What is The Scientific Fountain of Youth?

If you are a beauty conscious individual, you have the cosmetic treatment of choice.  You have the safe, fast and effective methods.  Laviv is a new injectible that utilizes your own skin cells to reduce wrinkles. It’s very different from more popular injectables like Botox or Juvederm in that it induces your skin to create wrinkle-reducing and skin-firming molecules naturally.  Laviv is radically different – it’s neither a neurotoxin nor a filler.  Instead, it utilizes your skin’s physiology to reboot itself.

Touted as the new Botox, Laviv has generated a lot of discussion as the next miracle treatment to turn back the clock on ageing. Available in the US within the next few months, the product re-injects the body’s own cells into the face to eliminate wrinkles.

Laviv has been taken from the technology first used in the UK in the nineties. Originally called Isolagen, it coined the phrase ‘grow your own facelift’ as a marketing ploy. The procedure then, as now, started with a biopsy or tissue sample being taken from behind the ear. The cells being taken are called fibroplasts; these produce collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid. The cells are then taken to a lab for 90 days and cultured so that millions of new fibroplasts are created. They are then re-injected in to the patient over a period of around five weeks (in three sessions) with the outcome being rejuvenated skin due to fibroplasts stimulating activity of those already in the skin.

That was the theory, anyway.

Back in the nineties, the results were a bit hit and miss. Whilst some loved the results, others are still trying to get their money back in legal actions. This is why there is some frank disbelief over the product essentially rebranding itself and re-launching.

The issue of why Isolagen only occasionally worked becomes clearer when Chris Inglefield of London Bridge Plastic Surgery explains:

“Most of the women who looked to Isolagen for skin rejuvenation were in their 50’s. But, as you get older, you have fewer active fibrolasts. As a result, you tend to have less raw material to work with.”

It means that Laviv is more likely to work for younger women. With a price tag that will be in the thousands, it may be a better option to go for cheaper filler such as Juvederm or Sculptra where the effect is seen in every patient, not just in the few. Or you could choose to age gracefully… *Insert uncomfortable laughter here*

Is LAVIV the real deal? The theory is solid, but in an industry where everyone is churning out the new fountain of youth, the science underneath is a tad fuzzy.