What is Emsculpt?
Emsculpting is a non-invasive treatment that builds muscle and burns fat. It’s painless and it has no downtime.
When you have an Emsculpt treatment you are positioned comfortably on a table, like a massage bed or something equivalent to that and your provider straps the Emsculpt applicators which look like big paddles to the area that is going to be treated, then sets the strength of the treatment and you’re off and going.
How does strapping a paddle to the outside of your body build muscle and burn fat?
What those paddles are doing is they’re providing magnetic energy or high intensity focused electromagnetic energy to the muscle group that you’re focusing under in your treatment.
By providing this high intensity focused electromagnetic energy to the muscle group that you are focusing on Emsculpt can trigger what is called a super maximal muscle contraction.
These muscle contractions are more powerful than anything that you would be able to produce on your own during a workout.
Your body responds to this powerful stimulus by actually increasing the size of existing muscle fibers and building new muscle fibers at the same time because this process is such an intense draw on local energy supplies, your body breaks down local fat cells near the treatment area.
The result is that muscle strength and tone increases and the amount of fat covering the muscle in the area decreases, which is a win-win situation in most cases.
Emsculpt stands out in the world of noninvasive body contouring treatments.
Emsculpt takes its origins from a collaboration with NASA.
Why was NASA interested in non-invasive body contouring?
The truth is they weren’t. They were interested in is solving another problem that they had which is that when astronauts are in low gravity or 0 gravity situations for long periods they experience muscle atrophy or weakness or lack of muscle definition.
NASA collaborated with B. T. L. the company that now makes Emsculpt develop devices to essentially provide physical therapy and muscle strengthening for astronauts if they found themselves in situations where they did have a degree of muscle atrophy.
The scientists at B. T. L. recognize the potential of the technology that they were developing for NASA and thought of other applications, and one of the major applications for this high intensity focused electromagnetic technology was the aesthetic industry.
That technology was further honed and evolved into the modern treatment that we know today as Emsculpt.
This technology has undergone extensive testing. It’s FDA cleared and there’s a great deal of scientific literature documenting the results of this treatment.
Aside from scientific validation, the public has received Emsculpt extremely well, with average patient satisfaction after Emsculpt treatment being at 96 percent.
Emsculpt though is not right for everyone, and a key to achieving excellent results with Emsculpt and making sure that people are happy with this treatment is patient selection.
What kind of Emsculpt before and after results can you expect to see?
Emsculpt is going to tighten and tone the muscles in the treatment area. The most popular areas for treatment with Emsculpt are the abdomen and the buttocks, and also great results and great applications for this device have been seen with the arms for the biceps and triceps as well as for the calf. We can see a great definition of a lot of different body areas with Emsculpt.
At the same time as M. scope is tightening and toning the muscles in the treatment area and achieving better muscle definition, it is also decreasing the amount of fat covering that muscle. You can have the best muscle definition in the world but if there’s too much fatty tissue covering the muscle, nobody’s going to be able to see it. Emsculp helps from that perspective as well.
There is an exception to the general rule that Emsculpt will build muscle and burn fat, and that is for the buttocks. A lot of people that come in for Emsculpt are looking for a non-invasive butt lift. A way to build, sculpt, and lift the buttocks without having surgery, without undergoing something like a Brazilian Butt Lift or fat grafting to the buttocks.
It wouldn’t be very helpful if, at the same time that Emsculpt built the glutes to lift and shape the buttocks, it decreases the amount of fat on the buttocks, because fat is very important in defining the shape of the body.
Several different Emsculpt treatment protocols might be used. The one that is widely used to build the buttocks and do this noninvasive butt lift is designed not to break down fat.
Since Emsculpt is rooted in science, and it comes out of that collaboration between B.T.L. and NASA, it may not surprise you to hear that Emsculpt has some great applications in results outside of the body contouring because Emsculpt improves muscle definition and build strength.
There are a lot of patients that see improvement in back pain after undergoing Emsculpt treatments, and that’s because as your core is better able to support itself a lot of the pathology and anatomical issues might be causing back pain could be alleviated.
Emsculpt can also come in very handy after childbirth, and that’s because after pregnancy the abdominal tissues are often separated from one another in the midline to make room for the expanding uterus, and after the baby is delivered you can be left with a space between these muscles.
Emsculpt has been shown to decrease the size of the rectus diastasis. In addition to having esthetic benefits to decreasing the rectus diastasis, this can also contribute to improved core strength after pregnancy.
Who’s a good candidate for Emsculpt?
Emsculpt is not for everyone, and if someone who isn’t a good candidate has an Emsculpt treatment, they may not see results.
To see nice Emsculpt results, specialists are looking to treat individuals who are at their ideal body weight or close to their ideal body weight, and are primarily interested in increasing their muscle tone and definition because while Emsculpt will get rid of a certain amount of fat in the treatment area, its primary purpose is to build muscle.
The fat reduction aspect of Emsculpt should be viewed as a happy accident in the process of building more muscle. If you’re looking primarily to decrease the amount of fat you have in a body area Emsculpt is not the right treatment for you.
If you’re looking to build up muscle mass and muscle tone, then Emsculpt could be perfect. For individuals that are looking to improve their muscle tone but they have a little bit of extra fat overlying those muscles that go beyond the capacity of what Emsculpt can treat, surgeons often end up pairing Emsculpt with liposuction to achieve stunning results.
Where should you be going to get your Emsculpt treatment? Who should be doing these treatments?
Because Emsculpt is so safe and the treatment itself is so easy to perform, you can find Emsculpt in all kinds of different doctors’ offices and even sometimes at non-doctors’ offices like in spas or other facilities. While this may seem appealing because anybody can strap on the Emsculpt paddle to someone turn the machine on and perform the treatment, this doesn’t mean that a great result is going to be achieved. It is recommended that you go to body contouring experts, real board-certified plastic surgeons to have Emsculpt treatments because even though this isn’t surgery it’s a non-invasive treatment, you should have someone expert in the art and science of body contouring and the underlying anatomy involved in this process to design the ideal treatment for you.
If you’re going to providers that don’t have other instruments for body contouring at their disposals such as liposuction or even excisional surgical procedures, it may be more likely if find yourself in a scenario and say “okay all well we have Emsculpt, so let’s give it a shot” and this also gets into the question of how much does Emsculpt cost, how much is Emsculpt treatment?
In general, while you will find some geographic variability you can usually expect to pay approximately $3000 for the full Emsculpt treatment regimen, and that treatment regimen to achieve the best possible results consists of 4 rounds of Emsculpt performed over 2 weeks.
Like with so many other things you often get what you pay for. The less expensive Emsculpt treatments may not include a consultation with a body contouring expert to ensure that you’re a good candidate for the procedure and to design a treatment plan that will bring the results that you’re going to be happy with.
While going to an under-qualified Emsculpt provider may be less expensive on the front end, it certainly becomes more expensive if you don’t get the results you’re looking for, and then just have to have other treatments to achieve what you were going for in the first place.
The results of Emsculpt are generally not immediate, while although a lot of people report feeling an improvement in their muscle tone and feel better during their work out, sometimes right after, an Emsculpt procedure does take about 4 to 6 weeks to see the final treatment results, and that’s because just like when you’re working out and building muscle, it does take time for the muscle to respond to that stimulation and build itself up.
This leads us to another very popular question about Emsculpt.
Are Emsculpt results permanent?
The answer is no. Like with working out, if you aren’t maintaining the results they will eventually fade. You can maintain your Emsculpt results by keeping up with an active diet and exercise routine, and some people like to have a touch-up and Emsculpt treatment every 6 to 12 months.
Those types of treatments don’t generally consist of the 4 rounds of Emsculpting treatments, but just one round of Emsculpting every 6 to 12 months some people find helpful in maintaining their results.
Will Emsculpt tighten skin?
The short answer is no. But the longer answer is that in some instances by building muscle mass underneath areas that have very mild skin laxity, that mild skin laxity may appear to improve a little bit because by bulking up the muscle you’re taking up some of the slack from that skin but in general Emsculpt should not be looked at as a treatment that tightens skin.
This points to the importance of going to a true body contouring expert to have your Emsculpt treatment because someone like this can start to offer combined procedures that will get you excellent results.
For example, a combination of Emsculpt to build muscle mass, if necessary liposuction to get rid of some of the extra overlying fat, and also radiofrequency skin tightening or the BodyTite device to essentially shrink-wrap the skin to this new and improved underlying tissue structure.
Another great combination of treatment with Emsculpt is with another treatment called Emsella.
Emsella is another device by BTL that uses the same high intensity focused electromagnetic energy, but it is designed specifically to treat the pelvic floor, and while it’s FDA cleared to treat stress incontinence in both men and women, it has been found to provide some nice other benefits as well by building and strengthening the pelvic floor musculature in terms of sexual satisfaction and also improving core strength, because the abdominal musculature and the pelvic floor musculature function in concert to provide that core strength. This led to the term court to floor treatment. Emsculpt aims at treating the core directly by focusing on the abdominal musculature and Emsella to focus on the public for musculature.
This court to floor treatment training idea is particularly relevant now in this period of COVID 19 pandemic.
Something else is being seen a lot with Emsculpt and Emsella. It is that people are opting to come to doctors for what is a medical gym to get in their work out into a clean safe private medical-grade environment instead of going to crowded gyms or classes to do their conditioning. Emsculpt has always been a great treatment.
