time between Vancouver and New York, started out in the early ’90s covering rock bands—the White Stripes, the Strokes, and Hole among them—but recently shifted her focus to fine-art photography. She says that after years of going to concerts and after-parties, she was ready for a change. Plus, all those late nights were taking a toll, and she admits she started noticing that she didn’t bounce back as quickly as she had when she was younger. And at the age of—gasp—38, she began to see changes in her face: little lines around her mouth and what she calls “heavy” skin around her eyes.
So upon moving back to Vancouver permanently last year, Stefanopoulos asked friends what she could do to smooth out her face. Not comfortable with the idea of botulinum toxin—better known as the hugely popular Botox Cosmetic, a protein produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum that’s injected into the skin—she was intrigued by cosmetic acupuncture.
“Based on the information I had about Botox, I didn’t dig where it came from and didn’t want that stuff in my own skin,” Stefanopoulos says in a phone interview. “But I didn’t want these lines to get deeper.”
She chose cosmetic acupuncture and went for 10 sessions of having little needles inserted in various parts of her face, and toward the end, her wrinkles (or “laugh lines”, as she puts it) started to fade.
“There was one night when I was washing my face and I just looked in the mirror and thought, ‘I’m so stoked!’ ”
Before that point, she hadn’t tried acupuncture, the traditional Chinese medical technique that involves stimulating specific points on the body with thin needles. Those points are said to connect with meridians throughout the body, along which a person’s qi , or vital energy, flows. According to practitioners, when that energy is blocked, it leads to an imbalance and ultimately disease, and acupuncture helps unblock that energy and bring the body to a state of balance.
Although acupuncture has been around for thousands of years, its use for cosmetic purposes might seem like a strictly modern-day application.
Not so, according to Maryam Mahanian, a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner in Vancouver.
“It used to be used on emperors’ concubines,” says the head of the Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine Clinic of Vancouver in a phone interview. “But the marketing of it is new.”
Mahanian, who’s been in practice for seven years and treats infertility and skin conditions, among other things, trained in Toronto with Shali Rassouli, a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner who also uses acupuncture to reduce cellulite.
“The theory of it just made sense to me,” Mahanian says of using acupuncture for cosmetic reasons. “It encourages circulation and collagen production and overall health. And if you’re in very good health, your skin will also manifest that.…When you feel better, you look better.…When you feel better, you sleep better, you have more energy.” (Collagen is a fibrous protein produced in the skin’s dermal layer that helps skin hold its shape.)
Mahanian explains that she does a full health assessment with every patient at the outset to determine what other problems they might be experiencing, whether it’s stress, poor nutrition, menstrual pain, digestive issues, or fatigue. As a result, she might insert needles—as many as 40 in total—in locations on a person’s body aside from her face, hands, and feet, which are all possible locations for treating wrinkles and frown lines. “Their underlying health problems are addressed,” Mahanian says, noting that about 30 percent of her patients are men.
When using acupuncture for cosmetic purposes, she suggests two sessions a week for five weeks, followed by monthly “maintenance” visits. (Each treatment costs $100.)
For those who are freaked out by needles, Mahanian says the ones used on the face are thinner than those used on other parts of the body, and people tend to feel nothing at all or a sensation of pressure but not pain. She says that results are more subtle and gradual than those achieved by plastic surgery or Botox, the latter of which creates effects that last for up to four months.
Botox works by limiting the activity of muscles that cause frown lines. According to the manufacturer’s Web site, Botox Cosmetic can have life-threatening side effects, including trouble swallowing, speaking, or breathing, and can even cause death, all of which can occur hours to weeks after an injection. Sometimes, the botulinum toxin can affect the body in places other than the injection site and cause symptoms of botulism, such as double vision, change or loss of voice, trouble saying words clearly, and loss of bladder control.
Stefanopoulos says she did have side effects from her treatment—positive ones. “When they put in the needles, you feel really relaxed,” she says. “I would fall asleep, or go into a really deep state. It’s different for everyone; you can meditate or just drift away. It’s almost like an addiction, because you just want to go back.
“It opens up your energy and blockages in the body, and you can actually feel that when you’re in tune with your body,” she adds, saying that the treatment also had a positive effect on some of her digestive issues.
“It sounds crazy, but when there’s an unblockage, that energy just rushes through you.…I would feel that for a couple of hours afterward. You know how you leave a really good concert but you’re still on a high afterward? I’d feel like that.”