I suggest they come see me for Skin Consultation at a later date. Nobody seems to think that's much fun. The chat continues...
One of the girls has been for some kind of skin analysis at a franchise where 'the girl told me I needed botox, a course of laser facials, and a some AHA serum. I left feeling old. The brat!"
Another one spent a year doing naturopathy appointments and a rose quartz roller with a $200 organic cream, but drew the line when she was recommended past life regression to undo energy blocks that were causing her frown lines. I don't blame her.
So I tap into my Consultation Software and show them a client who has given me permission to share her images for marketing. It's a photo of skin taken under an Observ Diagnosis device. They've never seen it.
Everyone leans in and oohs and aahs. But there's too much wine going on for me to start a Ted Talk in the Transport Bar - plus the bands about to start.
So here I am mid-week, writing about why they need a Skin Consultation.
Get ready for the link in the group chat ladies...
The Day of your Skin Consultation
You arrive at the clinic. Ideally you have no makeup on, and you've had none on for the whole day so far. This is because I want to see how much oil you've produced so far. If you can't arrive makeup-free, that's okay. I'll work with what shows up.
Using a piece of diagnostic equipment called an Observ, I take photos of your skin. Oil, water, blood vessels, pigmentation, all show up. You get to see the photos & I can explain what you're looking at.
It's important at this point to say, the point of Skin Consultation is to determine your skin type & any skin conditions. It's quite literally the ONLY way to correctly customise your skincare product routine & treatment routine correctly. If we do just a chat at reception, the best you're going to get is an excellent routine - not a mind-blowing, who-does-your-skin-sis routine.
So here with are with our photos.
I've got questions. Lots, and lots, of questions.
It's going to be about a half hour chat if your skin is generally healthy, longer if you skin condition has deeper triggers, such as with hormone-mediated acne, or inflamed dry conditions.
We aim to
- identify your main skin type from within the only 3 that exist (hint: dry, oily and sensitive is not the 3).
- identify your primary skin condition. This is the one we will treat first.
- identify any secondary & subsequent skin conditions.
- find the cause, trigger, driver of the main conditions.
- determine the best ingredients for your unique skin, and customise a skincare routine to match.
- give you a Skin Treatment plan so you know what you can book.
All of this takes more than a glass of wine (if you drink as fast as my friends, anyway) but it's the most interesting chat you'll ever have.
You stand to save a lot of money on your skincare purchases, have much better skin and see your skin go from 'needing a peel once a month just to feel human' to 'holding it's moisture, firmness, not breaking out and glowing the majority of the time.'
I like to show you the ideal skincare routine to be on 'one day' with your understanding that 'one day' could be a few weeks away, or it could be years.
For today, you'll need a couple of things, and some lifestyle advice (don't worry, you already know I don't ban people from wine).
Are we on a skin fitness bootcamp here, or what?
You know in the 90s, I had to convince people to use skincare and book treatments. It was all about trying to get you to take your skins eroiusly. Those days are over, and if you're here, it's because you know the reputation of this clinic for getting seriously great skin results. Modern clients are here for the journey.
Today we have a different challenge, which is that the product is BETTER.
The skincare stocked in skin clinics has gone from cosmetic, to cosmeceutical, to cosmedical... to truly bio-similar skincare that supersedes all of that, customised for your skin, using compounds you could not possibly get from a pre-mixed bottle because the science simply would not work.
What we use will pull the years of emulsifier build-up, waste and nonsense out of your skin. Your skin will improve, but so will your knowledge of skin, beyond anything you could read in a blog, magazine or hear from a marketing brochure. My goal is that you get the power, while I get the trust, and your skin gets the glow.
You can buy what I recommend now, or take home the plans I write out and think about it.
Starting the skin journey starts with consultation, and continues throughout your life. Sometimes you'll lean in & level up your skin health with more treatment, more serums, more love as you go through a stressful period. Other times you'll pare back and maintain.
Of course your skin will continue to change - it's a living organ after all. It will probably never be perfect. And that's the kind of honesty you should be looking for in a skin therapist, because anything else is not worthy of the group chat.
Click here to book a Skin Consultation
Click here to find out what the changes could look like.
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We know the main reason most people don't get the results they want is a lack of education among the skin clinics who aim to treat them.
Many Skin clinics, including many of them here in the Southbank and South Melbourne area, are so often just using the machines they have invested in until they are paid off, regardless of whether those machines are giving the results clients are looking for, or not.
How does this happen?
Firstly, skin clinic owners are very busy. They have a lot to do.
There are very few of them who get a chance to leave Southbank/South Melbourne, get out of town and visit clinics around the world to see what is current and what is getting really good tightening, lifting results.
Often the better they are today, the more likely it is that they will fall behind tomorrow. After all, if your skin clinic is fully booked, you don't have a lot of time to travel the world and look into the best technologies!
Just like in the medical field, after graduation and opening a practice, a busy practitioner gets much of their information from visiting representatives of device suppliers. They come touting the latest lasers, IPLs, tightening devices, HIFUs...the list is long.
Each of these devices represents a serious investment for a skin clinic owner, and they need to be able to operate them until they are paid off. |Nobody wants to be paying off a skin tightening device that has already reached the end of it's life cycle.
But what if the device turns out not to be good at tightening and lifting the skin?
What then?
There is almost no chance a skin clinic can return a tightening and lifting device to the manufacturer. It's almost impossible.
The excuses a clinic owner will hear vary, but they include:
- everybody's skin is different so not everyone will get a firmer, tighter skin
- clients need to follow all the aftercare rules to get a good result
- there is new technology and we are happy for you to trade in this machine to buy another one. The skin clinic is scared to do that, because if the first device didn't work well, why would this one? Nobody wants to throw good money after bad.
All of the above are valid, but it's pretty disappointment if you have invested in a skin tightening device and you find out it doesn't work.
So this is just ONE reason why some people are being sold treatments to tighten up their skin, that end up not working.
Another reason is EDUCATION.
When skin clinicians / dermal therapists / beauty therapists and skin therapists study, they learn a lot about the individual systems in the body.
Many of them go on to study more about the skin. There are plenty of skin therapists out there who can tell you all about cell turnover, barrier function, and everything about how the 'skin' works.
They can fix skin and make it gorgeous.
But this is not all they need to know.
In order to get a skin to tighten and lift, skin therapists need to know a lot about many areas.
Here are just some of them:
- how to produce somadatrophin growth hormone in the body using exercise in order to aid in collagen production
- what type, frequency and style of exercise, and how to do that safely for that individual client who wants to tighten and lift her skin.
- what nutrition is going to help the person wanting to tighten their skin
- which foods are harming the tightness of the skin and making your skin sag
- how medications are going to impact your skin sagging or skin tightening
- what impact the climate and environment has on your skin. For example you might think 'I live in South Melbourne and the weather there is like XYZ' but actually, even within the small area of South Melbourne and Southbank has a wide variety of ways people live and differing environments. Some people are sleeping in hot rooms beside the freeway overpass, others have bedrooms opening onto a cool terrace garden on a quiet street. These things matter for so many reasons and different skincare and lifestyle advice is relevant for each of these people. Even different skincare ingredients.
- how much work the person has done to trigger collagen production BEFORE having a tightening or lifting treatment done. If you have just come to the skin tightening party today, we are doing to need to do a bit to get your skin jogging, before asking it to run the marathon of a non-surgical facelift.
That makes it sound like a lot of work but it's really not.
Getting the skin 'fit for the fight' is about knowing what lifestyle, ingredient and exercise triggers to pull to get skin producing collagen in that particular person.
This is where individual experience comes in. Does you skin therapist really know how this stuff works?
The combination of the right machine, in the right hands, on the right person, at the right time, after the right preparation - all go into the mix, and how that cake looks and tastes is deeply individual and dependant on all these factors.
If you want to get good results with skin tightening, non-surgical facelift techniques, we highly recommend you start with an Ulfit Consultation at Natashas Skin Spa.
Performed in a private treatment room right here at our Southbank skin clinic, you will find us easily located beside Ink Hotel, at 171 City Road. We are just a block away from Crown Casino, Crown Towers and Crown Promenade.
You'll be able to park right outside, come in off busy Southbank and experience a peaceful, calm atmosphere where our skin therapists can take the time to learn all about you, your lifestyle and see if skin tightening is going to be right for you.
We have multiple types of skin tightening machine, all of them TGA approved, clinically proven to work then submitted to the TGA, a government body who assesses the data and says whether or not we can make such claims.
Most of all, we have highly experienced skin therapists who have worked here in our Southbank skin clinic for many years, performed hundreds of skin tightening treatments and non-surgical facelifts, and know just what to choose for each persons unique skin tightening needs.
If you would like to visit us, please book in online or drop into our Southbank skin clinic today. We would love to help you achieve good firming, tightening results with treatments that really work.
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