The blurb
Regularly topping ‘world’s best cosmetic doctors’ lists, and with a stable of supermodel and celebrity regulars, I was more than excited to be treated by Dr Jules Nabet.
I was trying cheekbone fillers administered with the Teosyal Pen—a technologically advanced ‘mechanical injection pen’ that Dr Nabet is pioneering in the UK. This cutting-edge medical device for facial filler treatments is basically a patented, cordless, miniature electronic syringe holder that results in less pain, swelling and bruising for the patient. The main indications treated are naso-labial folds (nose to mouth lines), followed by cheeks, lips and around the eyes.
Dr Nabet is also one of the first doctors in the UK to use a new filler that has been designed to take into account facial dynamism. Since the introduction of the first hyaluronic acid (HA) dermal fillers more than 30 years ago, a number of advances in composition, production and applications of the products have been made. Despite the huge number of available fillers on the market, one patient need is not currently answered: the dynamism of the face. None of the currently available products takes into account the daily movements of the face and facial expressions except Teosyal RHA, which I was here to road-test, along with the pen.
The process:
I’d initially wanted Dr Nabet’s famous Y-lift, which involves cheekbone fillers plus additional injections between the muscle and bone to lift both the upper and lower face, but apparently this was for much older patients and not at all suitable for me. After looking at my face, Dr N set to work with a biro, marking three dots on each cheek where he planned to inject.
Whilst Dr Nabet wasn’t keen on my jumpy disposition—not helped by the fact he’d deemed anaesthetic cream unnecessary—I needn’t have worried. Once I finally stopped flinching and allowed him to get on with it, it was bizarrely pain-free. There was a slightly disconcerting drilling noise as the pen auto-injects at each site, but very little in the way of actual pain. The filler contains anaesthetic within it, which works almost immediately, and the whole process was over in a matter of minutes.
The results
Amazing. Very subtle, as all good cosmetic work should be, but in those few minutes he took a good few years off me. Cheekbone filler can last between 18 months and two years, and I immediately wished it could last forever.
Panic #2 kicked in on the way home, as half of my face stopped moving and I could only manage an eerie smile on one side, but a quick call to the clinic confirmed this was normal, and just a temporary effect of the numbing anaesthetic. The asymmetry only lasted a couple of hours, but I sort of wish someone had told me beforehand, if only to save me from several minutes of dread that I was definitely permanently disfigured.
That aside, three months on my cheekbones are still high as a kite, the treatment was astonishingly quick, absurdly painless, and no one has noticed a thing in the way of ‘work’. Would I do it again? 100 times over.
