Esther's June Updates
THE CHEAT’S GUIDE TO EXERCISE
As the saying goes, if there’s “no pain”, there’s “no gain”. Yet as far as exercise is concerned – and the blood, sweat and tears that goes with it – I really do believe I’ve found the Holy Grail. Welcome to EMS – or Electro muscle stimulation: A form of working out that fast tracks your toning results through the power of technology. In practice, this means donning a vest and electrode patches attached to your arms and legs – then performing common fitness moves such as crunches, lunges, bicep curls and oblique planks. The vest and patches attached to your limbs are wired up to a machine that generates electrical impulses, which in turn bring about muscular contraction. This increases the work of muscles to such as extent that advocates claim that a mere 20 minutes of an EMS workout is equivalent to a one and a half hour resistance regimen performed without the device. When the session begins, the impulses are mild and barely perceptible. Yet as the workout continues, so too does the intensity of the impulses, so that by the end of the 20 minutes it’s really quite a short, sharp sensation against the skin! This incredible new way of exercising is now available in our Canary Wharf clinic, where we’ll have personal trainers holding one-on-one sessions a couple of days a week. Delivering a noticeably more toned body in short spurts, it’s the perfect workout for cash-rich, time-poor urbanites. Better still, we’re offering clients the chance to team their new workout method with skin tightening treatments such as our wonderful Radiofrequency and Reduce by Vanquish. I’ve already signed up to a course of 10 EMS sessions in order to see results in time for high summer. After my workout last weekend, I recuperated in steaming bath laced with muscle-soothing magnesium – so I can personally vouch for its efficacy!
TREATMENT OF THE MONTH: THE “MUMMY TUMMY” SOLUTION
Anyone who, like me, has had children, will know that having children takes its long-term toll on your body. Indeed, many mothers out there will be all too familiar with the dreaded mummy tummy that consists of weight gain around the stomach and loose, excess skin. Up until now, it’s been a notoriously difficult condition to treat. Yet here at EF MEDISPA, we think we’ve cracked it – by applying treatments and techniques traditionally used on the face, to the body instead. So mummy tummies be gone – because our new combination treatment, the 3D SkinLift by Ultraformer followed by Microfirm has arrived. Fabulous when performed in isolation, even better when they work in tandem, the 3D SkinLift begins the mummy tummy beating process by working on three layers of skin around the stomach area. Using different depths of ultrasound, it tightens, firms and smoothes lines by stimulating the deep level muscles, building collagen in the mid layer and finally – toning the very surface of the skin. Lasting around an hour, it’s fabulous for treating stretch marks. A week later, you can follow the treatment up with a session of Microfirm Skin Tightening. Radiofrequency is run down the length of microneedles that are inserted into the skin in order to boost collagen and bring about overall firming, with the minimum amount of downtime. I recommend alternating several of both treatments a week or month apart, depending on the severity of your mummy tummy and the time frame you have in which to tackle it. It certainly beats doing 100 abs crunches a day!
ADVENTURES WIT PAUL MCKENNA
I have to confess, that I’ve always been rather fascinated by hypnotherapy. After all, it’s an extension of the many treatments and therapies that I’ve looked into over the years as part of my role in the beauty, holistic health and well-being industry. So I booked myself into a conference with the famous Paul McKenna and the less well-known Richard Bandler – the co-developer of NLP (or Neuro-Linguistic Programming). Off I toddled to the Royal Garden Hotel at 8.30am one Saturday morning – present and correct for registration. Me and 300 or so others, who all filed into a huge conference room where Paul and Richard proceeded to talk about hypnotherapy, in a story-telling manner, for the best part of the next two days. Techniques and the philosophy were covered, but I got the eery sense that we were all secretly being hypnotized without even realising it! When the second day of the course dawned, a few members of the audeince were asked who they’d like have been in another life. Henry VIII, George Foreman and the usual suspects were all named – before each participant was put in a trance. Sitting pretty, smug in the fact that I was merely an observer, I suddenly woke with a start to realise that I too had been “asleep” for 45 minutes! So am I a believer? All I can say is that ever since that day, I’ve felt slightly different. In a way that I can’t quite put my finger on, but that feels better. So naturally, I’m going to the next conference in October to find out!