Cellulite laser treatments: don't waste time, money and hopes, they don't work - learn why

Laser treatment for cellulite removal: a review 

There are three types of lasers used for cellulite and skin tightening:

• hot lasers, i.e. high energy/thermal lasers

• cold lasers, i.e. low energy lasers and also known as low level laser therapy / LLLT

• surgical lasers

Here you can read an analysis of all three types of lasers used for cellulite removal and their effectiveness.

Hot lasers for cellulite removal and skin tightening: ablative and non-ablative

Hot lasers are high energy lasers than can be ablative or non-ablative.

Non-ablative hot lasers use short intense pulses to hopefully stimulate collagen production.

However, as laser by definition is very superficial, lasers don’t penetrate deep enough to effectively stimulate fat release and collagen production in the deep skin layer (hypodermis) in order to reduce cellulite. Skin tightening is minimal too, especially when compared with technologies such as high-energy, deep-tissue radiofrequency.

Ablative lasers are used for acne, tattoo removal, skin resurfacing and hair removal and for cutting tissue for surgery.

High energy lasers are able to ablate (i.e. to excise, amputate, remove by erosion/melting/evaporation or otherwise destroy body tissue. In that sense, we can say that high energy levels work through "brute force".

Ablative lasers are really good at treating superficial tissues by creating controlled damage, as in removing part of or the entire epidermis (upper skin layer) in order to remove acne, wrinkles and other blemishes.

However, cellulite is found in the deepest layer of the skin and thereby it simply cannot be removed by ablative lasers without first burning away (ablating) the rest of the skin itself, including the dermis (the core of the skin). This is obviously not an option - who would want to burn their entire skin?

So all those IPL machines, cold lasers and hot lasers, used for anti-ageing, resurfacing and hair removal cannot be used to remove cellulite, despite the erroneous claims and the marketing hype.

They are just too superficial.

Surgical lasers, fat removal and cellulite

Having said all that, there is a case where ablative lasers are successfully used to melt fat (but NOT cellulite).

This is the case of laser-assisted liposuction, also known as smart-lipo, mini-lipo or laser lipo.

For smartlipo, a cannula is inserted underneath the skin (and therefore UNDER the cellulite layer) and melts the deep subcutaneous fat, which is then aspirated (sucked) out of the body more easily.

Smart lipo, or mini lipo, is used for the removal of limited amounts of fat (normal liposuction is better for larger amounts of fat), but it is still an invasive liposuction procedure which often causes quite a lot of scar tissue / skin hardening / fibrosis.

Laser-assisted liposuction has been out of favour for some time, largely replaced by ultrasound assisted liposuction (vaser) which is equally effective but much gentler, as it causes less scar tissue.

Laser liposuction does NOT remove cellulite, as cellulite is an integral part of the skin itself and therefore can not be removed - who wants to remove their skin?

Cellulaze for cellulite

Cellulaze is an implementation of a hot/ablative laser, such as the one used for laser liposuction.

Whilst laser liposuction targets the fat under the cellulite layer with a laser-tipped cannula, cellulaze targets the cellulite layer itself, also with a laser-tipped cannula.

For cellulaze the cannula is inserted into the skin, UNDER the cellulite layer, and fires UPWARDS onto the cellulite layer, aiming to basically cauterise / coagulate / burn it.

In theory this causes thermal (heat) damage of the cellulite fat and tightens the skin by literally burning the hypodermis (lower skin layer).

As always, in practice things are not as good as on paper, because the power needed to burn the fat above the cannula, is so strong that it does not cause simple coagulation, it very often causes severe deep burning, followed by severe deep scarring which manifests as hardened skin and hard lumps.

So the end result is that you may end up replacing the cellulite bumps with much larger and harder scar tissue lumps. Not smart…

I have personally seen some quite bad hardened scar lumps on clients who had cellulaze. These where much bigger and much worse than the cellulite they had before, with the cellulite around them not affected in the slightest either.

If I had cellulite, the last thing I would do is shell out thousands of pounds for that result.

No wonder then that cellulaze did not really catch on in the UK, despite the huge initial hype.

Cellfina for cellulite

We saw above that cellulaze quite often replaces the cellulite bumps with scar tissue bumps, sometimes worse than the original ones.

On the other hand, cellfina, the latest cellulite laser-based minimally invasive surgery, does not replace cellulite with scar tissue, it replaces it with saggy skin.

With cellfina, a tiny laser tipped cannula is inserted into a cellulite ‘peak’, side-fires the laser on to the ‘trough’ next to it and cuts the shortened, hardened connective tissue fibres that tether the indented skin to the tissue underneath.

This sets free the anchored skin of that specific indentation and restores the smooth appearance of the skin on that specific spot. Then another spot is chosen, another anchor is released and so on, for up to about 25 cellulite bumps per surgery.

This sounds great on paper, but not so much in practice.

Let me explain. Have you ever wondered why mother nature created those collagen ‘tethers’ that keep your skin attached to your deeper tissues?

Exactly: those collagen tethers exist to ensure skin stays put and doesn't glide sideways, like a wobbly fruit jelly. By undercutting what keeps the skin in place, you replace one evil with another: you replace cellulite with wobbly, flabby, loose, saggy skin.

Given that most women with cellulite already have loose, saggy skin, I don't know what is worse: cellulite with some wobbly skin or less cellulite with very wobbly skin.

This takes us to the next point. With cellfina you can only release the cellulite anchoring fibres one at a time. Given that cellulite legs have hundreds of those anchors, not just 25, it is obvious that only a small amount of them will be released.

(If all of them were released, then you would be left with no anchoring points to keep your skin in place at all and it would simply slide on your body. Not a good image…)

So after cellfina, a course of high power, deep acting radiofrequency treatments is a must, in order to treat the newly acquired skin looseness.

But then again, a course of strong radiofrequency treatment without cellfina would have improved the cellulite anyway. It would have actually boosted firmness at the same time, instead of - literally - undermining it, so why have cellfina in the first place?

And there is one more thing: cellfina realistically only works on a few dozens of the hundreds of large, DEEP HYPODERMAL ANCHORS, the ones that cause the deep cellulite indentations. That is what cellulite experts call deep cellulite.

However, cellulite also comprises literally hundreds of medium-sized and thousands of small-sized, more superficial DERMAL/HYPODERMAL ANCHORS, i.e. medium-depth cellulite and superficial cellulite.

For those thousands of small but annoying cellulite bumps, cellfina does nothing, as those bumps are part of the hypodermis and dermis itself, not part of the superficial subcutaneous adipose tissue where cellfina works.

So ALL these thousands of smaller bumps will continue to exist after cellfina surgery.

All in all, this laser cellulite procedure is destined for the really desperate with really, really bad cellulite indentations. For those people, cellfina will make those deep, bad cellulite indentations disappear, and in that case perhaps the resulting skin wobbliness is better than the cellulite bumps - as long as one doesn't move or shake their thighs too much.

LLLT, non-surgical “laser lipo”, “fat melting” and cellulite

In contrast to ablative lasers, low level laser therapy (LLLT) or cold laser therapy is very gentle and is used in physiotherapy as a therapeutic stimulus for superficial tissues, such as superficial tendons and ligaments. We could say that cold lasers work by "gentle stimulation", as opposed to the brute force of high energy hot lasers.

Similarly to ablative lasers, the problem with cold lasers is that they do not penetrate enough to reach the hypodermis, i.e. the innermost layer of the skin, where cellulite is located. Moreover, the power used for low level laser therapy is minuscule and definitely not enough to justify the claims of fat melting and other lies propagated by cold laser cellulite treatment providers.

Most LLLT, so called "laser lipo" machines have a total power of around 200 milliWatts to 2 Watts, which pales in comparison with the good deep acting radiofrequency or ultrasound cavitation machines that feature powers of as much as 300 Watts, i.e. 150x to 1500x times more energy. No comparison.

Given that with the strongest cavitation/radiofrequency machines, a course of 6~12 sessions is recommended for satisfactory results for cellulite reduction, one can imagine what a machine with 1,000 times less power can achieve: nothing.

Clearly "fat melting", "non-surgical fat removal" and "getting rid of your cellulite" are not one of those results and this is also corroborated by studies, one of which is presented below.

Low level laser non-surgical "fat removal" treatments are so "effective" that they now sell for as low as £10-20 per session on Groupon and similar websites in the UK to the naive and the gullible - and of course no one is getting slimmer with them.

The only thing that LLLT achieves is some temporary water retention reduction, which providers of these treatments call "weight loss", "inch loss" or "fat loss". However, it is indeed a case of temporary lymphatic drainage, for which LLLT is indeed helpful.

The whole “non-surgical laser liposuction" industry has been based on a couple of dubious studies published more than a decade ago, which laser experts identified as fake. And reality has indeed shown that there is no way the results described in those studies are real.

Although LLLT has a valuable place in physiotherapy, all that those cold laser fat removal treatments will remove is your money. So don't fall prey to unscrupulous laser “cellulite/fat removal" treatment providers (there are plenty of them around).

LED therapy is not laser therapy and both are equally ineffective for cellulite

Quite a few "cellulite removal" machines, that according to the marketing blurb are supposed to use laser, in fact use plain, low energy light emitting diodes (LEDs).

LEDs are different from lasers, in that the light beam that they produce is not as concentrated and coherent as in cold lasers.

However, LEDs are similar to lasers in that they are equally ineffective in treating cellulite, given their low power (also 200mW to 2W) and, of course, skin penetration.

Most anti-cellulite machines that feature LEDs (and advertised as “lasers”) are combination LED + suction massage + bipolar radiofrequency machines.

The problem with such machines - in addition to the fact that LEDs do not reduce cellulite - is that their bipolar radiofrequency currents are of too low power and of too superficial a penetration to produce any meaningful results with cellulite reduction.

To make matters worse, the suction used for those treatments tends to cause spider veins (thread veins) and skin looseness, actually making matters worse: you don’t get rid of your cellulite AND you do get looser skin.

All in all, lasers do not "really work" for cellulite

In summary none of the options above are ideal for cellulite, with only cellfina being relatively effective, which, however, has the drawback of replacing cellulite with skin looseness - plus the usual side effects of surgery: scar tissue, hyperpigmentation, adverse reactions etc.

If a laser machine worked for cellulite reduction we would have bought it and sued it at the clinic a long time ago.

Let’s now see what lasers can do for “fat reduction” instead.

My LLLT experiment

Theorising that it may be the low energy of those systems that was responsible for the lack of results (some of them use as little as 300 milliWatts of total power on the whole body, which is pathetically little, to put it mildly) I have trialled a powerful 12 Watt system (12,000 milliWatts) on a small skin area, as opposed to treating the entire body with the usual 300 milliWatt systems used for non-surgical “laser lipo”.

After 12 sessions, the result was that fat actually marginally increased by the treatment on the treated areas.

This makes sense considering that this kind of laser therapy actually heals tissues and stimulates growth. Quite the opposite of tissue destruction such as "liquefaction of fat" that "laser lipo" clinics claim.

So the laser simply "healed" the fat tissue, making it more effective in storing fat.

Great...

LLLT boosts whole body metabolism, but also local fat accumulation

In 2017 a study has looked into the whole LLLT "laser fat melting" issue using subcutaneous abdominal fat imaging on a number of patients. For the study, 17 subjects were treated with a 650nm laser, on one side of the abdomen, with the other side used as a control.

After six sessions spread over two weeks - and a two-week post-treatment period - the results were exactly the same as those of my much smaller personal trial: NO spot fat reduction.

In fact, when the control side was taken into account it was found that in 8 out of 17 subjects there was a relative increase in fat thickness, instead of a decrease.

Yep, that’s right, there was an INCREASE of fat with “non-surgical laser-lipo”.

This can be explained as follows: the whole body underwent some small, systemic fat/weight loss, most probably due to metabolism improvement.

However, the treated areas actually experienced an increased fat accumulation, most probably due to the healing / tissue stimulating effect of low level laser therapy.

In summary, according to this study, LLLT therapy improves whole body metabolism but actually inhibits fat loss on the areas where it is applied - and it may even stimulate fat gain on those areas.

This practically means that by using whole body LLLT in order to MARGINALLY "lose weight", you will have to cope with the increase of superficial fat on the whole body.

Specifically, you may end up losing just visceral (deep abdominal) fat, which is not directly exposed to the laser beam and is not stimulated to grow by LLLT, as superficial fat does.

Clearly more work is needed on this subject to clarify this issue, but in the meantime the wise thing to do is to avoid LLLT "fat melting" treatments, simply because everyday experience has shown that they just "don't work".

So does laser get rid of cellulite or fat?

Absolutely not.

In summary to the above, no laser implementation, hot or cold, surgical or not, is a good way to remove cellulite or fat.

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Low-level laser therapy (LLLT) does not reduce subcutaneous adipose tissue by local adipocyte injury but rather by modulation of systemic lipid metabolism

• Research paper link: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10103-016-2021-9

• Abstract: Low-level laser (light) therapy (LLLT) has been applied recently to body contouring. However the mechanism of LLLT-induced reduction of subcutaneous adipose tissue thickness has not been elucidated and proposed hypotheses are highly controversial. Non-obese volunteers were subject to 650nm LLLT therapy. Each patient received 6 treatments 2-3 days apart to one side of the abdomen. The contralateral side was left untreated and served as control. Subjects' abdominal adipose tissue thickness was measured by ultrasound imaging at baseline and 2 weeks post-treatment. Our study is to the best of our knowledge, the largest split-abdomen study employing subcutaneous abdominal fat imaging. We could not show a statistically significant reduction of abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue by LLLT therapy. Paradoxically when the measurements of the loss of fat thickness on treated side was corrected for change in thickness on non treated side, we have observed that in 8 out of 17 patients LLLT increased adipose tissue thickness. In two patients severe side effect occurred as a result of treatment: one patient developed ulceration within appendectomy scar, the other over the posterior superior iliac spine. The paradoxical net increase in subcutaneous fat thickness observed in some of our patients is a rationale against liquefactive and transitory pore models of LLLT-induced adipose tissue reduction. LLLT devices with laser diode panels applied directly on the skin are not as safe as devices with treatment panels separated from the patient's skin.