SHAPE SHIFTING
In light of Linda Evangelista’s lawsuit over a fat-freezing treatment, should we be more worried about the procedure? Alice Hart-Davis investigates
It has been the most popular cosmetic fat-busting tweakment for a decade. But since supermodel Linda Evangelista launched a lawsuit against the company that created the procedure, claiming that it had left her “brutally disfigured” and “did the opposite of what it promised”, many questions have been raised about CoolSculpting. What on earth went wrong?
Does this happen often? Why had we never heard of this before? Wasn’t there anything that could be done to fix it?
CoolSculpting is a brand of cryolipolysis that works by super-cooling areas of fat that have been sucked up into a treatment head roughly the size of a block of butter (there are smaller treatment heads for areas like the jowls and the backs of the arms). When the fat cells get near freezing point, around 25% of them die and are slowly dispersed by the body over the following weeks.
I’ve had CoolSculpting a few times – on my tummy and my love handles – and each time it has worked just fine. There has been a small but significant reduction in the area and once it’s gone, it stays gone.
That’s how it ought to go. But I have friends for whom it hasn’t gone so smoothly and they have suffered lengthy bruising or sharp pain in the treated area that takes a week to subside.