These include:
- A general laxity of tissue due to excessive stretching/stubborn fat
- In a significant proportion of cases, this stretching results in post pregnancy stretch marks
- When stretch marks do occur, there is now evidence of an associated higher risk of stress incontinence and prolapse in later life. In fact, stress incontinence post pregnancy is very common, with more than seven million suffers in the U.K alone
Until recently, many of these symptoms went largely untreated, or in more extreme cases, involved surgery—never an ideal option. Fortunately, in recent years, there have been major advances in non-surgical treatments for many of the problems mentioned above. Used in conjunction with a healthy lifestyle, including exercise and sensible diet, they may be all that is needed to undo the after-effects of childbirth.
Mummy tummy is basically a combination of muscle laxity, stretched skin, and excess fat.
The best treatment for the muscle laxity is exercise. However, for the skin laxity and modest excess fat, High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (Hi-Fu) is an effective treatment. Typically, post pregnancy skin laxity can be greatly improved by two or three treatments, at least four weeks apart.
Hi-Fu is also effective for the breakdown of fat in the targeted area, but it is not a bulk contouring technology. It is better suited to smaller or thinner areas of fat. For people who have a need to remove a larger amount of fat in the abdomen/hip/thigh areas, there are better technologies including fat freezing and laser fat breakdown. The laser approach has the advantage of being faster, and has the capacity to treat thinner layers of fat.
It should be noted that none of these treatments remove fat from the body. They breakdown the fat cells in the selected area, and the released fat needs to be used through exercise or diet, otherwise it will be deposited elsewhere in the body. It will however, contour the body more towards the desired shape.
Stretch marks can often lower self-confidence for many. Thankfully however, there is now an excellent treatment to greatly reduce them. Fractional non-ablative laser resurfacing may sound daunting but the recent advances have resulted in a treatment that, if not pain free, is at least well tolerated by most and can produce excellent results. The treatment is quick, with no downtime. In most cases, three to four treatments will produce an excellent improvement.
The best type of machine is the scanning infrared 1550nm laser that heats micro columns of skin and then allows them to cool before heating the adjacent column. This heating damages small parts of the skin collagen so that the patient’s body moves into repair mode to replace the damaged collagen. A further bonus is that it also tends to build more, new collagen than the old collagen that is removed—giving a further youthful boost to the skin’s appearance.
The above treatments can be used in combination to produce excellent results.
Preventing stress incontinence and associated complications
Such problems are largely invisible and to many are an embarrassing and restrictive condition. The effects of a weakened pelvic floor can be improved by several methods, including a machine to help exercise the muscles.
More recently, non-surgical vaginal tightening procedures have become increasingly popular including:
CO2 Laser—this is effective at resurfacing, but since it, in effect, burns tiny holes in the vaginal walls, it carries a risk of allowing in infection and is not the most comfortable treatment.
Hi-Fu—for vaginal tightening, this has several advantages. It can treat deeper into the vaginal wall and, because of the focusing of the ultrasound; it does not disrupt the surface of the vaginal walls. It can reach therapeutic temperatures internally without significantly heating the outer surface, resulting in a generally comfortable and effective treatment.
Radio Frequency – a third technology in this area, radio frequency is a bulk heating treatment that tends to heat the whole volume in the treatment area. This prevents it reaching truly therapeutic temperatures.
In summary, there are now excellent methods for reducing the traumatic physical effects that pregnancy and childbirth can have on a woman’s body. There is now no longer the need to suffer in silence.
Visit https://cambridgestratum.com/ for more information on non-surgical, pain free rejuvination treatment.
