Looking for the proverbial spring of youth, people who are really into skincare keep a close eye on every new wrinkle treatment that claims to stop faces from falling south. New high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) devices that make small heat ablation points deep below the skin’s surface say they can tighten sagging necks, double chins, and jowls without surgery. How much better does HIFU work compared to poison injections, and is it safe to use for a long time? This piece separates the truth about skin-lifting products that actually work from the marketing hype that is pushing the boundaries of cosmetic medicine.
Getting Started with HIFU Skin Lifting
HIFU uses highly focused ultrasonic energy beams to fix moderate skin laxity by affecting different levels of tissue:
The top layers of skin—Stimulating collagen and elastin directly makes the tone, texture, and glow of the skin better right away after just one treatment. However, the effects are only brief and will go away in three months, unlike deeper effects.
SMAS Layer: Heating the superficial musculoaponeurotic system (SMAS), which connects the facial muscles to the skin above them, causes gentle tissue coagulation, which speeds up the regeneration of structural proteins and collagen in the months that follow. This tightens and lifts the lower face, improving definition and lifting areas that have been lax in the past.
HIFU is different from surface-level laser, radiofrequency, and microneedling rejuvenation because it heats up the foundational SMAS layers about 4.0 to 4.5 mm below the skin and starts the collagen and elastin growth cycles again. These other methods rely on shorter-lived skin stimulation cascades that fade quickly. Impacts below multiple levels have the best chance of achieving long-lasting cosmetic changes, such as lifting, tightening, and volume restoration that can’t be achieved with non-invasive methods.
Popular Places to Get HIFU Treatment
Practitioners use ‘candidature screens’ to find people with mild sagging or wrinkles who don’t have any other reasons to get a facelift, chemical peel or eyelid blepharoplasty right now. Some common places where HIFU works best are:
Lower face and neck: The skin on the chin, jawline, and neck is constantly pulled by gravity. To keep the structure strong, especially after age 40, continuous collagen stimulation is very helpful.
Hooded eyes: The skin on the upper eyelids evens out and lifts away from the lash lines again after ultrasound thermal stimulation. This fixes the annoying progressive sagging that blocks your view.
Eyebrow shape: In the same way, a sharper arch appears across the brows, pulling the outer corners up along the temples and reducing the look of hollowness under the eyes.
Combination treatment for the mid- and lower face that targets structural fat layers shows a lot of promise for lifting sagging malar “fallen cheek” and getting rid of nasolabial folds that won’t go away with fillers.
More than one pass, more than one effect
Different treatment plans are needed for different conditions, but repeated stimulation works best when it’s spread out over a large area. This way, the heat is evenly distributed and not too intense. Some examples of common dual treatment plans are
Lower Face/Neck: Usually, splitting 8–10,000 pulse passes over two sessions that are 8 weeks apart gives collagen and elastin waves enough time to work, so that they have the best regenerative effects six months later, after the necessary waiting period for newly strengthened fibres and facial substructure rebuilding.
Hooded Eyes: 4,000-pulse treatments of the upper and lower eyelids separately greatly reduce sagging and crow’s feet by firing along the upper orbital rims and down through the cheeks. At the four-month mark, the results were very amazing.
Overall, spaced multimodal programmes are better for getting the most out of HIFU energy than single megadoses, which can cause nerve inflammation in the face in the short term and even the feared backfires in the long term that all people who have had plastic surgery fear.
Looking at Evidence for Claims of Efficacy
Skincare fans should carefully check the results and longevity of any new wrinkle-fighting food. However, a large number of supporting clinical studies backs up the effectiveness of HIFU in particular:
In a 2021 double-blind, placebo-controlled study with over 100 participants, 70% of those who had HIFU said their eyelid skin improvements were “moderate” or “significant” six months later, based on histology results and investigator evaluations, while almost no one who had the placebo responded in the same way.
SMAS layer assessment using ultrasound to measure set skin depths before and after treatment found that the skin surface increased by an average of 1.2 to 1.4 mm, showing that collagen regeneration and tightening abilities were better than baselines. These measurements are still valid one year later as part of ongoing longer-term reviews.
Individual results with cosmetic drugs do vary, even in clinical settings. However, HIFU consistently shows measurable improvements in correcting moderate facial sagging and wrinkles without surgery, as long as enough dermal repair cycles are completed for new structural proteins to raise, tighten, and plump up targeted areas.
What to Look Forward to During Normal HIFU Sessions
HIFU face or neck lifts that don’t involve surgery usually happen in three steps:
Before the treatment, the patient takes off all of their makeup around the areas that will be treated. Then, experts mark tactical treatment grids that will be used to spread pulses evenly across the whole zone. A lot of topical numbing cream is put on next to ease any small pains that might happen during.
Treatment: The person lies flat for 45 to 90 minutes at a time, and a smooth applicator fires ultrasonic pulses in controlled sweeping motions along marked areas. Conductive ultrasound gel moves the waves’ kinetic energy through the skin, starting thermal coagulations in the SMAS layers. During low-sensation treatments, patients can calm down.
Post-Care: Aloe vera products can help soothe areas that have been treated. Mild erythema (pinkness) may last for a short time before going away within hours. If you don’t put on makeup for 24 hours, your body’s cells can get the most oxygen, which speeds up the remodelling process.
In the months that follow, traumatised skin sublayers start necessary remodelling and skin rejuvenating processes. However, you won’t have to take a lot of time off or cancel social plans outside of session days. You just need to be patient and wait for the longer collagen synthesis cascades to reach their visual peak between three and six months later.
HIFU Newcastle Can Give You Surgical-Style Results Without Surgery
To sum up, the safe use of high-intensity focused ultrasound technology under the skin has made it possible for amazing non-surgical face and neck lifts that are on par with surgical results. This is made possible by guided micro-injury repair processes deep below the facial muscles. Its ability to cause such fundamental structural changes at the SMAS level sets HIFU apart from the decades of work that has gone into perfecting mostly short-term surface laser, radiofrequency, and microneedling techniques that failed to provide long-lasting, impressive cosmetic improvements as newly formed collagen and elastin slowly weaken and fade.
But collagen and elastin fibres that have been brought back to life don’t know what radio waves or laser optics can’t do. The best power yet is used by HIFU to take skin regeneration to exciting new levels. So, for people who want small changes but don’t want to go through major surgery, ultrasound energy sent to the right layers of skin at the right frequencies finally gives natural facelift and volume-boosting effects that last for a long time. Welcome to a new era of skin renewal that will make your face look even better.
