The Skin Nerd: How ultrasound therapy can tighten and lift your skin

Why ultrasound treatment may be what you're looking for to help to reduce sagging skin.

Ultrasound treatment may be what you're looking for to help to reduce sagging skin.

With salons and clinics open for business at the moment, the interest in skin treatments is booming. Now, my favourite type of skin treatment is a treatment that prompts our skin to stimulate its own goodness. From my experience, they tend to be the most effective – peels, Ultherapy, LED, microneedling... All of these technically pool from the skin’s own resources and functions for best results.

As we age, our skin begins to sag, we can see more lines, more dullness and less hydration. We can tackle lines, dullness and hydration with our home skincare, however, sagging is a trickier dilemma. We can support our skin with vitamin C, to help it to synthesise collagen, and we can introduce peptides for the same purpose but in the case of sagging, gravity begins to work against this.

Ultrasound therapy comes under many brand names, and I have specifically had Ultherapy. The ultrasound device can visualise the layers of the skin, and then can fire energy into it, which converts the heat and causes the lower layers of tissue to contract. What makes Ultherapy so fruitful is the visualisation aspect, as it allows the treatment to be tailored to your own physiology. As Dr. Jane Mulrooney explained to me in the Dr Mulrooney Clinic, each individual has different dermal thickness, different degrees of subcutaneous fat, bone in different areas and skin thickness.

In Ultherapy, the energy can pass through the upper layers of the skin without causing trauma to them so there’s no trauma and thus no downtime. What you’re triggering is microtrauma in the lower layer of the skin. I spend each and every column talking about how we can avoid causing damage to our skin, and with this, it may seem I’m advocating for it. This is where I should note that it isn’t true trauma, it’s simply enough to trigger the skin’s regenerative processes, bringing about an uptick of collagen and elastin. Collagen is what makes our skin plump, and elastin is what makes it elastic, so this is what can tighten up our skin.

If you’re worried about the idea of heat, it isn’t a hot sensation – it's more like a small sting, and sometimes, you can feel tight in the area following the treatment. Many have this treatment on the jawline, such as myself. Dr. Jane Mulrooney says that people opt for Ultherapy on their neck, along their jaw and also on the brow area – some opt to combine Botox on the brow area with Ultherapy to lengthen the results.

You need a bit of patience when it comes to Ultherapy, as you’ll see the best effects at the 6 months mark. The results will last for around a year, maybe even up to two years, and Dr. Jane Mulrooney usually recommends repeating the treatment yearly for best results.

If you’re seeing sagging on your neck and jawline and are looking for a treatment that will be truly beneficial, Ultherapy may be for you - but do note that depending on areas being treated, the lower end of the price spectrum is around €1,000, so it’s definitely not what I’d consider affordable. I can testify that the results are worth it, and I’m personally very excited to see the full effect of my Ultherapy treatment.

Not all clinics carry out Ultherapy (or Ulthera, as it can be named) so do a bit of research and find a practitioner who is well-experienced with the treatment!