Ep 39 - Tech Talk on Body Contouring

​​​​​​​0:00:00.5 Speaker 1: Award-winning Celluma light therapy devices are the choice of aesthetic practitioners around the world. Celluma may be used for stand-alone acne, anti-aging, or pain treatments, and as an add-on following micro-needling, surgery, laser, and peels. With 11 models to choose from, offering head-to-toe treatment options, Celluma offers the best low touch, affordable and portable devices on the market today. And with the new battery-powered iSeries, both clinic and mobile practitioners can take their light therapy treatments anywhere. Visit celluma.com, call 714-978-0080, or email info@celluma.com to find the device that's right for you. 

 

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0:00:50.3 Maggie Staszcuk: You are listening to ASCP Esty Talk, where we share insider tips, industry resources, and education for estheticians at every stage of the journey. Let's talk 'cause ASCP knows, it's all about you. 

 

0:01:05.7 MS: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the ASCP Esty Talk. I'm your host today, Maggie Staszcuk. I've been a licensed esthetician since 2006, and I'm the Advanced Modality Specialist here at Associated Skin Care Professionals, where no topic is off-limits. We share all kinds of great information on this podcast, from ingredients and the science of the skin, to business and beauty diversity. We hope you come away having learned more about your career, the industry, and maybe even life, in general. Today, we are joined by Stan Kapica. Stan has a 20-year career in the media and marketing world, and in 2012 began the first whole-body cryotherapy center in Manhattan. In 2015, this evolved into a whole-body distributorship selling cryotherapy chambers and devices. The company continues to evolve as new technology advances and devices come on the market. Please welcome Stan to the podcast show. Hello, Stan. 

 

0:01:58.5 Stan Kapica: Hi, Maggie. Thanks for having me today. 

 

0:02:00.4 MS: Thanks for coming on the show. So some things in life we just can't change, but thanks to noninvasive body-contouring procedures, treating areas with stubborn fat and cellulite is just not one of them. And in today's esthetic marketplace, the devices and technology available for this sector of the industry are immense. We have the use of cold, heat, radiofrequency, laser, and even injections. And generally speaking, when we talk about fat reduction and body-contouring, can you tell us a little bit about how this works?  

 

0:02:31.0 SK: Sure. Well, in the whole body-contouring arena... Body-contouring is a broad field, so it can represent fat and cellulite reduction, but it also ties into skin tightening. So, bariatric surgery is bigger than ever today, people losing a lot of weight, you have post-pregnancy skin stretching, you have even the dreaded bat wings and bingo arms as they're called, as women age and they develop those fat pockets or excess skin on the back of the arms. Until now, everything has been more or less defined and bucketed by individual products for specific use. So you've had your cellulite and skin tightening specific type of modalities, you've had fat reduction modalities, and now it is evolving to where you have products that are multifaceted. The other thing about the history of this business is that it has been very heavily controlled by the medical profession and the FDA, justifiably so in certain respects, but most of the equipment has been very cost-prohibitive, about $135,000 plus, Class II medical device license requirement. And it's just a very expensive platform to get into, plus you have a really high consumable as well. 

 

0:03:53.4 SK: So when I first found out about some of these devices when we started distributing back in 2017, I got into body-contouring in early 2017, the whole goal was to find something that could be broader use by the aesthetic community and that limited to medical and have a more multi-dimensional approach, so that body-contouring could be affordable to a much broader demography than it has been affordable to in the past. And so that's where I think the whole thermal shock premise comes to the equation. And thermal shock is basically just using warm and cold at different times, temperatures, and sequences, depending on the desired effect you wanna create on the body. And that approach can be applied to fat reduction, cellulite reduction, skin tightening and toning, and even anti-aging special, even facials and aging, neck or de collete where you have excess skin or wrinkles, and so you don't need to have a whole... A ton of products in the facility, you can have one product that will perform all of these functions, and that's... The aesthetic community, estheticians, and massage therapists have really had a lot of this taken away from them over the years by the medical community, and this is something that kind of puts them back in and being able to offer these services. 

 

0:05:18.7 MS: And I hear you using the term thermal shock, how is that different from other body-contouring devices that are on the market? And for somebody that doesn't know that term, thermal shock, what is that?  

 

0:05:31.0 SK: So you may be familiar with what chiropractors, physical therapists use, which is contrast therapy. They use ice and hot pads to create a contrast effect to help with muscle recovery, facilitate healing. Well, thermal shock originally began as a physical therapy modality, and then it evolved in the beauty and really all it is, is when you approach a situation with hot and cold in conjunction, it has a more dramatic effect at the cellular level than if you use hot or cold independently. 

 

0:06:07.0 SK: So when you can... You have a device that can create a very rapid and dynamic execution between those two temperatures extremes. It has a more dramatic effect at the cellular level and shocks the cell. The analogy I would use with everyone is, You're sitting in front of a fireplace, you have someone massaging your neck, you're drinking a glass of wine, it's about 80 degrees in the room, nice music playing, and you're ready to fall asleep. Then suddenly someone smacks you in the back of the head, knocks the wine out of your hand, blows out the fire and open some windows and it's zero degrees outside. That's what happens to the cell when you go from a nice relaxing heat on the face for a couple of minutes, then you're going to an extended period of cold, and then you're coming back to heat again. And these devices use electric current to induce thermal shock versus radio frequency or cryolipolysis or other types of things. So, it's electric current just being transferred back and forth to... And it uses 50/50 premixed antifreeze and internal closed reservoir, that travels through the device going to a thermostat, it regulates the temperature. 

 

0:07:17.6 SK: So what happens is, it can go very fast. You can go from 41 celsius, which is 107 Fahrenheit to -16 celsius, which is zero Fahrenheit in less than 60 seconds, by the head of this device. So, if I've got two minutes to heat on the face, I've relaxed the tissue, I've stimulated collagen. Then I go from five to seven minutes of extended period of cold on the face. I've tightened the skin, I've lifted, I've reduced inflammation. Then I come back to heat again, so you're going from hot to cold to hot, and that reinvigorates the elasticity in the tissue at the same time. So you're performing a myriad of functions at one time. Now take that science and apply it to the abdomen. Say you want to reduce fat cells in the area. So you start with a period of heat to relax the tissue, then you go to an extended period of cold to get down below the dermal layer, to the fat cells. It's like peeling an onion. And then you come back again to a period of heat at the end, and the heat at the end induces those fat cells that have died to release their lipids. 

 

0:08:25.1 SK: And when the lipids or fatty acids are released, they create air spaces between the fat cells. And so you don't have to do a manual massage in the area to break up the cluster of fat cells, because air pockets are created. So that... Those lipids flush out in first 48 hours through the lymphatic system with a normal... Somebody has to perform some type of lymphatic drainage afterwards, whether it's an exercise, red light therapy, infrared sauna, there's a variety of mechanisms you can use for that, it could be just a lymphatic massage. But those fat cells, the lipids, pass out in the first 48 hours. The fat cells with regular exercise and proper diet, also or that helps, will flush out within the next four weeks. 90% of them are gone within two weeks, actually. The whole process takes about four weeks for all of them to flush out. So you can actually do a treatment every two weeks. 

 

0:09:16.0 MS: Wow. And so, generally speaking, how many treatments is somebody needing or how... You said coming back every two weeks. But is it kind of like a one and done, or what does the series look like?  

 

0:09:27.9 SK: So it's always based on a series, unless somebody has very little fat, then you can go by a one-off and see how they do, and see what the reaction is. But generally you need to do minimum of five treatments but because the consumable is only gel, so it's $2-$3 for treatment, that someone only has to come back periodic... If they come back every two weeks, it's $300 a treatment or $1500 for five versus you're facing almost that for one of a more traditional approach. 

 

0:10:01.6 MS: There's something you mentioned that really stuck with me. As tatoocians out there that are doing body contouring, they may not have the choice in the device they're using because of the doctor they work with. Or if they do have the choice or maybe they're about to invest... They're developing a med spa. One of the benefits of something like thermal shock, and if I'm hearing you right, is that the benefit between hot and cold is that you're not following up with massage or lymph drainage or LED. It's that, that heat and the cold will do that process for you, and flush that cell after the fact, is that right?  

 

0:10:41.9 SK: They do... I mean they still need to do a workout or something to stimulate the lymphatic system after a treatment, but it's not something where a nurse has to do a manual massage on the abdomen or something to that effect. They can be left to their own recognises or usually most people have some other type of modality in-house that you can put them on. It could be a vibration or something simple as a vibration plate to help stimulate the lymphatic system. 

 

0:11:07.2 MS: Mm-hmm, that's really interesting. And I also heard you talk about tightening and stimulating that collagen, so that's even another benefit aside from just flushing that fat cell. Boosting collagen is, we talk about that in the industry all the time, anti-aging. And so what benefit can somebody expect just from that aspect alone?  

 

0:11:30.2 SK: So what we're doing is we're taking dormant collagen and bringing it to the surface and recalling it. And when you do... If I did one treatment today you'd see an instant result. Before the person leaves, you gonna see a change. But if they didn't come back in again in a week, it's gonna recede. But if you do a cluster of, say, five treatments in a 10-15 day window, you're instilling basically a memory in that collagen again. And it stays close to the surface. Then you go to maintenance, because once you lose it, that's it. You can't replicate it again, but you can recall what's dormant in skin and bring it to the surface. So, depending on age, once to twice a month. Some people do it with repetition and keep the process going. Some people do it just before an event, maybe it's a wedding, maybe it's a 30 or 40-year college reunion, and you wanna look better than everybody else. There's a practicality to it at the same time, but the beauty of it is... No pun attended... Is that you have one source that you can do everything with, and for an esthetician, it's nice that they don't have to have a huge capital investment. 

 

0:12:45.5 MS: And what body areas are being treated? Are we focusing just on the trunk of the body? Can we treat the face as well? If somebody wants to do under the chin, for instance, is it everywhere, or are they limited?  

 

0:12:58.2 SK: No, basically, you can treat everywhere on the body. So skin rejuvenation, you can do everywhere on the body. Fat reduction, arms, back, abdomen, legs and glutes, and for cellulite, most cellulite is confined to the legs and the glutes, but on some women, they get it on the back of their arms as well too. Cellulite, I think the data is that 85% of women have cellulite, and it's genetic. 

 

0:13:29.9 MS: So I've been hearing about a new technology in body contouring, and that is called Roboderm technology, so tell me a little bit about how this is different and how it works from this thermal shock that we've been discussing. 

 

0:13:43.4 SK: Thermal shock, I just wanna say is a non-invasive technology, as is Roboderm. So Roboderm is... There's a manufacturing company in Italy called ITEC, and they have a product they have called icoone, and they've had it for a number of years, but they just created a point of differentiation versus their competitors. Where the competitors use rollers, flat rollers, they use motorized rollers that have recessed vacuoles in them for stimulating the skin, and one of the cool things that they've done is that one of the scientists there actually took a camera and embedded it in the skin and has made a video that they're producing right now, so you can see what happens to the skin as the Roboderm technology goes across the top. So you can see, because the skin is our biggest organ in the body, and it's one interconnected organ, and you can change the structure of it when you use this Roboderm technology, so it's suction combined with the roller, with the rhesus vacuoles in it, and when you roll it over the skin, it triggers elastin and college and a realignment of the skin, and that can give you almost instantaneous results as well. 

 

0:15:11.5 SK: And it's not invasive. It squeezes the fat cell to induce lipolysis, which is just the removal of the fat out of the cell. There's no fat cell death that occurs, so it is a more natural approach than anything else out there, but it's really incredible for body contouring, and cytoline. I found out about this device from an anti-aging doctor in South Beach named Dr. Christoph Goles, and he's a very famous anti-aging doctor in Poland who came to the United States with his practice. He had four centers in Poland. And when I met him, I said, "What is that? That's such a beautiful device." And he said, "Oh, it's icoone. It's the best cellulite device in the world." And I said, "What makes you say that?" He said, "I had four of them at my facilities in Poland," he said, "and I have the first one here in the United States." That was about two years ago. And so they've evolved it since then. So there's a laser version, which is a class two medical, and there's a non-laser version, which can be used by any esthetic center as well. So you have it available, so it does face, neck, décolleté. It does all parts of the body. The first thing you do with it is you do a 20-minute drainage setting on the body, on the whole body before you treat the isolated area, so you're facilitating lymphatic drainage and optimizing lymphatic drainage. Then you do your treatment on it, on the body. 

 

0:16:34.2 MS: That's very, very interesting. The fact that the fat cell still stays, but the lipids are removed is very, very interesting, because when we talk about body contouring, at least when that first came to the market, the whole idea was rid the fat cell, you'll never develop that fat in that area again, and so this is a very different concept. And I have heard about this, if I'm saying it correctly, the technology MMAS, which I think is what is part of this Roboderm, the multi micro alveolar stimulation. Is that what is stimulating the removal of those lipids?  

 

0:17:15.6 SK: Well, yes, that's part of what it's doing at the same time, so it's aspirating the tissue, it's oxygenating, it's squeezing the fat out of the fat cells, and it's also... It's taking your... Where you have cellulite and the connective bands that become constricted, it's freeing that up, and because you're facilitating lymphatic drainage, you're optimizing the flow of fluid in that area, so that outer pocket of the leg and buttocks, that usually is the area where most women will develop cellulite, it frees it up, and it's the only technology that you can do every day. So where everything else is once a week, you can do it every day. So if somebody can go to a day spa for four days for a weekend, a resort spa, and they use this, they can see results before they leave, and then so somebody else with fairly common fibrotic cellulite, in 10 to 15 days, they can clear it up to where they can go to once a month for maintenance, instead of waiting months and months historically, and like you say, it's a more all-natural approach. But it does, it re-conditions and retones the silhouette because you're squeezing the fat cells and at the same time you're tightening your skin, stimulating collagen and elastin, and you're remodeling. It's like a massage. You fall asleep when you're having the treatment. 

 

0:18:34.0 MS: Yeah, interesting. And so, since cellulite is a genetic issue, is this something that is just going to smooth and you have to maintain or because those fat cells are being squeezed, it literally is removing that fat and eliminating the cellulite, and once the treatment or the series has been completed, you never have to worry about coming back and getting that treatment again?  

 

0:18:56.8 SK: I know some people who only need to come back once every three months. Some people have to come back once a month. It just depends on how constricted that area is. So normally you wanna do five to 10 treatments that can be done in 10 days, five to 10 days, see what your results are, and we'll see how much farther you wanna go with it, and then if you see it starting to come back, you hit it again, or you just come in once a month for proactive maintenance, and it's... No, it's two to $300 of treatment, so it's not a bank breaker on a monthly basis. So I don't know many women who wouldn't wanna keep cellulite from coming out. [chuckle] 

 

0:19:33.4 MS: Definitely, [laughter] that's the truth. Yeah. So we've talked about two really diverse forms of technology here, the thermal shock, the Roboderm technology. What advice do you have for estheticians that are looking to either advance their education or they are expanding their offerings and looking at bringing on some form of technology like this into their practice?  

 

0:19:55.2 SK: Well, it's complicated in terms of knowing where you're gonna spend your money effectively. There's... Price points vary. You can spend anywhere from 25,000 to $60,000, and it's just a matter of... Sometimes I tell everyone, start at the basics. Build your business, unless you have a good size aesthetic business, when you know you have a nice client pace to draw from. Start with a more minimal investment, build your business, and then earn the right to have something that maybe has static pads that replace the manual operation or the Roboderm. The Roboderm is really more of a volume type of scenario. 

 

0:20:45.6 SK: The ROIs on all the devices are great because you have almost no consumable with each one versus some of the more popular cryolipolysis devices are as much as a $200 consumable for an abdominal reduction. That requires the medical license as well. These have almost no consumables, so you're putting all the money in your pocket, basically, and you can finance all these up to five years. It just depends on a credit score and length of time in business. Some finance companies, now, are taking to consideration how many years you might have had an estheticians license instead of just looking at how many years you've been in business. So it does change the dynamics some because they take experience into account. 

 

0:21:27.9 MS: Yeah. And is education something that's generally provided by a distributor, such as yourself? Or a manufacturer? Or do they need to find a training center that would give information on body contouring and all the options that are out there? Do they need like a certification?  

 

0:21:47.8 SK: Well, knowledge is power, so for your insurance companies, you're going to need a certification. We have all of our technicians here are Pagani or iTech certified master trainers. So we do an extensive training process for everyone. We have an ongoing support with a help desk that staffs six days a week to provide technical and aesthetic support. So you always have a lifeline, just make sure that whoever you decide to pick and purchase a machine from, that they have, both, a strong on-premise factory-trained staff, and that they maintain a factory-trained technician with full parts inventory and loaner units, in case you're down. Or have a national service network with somebody who can service the device if needed. 

 

0:22:35.1 SK: And we approach it, where we're always filling customers in, even we tell them what our competitors are, because you need to do the research and know that you're making the right investment. And we don't want anyone to make it unless they've gone, number one, try the product first, and even if they wanna travel here to do it, we will reimburse them for their expenses, take it off the price of the machine if they wanna come here to do a demo. But now with Zoom and FaceTime you can do a lot more. We've become the Zoom economy now. [chuckle] 

 

0:23:09.0 MS: That is the truth. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, this has been really, really good information, Stan. It's been a pleasure chatting with you, and I thank you for sharing your expertise with us. Can you tell us where we can find you and all the things that you're doing?  

 

0:23:22.6 SK: Sure, so our company is called Cryo-generation. It's C-R-Y-O dash generation dot com, and you can also call me at... My cell is 914-552-5128, or you can reach out to cryo dash generation... I should say, Stan@Cryo-generation.com. 

 

0:23:43.0 MS: Thank you so much for joining us and thank you everyone for listening in, and you all have a great day and we'll talk with you next time. 

 

0:23:49.4 S1: Thanks so much, Maggie. 

 

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0:23:51.6 MS: Thanks for joining us today. If you like what you hear and you want more, subscribe. If you wanna belong to the only all inclusive Association for Estheticians that includes professional liability insurance, education, industry insights, and an opportunity to spotlight your six skills, join at ASCPSkinCare.com, only $259 per year for all this goodness. ASCP knows, it's all about you.