My Beauty Space : Product Reviews, Tips and Experiences

Ugh, it’s that ugly, spongy looking stuff that plagues even the thinnest of women.  You’ve probably seen one too many gossip magazines with well known, famous, and beautiful women and even models, on the covers of these “expose” types of magazines, saying “ooh look who else has cellulite” as if to mock their perfect images and bask in their revelation that these gorgeous women also get cellulite, not just us poor shmucks who can’t afford the latest and greatest cellulite treatments and lymphatic drainage massages several times a week.

Well, I must say that sometimes seeing even the most beautiful and successful women get cellulite may sometimes make me feel a tad bit better about my own struggles with the spongy stuff, it still makes me mad that we have to deal with this on top of everything else a woman is made to feel insecure about by looking at all the fashion magazines and dealing with the increasing onslaught of near nudity in films, showing unrealistic figures and little to no real body fat.

However, we “regular women” do have several weapons against cellulite that we can use, and we can use them very successfully in our own homes, with dramatic results if we just use the right tecniques and the most effective products we can get our hands on.  Most cellulite creams contain ingredients that help to reduce puffiness on the surface of the skin, by doing this, they tighten the skin and make any dimples that appear in the skin’s surface much less noticeable. 

But you can add to the effectiveness of even the best cellulite treatments by using your own elbow grease to help smooth the lumps out.  When you apply your cellulite treatment, make sure you apply it with plenty of pressure and also make sure that you apply the pressure going up toward your heart, instead of down toward your feet.  We are trying to work against gravity - not with it, and you are trying to bring your skin and lumps up, not down. 

Also, it may be slightly more effective if you use a cellulite massage, which is very inexpensive and can be found in even drugstores today, in the shower, when your tissue is heated and you can actually get better results since your tissue is more malleable and when it is heated it may be more conducive to smoothing out, at least temporarily. 

I like the better results I get when I roughly massage my cellulite afflicted areas of my body, the thighs being the worst on me personally, however, I’m also fairly prone to easy bruising and that can be a problem when you are massaging very hard to help smooth out the bumps that cellulite produces in this area.

Body wraps were made popular as a way to temporarily spot reduce fat and to help trim size off the circumference of typical body omplaints on women and men - their bellies, thighs, buttocks, and upper arms, and evolved into somewhat of a regular treatment for many who swear by it’s detoxification abilities and their great affinity for spot reducing size as well as the appearance of that thing we all hate, cellulite.

Body wraps started off as a pampering beauty treatment for those that could afford things beyond the expensive haircut and coloring on occasion, since they usually went for anywhere from fifty to one hundred dollars per appointment.  Add that up and you have quite a costly beauty habit!  For information on a product you can buy that you can make your own home made body wrap with by buying ace bandages and performing the wrapping yourself, see our Revitol cellulite treatment review.

Now, thanks to the innovation of a few companies offering at home body wrap treatments, we can do a body wrap on ourselves, in our own home, on our own time and in privacy and comfort.  There are a few excellent kits being sold mostly online now that can really give you that smooth, toned, smaller look on your problem areas just like the in-salon treatments can do.

Body wraps done at home are a simple way to help trim a few inches off over a few days or weeks with repeated use if you are anticipating a big life event, say you’re in a wedding, going on a big date, or you have a high school reunion to attend, these are the times that many people seek out body wraps so they can spot reduce their trouble areas without actually dieting or killing themselves exercising to do it.

Home body wrap systems often work by the user applying some sort of herbal botanical concoction to the area they want to treat first.  These special herbal mixtures may contain any combination of tightening and toning ingredients such as seaweed, caffeine and other ingredients that tend to help reduce water retention and encourage the smoothing out of the skin.

These kits then supply you with some sort of a wrapping devices, such as thin strips of wrap material that look similar to an ace bandage, which you then use to tightly wrap the area you are treating after you have applied the (usually herbal) formula.

These techniques provide size reduction and cellulite smoothing as well and tone improvement in the affected areas by using compression as well as the ingredients in the topical cream or serum to really force the fat cells to compress together, creating a smoother, leaner look, and often even temporarily reducing the size by “training” the tissue to stay smaller and tighter for a period of time as well as smoothing out the appearance of cellulite.

Often times once you can achieve the desired outcome after doing several treatments, you only have to do upkeep treatments after that to maintain the look you want.  Note that body wraps both at home and at a salon are not designed for actual weight loss, they only make the body parts they are applied to appear smaller, but they usually do not cause the individual to lose weight, only size.  Any weight loss should be viewed as a bonus.

Cellulite reduction products such as creams, serums, gels and liquids, heck, even some offer pills that claim to help with the reduction of the appearance of the stubborn spongy stuff, have quite a few ingredients in common usually.  There’s a reason for that, and that is these ingredients have been demonstrated to have somewhat of an effect on the appearance of cellulite in the people that use it.  Albeit it is usually a temporary reduction, but it nonetheless does seem to disappear from view at least reasonably for hours after application.

But are their ingredients that really help to tone and tighten, that you should look for when choosing the best cellulite treatment you can find, and do these products really make a difference?  My belief is that they do, as a cellulite cream user myself, since I can definitely see a difference in the pitting and spongy look in my buttocks and thighs when I’m using the cream regularly vs. not using it.

First off, your cellulite cream should definitely have some source of caffeine in it. Where the caffeine is derived from it shouldn’t matter, but caffeine is one of the best surface toners out there, and models have been using the coffee grounds to reduce cellulite for a long time, however that’s messy and time consuming, so utilizing caffeine in a cream is best for those of us who don’t have time to mess with using used coffee grounds on our trouble areas in the shower every morning. 

Many types of algae have been shown to have skin tightening properties, as well as helping to alleviate surface water from the skin, which just pushes the bulges out further, making the cellulite appear worse than it is and exacerbating the problem areas.  Natural algae is not only great for cellulite, but also is therapeutic for the skin as well, so you get a two for one here.

Retinol and retinoids are excellent as well, as they are a derivative of Vitamin A, and they have great therapeutic properties for toning the skin and helping promote elasticity, something that is hindered by cellulite, hence the puckered look instead of a smooth look.  Retinol is not only a great cellulite fighter, but is also excellent for the skin and is used in several top notch skin care products for anti aging because of it’s promotion of skin elasticity. 

Well, for those of you that loathe that spongy, loose looking flesh that tends to accumulate so much on women in the same “problem” areas such as the hips, thighs and buttocks, and occasionally even the belly and lower legs (calf area), there may be some very exciting news in cellulite reduction.  But brace yourselves, because it’s probably the most expensive cellulite treatment to date. 

At a rate of about $4,000.00, you may have access to getting cellulite reduction that actually lasts, and also where results can be seen after just one session.  Normally, cellulite treatments take several sessions to gain results, and then take monthly or biweekly treatments just to keep those results going, but this Thermage cellulite reduction treatment may be a little better than what’s currently out there when it comes to permanent results and quick ones too.  It’s called the Thermage Therma Tip CL cellulite tool, and it’s bound to cause a buzz in the beauty and spa industry as soon as women see results after the very first visit, if it works as they company says it does.

Thermage is a system that has been used for a while now, and is usually used on the face as a means of anti aging and wrinkle control.  It is a series of radio frequency waves and heat that are transmitted through the skin via a professional hand held device, and it supposedly can penetrate layers of skin more effectively than even the best layers currently can do. 

This is why they are saying it is so effective at breaking up fat and helping rebuild collagen while improving the circulation and promoting blood flow to help break it up more, and why it is great for breaking up cellulite problem areas, and very quickly.  The cost though is very high, and that is definitely a consideration and something that is casting it into the only-the-rich-can-afford stratosphere of beauty and personal care, so it may be very limiting, but often times when something is first introduced it’s astronomically prices and then comes down shortly thereafter. 

Unfortunately, this is so new that I have not read any reviews or user experiences with the treatment yet, but I do know that many users complained about Thermage that had it done on their face, that it was extremely painful.  This may be different though, since it is not being performed on such a sensitive area, and it may also produce a different set of feelings because traditionally where there’s cellulite, there aren’t many nerve endings of blood flow, which is why it bruises so easily, but which also may be why the pain could be totally tolerable in this area.

Body wraps are gaining popularity in the realm of body sculptin and shaping, as well as helping with cellulite reduction and shrinking of body parts like the butt, thighs and arms, all of which are common problem areas that are complained about from women, who are of course the most frequent seekers of quick fixes for body fat and downsizing since it’s such an emphasis for women to be thin and trim in today’s mainstream media.

So, do body wraps actually reduce you by inches as they claim?  And if so, how does a body wrap work to do this?  Well, I’m no expert on body wraps, but I have read about them and what they do to make it appear as though you’ve actually shed weight.  By the way, the costs of body wraps today range from about fifty to one hundred dollars per treatment, so a series of treatments does not come very cheap, but if it works and you find you get results, it may be something you would add to your beauty regimen.

Body wrap professionals claim that what body wraps do is to minimize excess water weight by using compression.  By wrapping the body in bandages and compressing the fat cells, they say this squeezes out excess water from between the fat cells, and makes them all get closer together, which makes you appear thinner.  However, it should be noted that this is only temporary, and once the fat cells expand again, the body expands along with them.

It’s also important to note that body wraps do not actually reduce the fat cells, they only temporarily restrict them so as to shrink the body parts that are wrapped.  Body wraps may use any number of natural or mineral solutions (creams or serums) along with the wrap, and these combined with the compression are what they claim makes your body compress and look thinner. 

Body wraps are probably good for an event or some special time that you need to lose some inches for, but you may want to make sure that you go to a place that guarantees a loss of so many inches within so many treatments so you don’t throw money down the toilet, especially for something that is a temporary fix and is not going to permanently be around. 

Another suggestion is to take a product like this revitol cellulite treatment and buy some ace bandages and just compress the areas yourself - it’d be a lot cheaper and plus you’d be in the comfort of your own home, plus it would provide a lot more treatments than you’d get for the price of one or two at a professional place.   

I was trolling the internet a while ago and saw this treatment that was available at some, but very few and far between, spas and cosmetic dermatologists and surgeon’s offices that was designed specifically for cellulite reduction, called Velasmooth.  I again saw it when I was doing some further research on mesotherapy, which is the injections that are supposed to make fat cells explode and be destroyed and subsequently excreted through your body’s natural waste elimination cycles, and also smart lipo, which is a fat removal treatment that uses a laser to destroy fat cells, allowing your body to remove them. 

I grew curious, so I started to do a little more research on what Velasmooth is, especially since it was very recently approved by the FDA for the treatment of cellulite, and was now available for use by specialists on women who wanted to treat their cellulite.  The Velasmooth system seems, from what I can see, to be modeled on the same premise as the endermologie cellulite treatment machine, in that it uses massage to break up the formation of cellulite lumps and bumps.

But it also goes a few more steps further than endermologie, which, who knows, may prove it to be more effective at reducing the appearance of cellulite than endermologie ultimately.  However, it’s so new there doesn’t seem to be much information out there, so that verdict is still way far away from being reached. 

The other steps that the Velasmooth system uses are radio frequency which is supposed to help break up the spongy appearance of cellulite, and also laser technology, which presumable makes it easier to break up the bands of collagen and the gel-like formation of fatty pockets that cause cellulite to look the way it does.

So, hopefully this newer system will prove effective, but I visited the website for the system itself, and there were only a few before and after pictures showing results, so I’m hoping the company and the people who perform the treatment with the Velasmooth device can come up with many more pictures to prove that the product has excellent results that justify the high end cost of the treatments. 

I recently saw a report on cellulite, and how women are basically “stuck” with it.  The report talked to a few cosmetic surgeons and dermatologists who believed that there were really no good methods currently to help smooth cellulite, but I happen to disagree adamantly on that assertion since I’ve seen dramatic improvement in mine from cellulite treatment cream combined with some good old fashioned discipline in massaging my problem areas either nightly or maybe even every other night (as much as I can, in other words).

The report explained that about 85% of women suffer from cellulite, whether they are thin or larger women.  I happen to also believe that the number of women suffering from the orange peel look is closer to the mid nineties percentage wise, since I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman without the spongy stuff - at least not one that hasn’t had some sort of treatment for celllulite.

It also went on to explain that the cause of cellulite is fatty pockets which are then strained by collagen bands beneath the skin, so it’s really not the deeper fatty tissue that is causing cellulite, it’s really the more superficial fat that is causing it, which is why traditional liposuction does not really help with the appearance of cellulite. 

Also, for reasons thought to be linked to estrogen production, women are the most likely to suffer from cellulite, although a few men do as well.  Women get the most severe cellulite in their thighs and buttocks, where circulation tends to not be as good because of the extra fat and padding in those areas. 

They said that increasing circulation by getting daily exercise or some sort of physical activity in is good for cellulite, and of course massaging is good as well since it stimulate the circulation as well as may help break up the fat deposits and collagen bands that create the puckered look we all love to hate. 

I think the best way to approach minimizing and reducing cellulite’s appearance is to lead an active and healthy lifestyle, reduce salty and fatty foods and complex carbohydrates, and make sure you massage those problem areas on a regular basis.  If you get in the habit of massaging the cellulite stricken areas every night, then it will seem less like a chore, and believe me, you will see a difference, especially if you pair it with something that really works for skin tightening like the Revitol cellulite treatment cream (see reviews), one of my very favorites. 

We have a brand spanking new page for tons of expert cellulite reduction tips and reviews of a few of the best cellulite creams and treatments around where you can treat yourself to cellulite reduction techniques and tightening ingredients in your own home, making for a smoother behind and thighs for those summer months when you gotta show your stuff!

The new page is cellulite cream reviews, and we hope you enjoy it and the tips that go along with it. 

I have to admit, I’m a sucker for beauty products that sound too good to be true, and I did order one that was actually overpriced I felt, and that I thought would probably help me to shape my thighs, which I always feel are a little too curvaceous for my frame, but I’m not really willing to diet them away since they are very hard to get rid of and other parts of my body have to shrink considerably before they go away. 

Smart lipo was looking like a great option for me to get rid of my saddle bags for a while, but I have to admit the idea isn’t all that appealing to me at the moment, and the cost isn’t either, so I was surfing for something to at least help me sculpt my thighs into submission so that I could fit into some of my cute summer clothes that I used to be able to again. 

That’s when, somehow in my surfing, I came across a site that sold body wraps that would supposedly help you lose inches or some sort of girth off of your stomach, thighs, or wherever it was that you would apply them.  I saw that they sold them for the chin area, since lots of men and women have problems with excess fat under their chins, and then they also sold wraps specially made for the belly area as well as the thighs. 

One thing I didn’t like was that after I had paid a high price for them, and I bought two units already, they took me to a screen which offered me additional products, the exact same things, only marked down considerably.  I thought, well hey I would have ordered more if I’d been given the chance to at this price, but that’s reallly neither here nor there since this is a product effectiveness review of the body wraps. 

The wraps come carefully wrapped in separate plastic bags, and you must peel them apart to reveal their full size once opened.  They smell very strongly of menthol, which makes sense, because the herbal ingredients they say they contained must have menthol usually in order to penetrate the skin fully and go to  work.  Menthol is a known agent to absorption transdermally (under the skin), so it is used widely in patches and wraps to get ingredients, whether they be pharmaceutical in nature or herbal, to penetrate as deeply as possible.

I used ace bandages to keep my wraps on my thighs, and although they didn’t cover my entire problem area, I thought they covered enough.  I wrapped them tightly since the directions say to make sure they are tightly adhered for at least an hour, if not overnight.  I chose to wear them overnight, which was a little rough, considering they kept sliding around and the menthol smell was very strong, so my boyfriend wasn’t too pleased that the whole bed smelled. 

However, I must say that it “feels” like it’s doing something while it’s on there, and in the morning when I woke up, I swore that my thighs did shrink a bit.  I’ve used 3 wraps so far, 3 nights apart as indicated, and I have 3 more to use.  I am not going to use them all consecutively though, since circumstances prevented me from doing this already, and I want to test it better next time and take measurements to see if they indeed do take inches, heck even centimeters off of my thighs. 

It is unclear the mechanism by which this works, and I’m always a little suspicious of products that claim to work yet don’t make clear how they actually work, but these do seem to be somewhat effective, if not a little expensive.  I’ll keep you posted on my next round with these, measurements and all!  Oh as far as cellulite treatment goes, I’m not sure they help with that at all, but I’ll let you know if I notice a difference with these next three wraps.