My Year In Tweakments – 2024

What are the tweakments that I’ve tried this year? What were they like? Which ones gave the best results? Here’s the full rundown of what I’ve been up to in the past 12 months, with links to articles and videos elsewhere on the site for anyone who wants more detail on any of these treatments. 

January: Emface, and Hydrafacial

EmFace is the treatment where they strap special paddles on your face that make your cheek and forehead muscles contract (to tone them up and improve your cheek contours). While doing that, it also delivers 20 minutes of radiofrequency energy to improve collagen production in the skin. I was mad keen to see what it could do, and thrilled when Dr. Suha Kersh invited me to try it at 23MD, her gorgeous and discreet boutique of a clinic in South Kensington.

It’s entirely non-invasive, it doesn’t hurt (well, more on that in a minute) and there’s no downtime, with a course of four sessions aiming to give you fewer wrinkles (all that new collagen) and more lift, as it “selectively tones the face-elevating muscles to restore and elevate support of facial features”.

I have to say, the first session felt so madly strange – wave after wave of nerve-buzzing muscle-contractions under the pads – that my brain hardly knew how to put up with it, and I could see my cheeks visibly twitching as I tried to film it.  When the pads came off there was a real “wow” moment when I looked in the mirror and I saw my face looking back softer and with the cheeks clearly lifted and plumped. Magic!

Sadly, the lifting effects didn’t last, even after I’d done the full course, though I know the radiofrequency will have helped the quality of my skin – research shows that the results go on building for three months.

If you’re familiar with the EMsculpt treatments from BTL Aesthetics (for toning the body’s muscles with high-intensity electromagnetic waves), EmFace uses similar technology. BTL, the company behind it, are always scrupulous in their clinical research, so there’s plenty of proof that this treatment works – but maybe I am too old to be an ideal patient.

Later in the year, I met a practitioner who nodded when I shared my experience, and told me that it worked brilliantly for her patients – as long as they had regular treatments, i.e. more or less every week. I winced at how much that would cost (in London, Emface costs around £500 a session, or £2,000 per course) – but it turned out she had a particularly wealthy demographic. Maybe for the rest of us, time will make the tech more affordable, as a non-invasive treatment that makes you look better by strengthening your face and skin from the inside is something of a holy grail in tweakment terms.

EmFace, around £500 a session; a course of four-six is recommended

Hydrafacial

I also sneaked in a Hydrafacial at the Dr Joney de Souza’s clinic, for a spot of new year deep cleaning for my skin. I love a Hydrafacial for contouring and lymph drainage, along with clearing the skin surface and dragging out all the gunk.

It douses the skin with targeted serums too, which you just know are going to sink in well and reach exactly where they’re needed. You’ve seen me trying Hydrafacials before; if you want to see how it works for different people, here’s a video of Team Tweakments trying Hydrafacials in 2022.

Hydrafacials cost around £200, depending on where you go.

February. IPL photofacial; Mapping my facial arteries; Skinboosters-in-my-hands results

In early February I dropped in on Dr Maryam McMillan at the Ambra clinic in North London to try one of her “photo-facials’ to take redness out of my skin. You may not see it, but it’s always there, lurking below the surface, so any chance of a treatment that will quieten redness is always welcome.

This was a quick going-over with the Aerolase, a 650nm laser which is good at zapping pigmentation as well as redness in the skin. There’s no downtime to speak of (on a light setting) and I went straight back to work, looking fresher than usual. If you do a course of treatment you’ll see collagen stimulation as well as brighter, clearer skin.

Aerolase, from £300

MRI of blood vessels in my face: ARtery-3D

OK, this one isn’t a tweakment but it’s such an extraordinary and innovative concept that I jumped at the chance of trying it. But first, background. If and when you have a procedure that involves sticking needles into your face – say, fillers – your practitioner needs to know their facial anatomy, so as to avoid injecting filler into a blood vessel (it can block it, with severe consequences).

The trouble is, our arteries don’t lie exactly where the textbooks draw them – and Prof Benoit Hendrickx has spent years developing a futuristic way of mapping the arteries in your face. Dr Amanda Penny supervised me through the process in London and you can read more in my article about this ARtery 3D technology.

 ARtery3d.com costs between £600 and £800, depending on the price of a private MRI in your area. It’s a one-off cost; unless you have facial surgery, your arterial map isn’t going to change. Because the technology is so new, how clinics may share the cost with patients varies.

Skinboosters in my hands: the results

At the end of 2023, I tried injections of Skinboosters (done by the brilliant Dr Priya Chadha) to improve the quality of the skin on the backs of my hands.  I’m mentioning it here because it takes around three months to see the full extent of what this treatment can do. In a nutshell, the results were excellent.

Am I pleased? I’m over the moon. Long may it last! Not only did they make the skin looks much smoother, but it was clearly firmer – when pinched up into a little pleat, it sprang back into shape. You can read more and watch the video on the link above.

Restylane Skinboosters, from £500-£700 per session 

March – Forma V for intimate wellness

Start talking about vaginal rejuvenation, and a lot of people get quite flustered very quickly, and start saying, “How ridiculous!”  At least, that was the reaction when I posted on Instagram about  trying the FormaV radiofrequency device from @inmodeuk and why we all ought to talk more about this sort of treatment. Though to be fair, a good number of people said, “Thank you for talking about this,” which is great to hear.

This is a women’s-wellness treatment, as Dr Shirin Lakhani explained to me, and nothing to do with getting a “designer vagina”. “It’s about function rather than appearance,” she stresses. In a nutshell, the RF is delivering heat into the tissues to stimulate collagen production – just like it would in the face – and reduce the atrophy (looseness, dryness) that comes on with age, or after childbirth, and tighten up the vaginal tissues, which should improve your sex life as well as making everything function better.

You want whoever is treating you to have gynaecological training, so that they can examine you properly beforehand, otherwise they’re flying blind. Dr Lakhani told me that I’ve got not just laxity but prolapse: she says she can feel my bladder coming down. ‘Would that be why I need to go to the loo so much in the middle of the night?’ ‘Yes,’ she said. That might explain why just tightening my pelvic floor muscles didn’t do the trick.

This device, the FormaV, just delivers radiofrequency – there’s also an intimate-treatment version of the Morpheus8, the Morpheus8V, which delivers RF energy through microneedles deeper into the walls of the vagina for greater effects – the idea makes me flinch, but I’m told it’s not painful.

This treatment felt really strange, but it was perfectly comfortable. In fact I couldn’t feel a thing, except when the device touched my cervix, which would very much rather not be touched. ‘Is that normal?’ I asked Dr Lakhani? ‘Yes,’ she said reassuringly.

20 minutes later, we’re done. I can’t tell if there are any results from one treatment. To really address that laxity, I need several more sessions. I’ll let you know how it goes if I get round to it.

Inmode Forma V, £650 per session

April – Sylfirm-X RF needling

I went for a catch-up with Dr Mahsa Saleki and snagged another Sylfirm X treatment while I was there. This is a type of RF needling that can treat pigmentation and redness as well as addressing skin texture and acne scarring. With care, it can be used up to the eyelashes and around the brow bone too.

That means it’s brilliant for improving the skin quality and it’s appearance. Here’s a video of me trying a previous Sylfirm-X treatment if you want to learn more about it.

May – wrinkle-relaxing toxin 

I’ve carried on having toxin quarterly with Dr Sophie Shotter, to balance up my face and damp down excessive muscle movement. Lots of people tell me with great confidence that “you can’t have Botox once you’re over 60”. But that’s not true. You absolutely can, as long as your practitioner has enough expertise to work with the way your face changes as you age.

I find it’s particularly helpful in my jaw muscles, to stop me from clenching my teeth so hard all night (not restful!), and in the stringy vertical platysma muscles in my neck, to stop them looking less – well – stringy.

Wrinkle-relaxing injections with Dr Sophie Shotter, from £400 for one area. My treatment involves a lot of toxin which adds up to more like £1,200. 

June – Mole check

It’s a while since I had my moles checked by an expert eye, and given the rising rates of skin cancers, especially malignant melanoma, I thought I’d nip along to Cosmedics to see whether Dr Ross Perry could spot anything untoward.

The short answer was ‘No’, which was good to hear; you can click the next link to read more about what Dr Perry calls the “ugly duckling signs” and my mole check.

Meanwhile, TTG’s contributing editor Becki popped into Montrose London to try their mole-mapping service; you can read about her experience in the same article.

July –  Keravive: the Hydrafacial for your scalp

You might wonder why you’d want to spend 40 minutes having a Hydrafacial machine worked carefully over your scalp rather than your face, but as expert hair-health adviser  Kelly Morell explained to me, the Keravive treatment will do you a lot of good if you have thinning hair or hormonal hair issues, and particularly if you’re struggling with any scalp imbalances like an overly oil, or too-dry scalp, or psoriasis.

First, there’s the deep-cleansing phase, an extremely thorough exfoliation to improve follicle issues like oily flakiness, or dryness, or just clear product build-up. It’s not uncomfortable as the water-vortex in the Hydrafacial tip digs in around the roots of my hair and grubs out anything that shouldn’t be there (and yes, it’s all gathered into the machine’s canister for a satisfyingly revolting “gunkie” afterwards).

Then my scalp is treated to the special Keravive serum – a blend of 12 different peptides and growth factors to improve hair growth – which is worked into my nice, clean receptive scalp and follicles. Kelly also gives me a spray product to take home –  another peptide blend to be sprayed into my roots before bedtime to help stimulate hair growth.

You can have these treatments as a one-off scalp-reviver, though if you have a hair issue Kelly would advise have one a month for three or six months.

Keravive treatments cost from £250-£450 depending on location 

August – Toxin in my Armpits 

If you suffer from excessive sweating – a condition called hyperhidrosis – injections of toxin  (ie Botox or any other brand your injector prefers) in the armpits (or hands, or scalp) are a massive life-enhancer as they quell the sweating for up to nine months at a time.

If, like me, you don’t have hyperhidrosis, then toxin in the armpits is an entirely unnecessary treatment but I love it because not sweating is just fabulous. No need to bother with deodorants and antiperspirants, no wet patches in the armpits of your shirts and dresses… and judging by how many practitioners offer the treatment, I’m not the only person who thinks this unnecessary-necessity a real treat. There’s more info about the treatment, which is FDA approved, on that link above.

Armpit toxin, from £500, depending on location 

August/ September

Polynucleotides! Everyone has been talking about them with increasing excitement all year, even though these shreds-of-DNA-injections have been around for years. YEARS! Anyway. This is the tweak that gets called ‘the salmon-sperm facial’ even though Plinest, the brand I tried, is made from trout gonads, not salmon, and as you can see in the pic you could in no way call this a facial. I had this elixir of epidermal youth injected into my eyelids, and also into my face, neck and chest. If you’re feeling up to it you can watch the video of my Plinest treatment.

But eyelids? Seriously? Yes, these ‘intradermal’, i.e. right into-the-skin, jabs are the officially recommended way of delivering polynucleotides into the skin, to improve its strength and quality. I had this done by Dr David Eccleston at his Medizen clinic in Birmingham, and followed this with two more rounds of treatment with Dr Paris Acharya at The Ardour Clinic in London. The results have been great: my skin looks fresher, which I interpret as being a bit firmer, and better hydrated, so less crepe-y, which is very good news.

Plinest Polynucleotides, around £400 a session, depending on the location and the practitioner. 

September

In September, I was off up to Liverpool to be filmed trying the Hollywood Laser Peel  with Amanda Azzopardi.

It’s a treatment as exciting as it sounds – what with all the drama of the black carbon peel that is painted on to the skin, heated with the Lutronic Hollywood Spectra laser to infuse the carbon deeply into the skin, then zapped off, with a great deal of snapping and popping, by the same laser. This second step blasts away the carbon, taking with it the dead skin cells that have stuck to it, which left my skin with a lovely radiant glow.

Do a course of these treatments, and you’ll gain smoother, fresher skin from the new collagen and elastin that the laser generates – or you can just have it, as I did, as a one-off before an event.

Hollywood Spectra Laser Peel, around £100, depending on location

October – lip filler! 

It’s years since I’ve had filler in my lips and the older I get, the more wary I am of any tweak that may leave me looking ridiculous. Dr Kuldeep Minocha told me he could certainly balance up my lips in a very subtle way and, because he’s a dab hand at less-is-more treatments when it comes to filler, I had plonked myself on his treatment couch before you could say, “numbing cream”.

He treated the area around my lips (with Restylane Classic) as well as the actual lips, and here’s a link to the full article and  video of my lip refresh if you want all the details, and to see the results.

A consultation with Dr Minocha is £275. Lip filler costs from £550. Treating the lips and the perioral area, as he did here, costs £950.

November: the Laser Genesis glow-up

Lasers are often seen as a hardcore, heavy-duty option for in-depth skin-resurfacing – and they absolutely can be. But they can also be used gently, with the power dialled down to a lightweight setting, for a painless treatment that delivers a nice radiance boost with no downtime. String together a bunch of these gentle treatments, and you’ll benefit from the more far-reaching effects of the laser – in the case of Laser Genesis, these include reducing acne, minimising the appearance of pores, toning down redness, and building collagen and elastin to firm and strengthen the skin.

I headed to Bristol to try the treatment at Dr John Quinn’s Mayfield Clinic and talk to him about why he’s such a fan of this particular mini-tweak.

If you take look at the video of the Laser Genesis treatment, you’ll see that, well, there’s not much to see. No flashing lights, no numbing cream needed, just me relaxing for 20 minutes and emerging with very clear-looking skin.  I haven’t followed up with more sessions, but one was enough to give me and idea of what this tweak can do.

Laser Genesis treatment, from £125-£250 a session, depending on location. You can find your nearest practitioner who offers this through the Cutera website. 

November/ December: E-50 Exosomes with TargetCool 

“Exosomes are the micro-vescicles that make the communication between the cells,” says Dr Giovanni Angelini, as he prepares to blast me with a dose of E-50 marine-derived exosomes. “Blast”, because he’s using the TargetCool, a device which fires out a stream of super-cooled CO2 gas along with the precious exosomes, which will be driven into the skin, where they can go about their work of renovation. They’re definitely going to get into my skin, those exosomes, because Dr Angelini has already given my face a thorough microneedling (with 0.2mm needles – deep enough for the product to sink in, but shallow enough that it’s tolerable without any numbing cream). The benefits? More collagen stimulation, improved skin tone, and smoother, fresher skin. “Ringiovanimento, as we say in Italian,” he adds. “Do you know the word?” Sure I do: it’s ‘rejuvenation’.

The microneedling – of course – stings like mad and makes my face feel hot and bothered, so the freezing jet of gas and exosomes feels wonderfully cooling. The cold starts to reduce the redness straight away, and, since the exosomes have a strongly anti-inflammatory effect, I am reasonably confident that my face will look almost normal after 24 hours.

Two sessions in, my skin is loving these – they seem to be supercharging the results of the polynucleotides that I had in the autumn – and looks better than it has any right to in the depths of winter.

Here’s a link to read more about exosomes.

 E-50 Exosomes at The Geneviv Clinic, £900 per session – three sessions are needed for best results.

So, what tweakment that I’ve tried this year are you most interested in? Click the links to discover more, and I’ll report back on what I’m going to be trying in 2025 soon too.