We are a society that is obsessed with physical appearance and the battle to stay looking ‘forever young’ is one aspect of that. However, the missing key to the anti-ageing process has now been unlocked, with facial muscle care now being shown to be the vital ingredient to naturally restoring the youthful appearance of the face.

Many women will go a long way to preserve their facial beauty. Avoiding the sun, treating your skin and eating and drinking healthily are all universal factors in the battle against the aging process. In fact, the average British woman spends hundreds of pounds a year on beauty products – and some will even resort to cosmetic surgery in a bid to beat the signs of ageing. 

Today there are many alternatives to going under the surgeon’s knife and the findings about facial muscle toning is heralding a revolution in terms of helping to delay the ageing process in a natural way.

While muscles in the face and the body naturally waste as we get older, the majority of women are unaware that as part of their beauty regime they should not only be toning their skin, but they should also be toning their facial muscles too which will help provide a visible and natural face-lift without the need for surgery.

Our live and interactive WebTV Show will show you how you can keep your face looking younger through muscle-toning without the need for expensive treatments or cosmetic surgery – and will include a look at the new Slendertone Face, which has been certified in compliance with the European Medical Device Directive.

So if you want to know how best to keep your facial muscles toned to reduce your crow’s feet or smooth out frown lines, submit your questions before the chat.

Dr Trish Smith, the CEO of Slendertone, and Margaret Dalton, who’s tried and tested Slendertone Face to tell us how we can keep our facial muscles toned to reduce the chances of your age being guessed in the wrong direction again.

For more information visit www.slendertoneface.com

H: Lis Speight, host
T: Dr Trish Smith, the CEO of Slendertone
M: Margaret Dalton, trial case study, Slendertone Face

H: Hello and welcome to the Lifestyle Show, I’m Lis Speight. Now we all know about the lengths people will go to in order to preserve or enhance their beauty.  These can range from the common practice of applying lotions and creams to the growing trend of Botox injections, and even more extreme forms of cosmetic surgery.  However a new scientific study has discovered that stimulating facial muscles is in fact the key factor in helping to delay the signs of ageing of the face.  Interesting stuff.  Well joining me today to talk about this is Dr Trish Smith, who is CEO of Biomedical research and has developed the new Slendertone anti-ageing product.  Welcome along Trish, really nice to see you today.  And also Margaret Dalton, who's took part in the clinical trials, welcome Margaret.  Now you’re both looking fabulously young and we’ll be asking you how you do it a little bit later on, but first of all we are live, so if you’d like to get your questions in about how to keep your face looking that little bit younger then do get them into us. All you have to do is type your name and your question in the box that’s on the screen, press send or submit, it’ll come through to us here in the studio and we’ll try to get through as many as we can during the course of the show.  But let’s talk a little bit first about ageing.  We all do it, don’t we unfortunately, but we all like to look that little bit younger. So how do we go about keeping looking young?  Margaret you look fabulous, how do you do it?

M: Well I think you have to look after your skin.  You have to cleanse and tone and use a moisturiser, keep your skin hydrated.  Of course your lifestyle as well helps – drink loads of water, have your early nights, don’t drink too much alcohol

H: We’ve heard it all before

M: Yes

H: We don’t do it though do we?

M: We don’t, no.  We all slip up on occasion, but basically I think if you do look after your skin, and a lot of it can be genetic – you can help it along as well

H:  So you get what you’re born with, to a large extent?

M: To a certain extent yes

H: Trish would you say that’s true?

T: Yes I would, that’s – I suppose the key thing I would focus on is you know, stay off the cigarettes

H: Right

T: Because they’re deadly for wrinkles.  Deadly for wrinkles

H: And we all know that again don’t we but often we only find out when it’s too late don’t we?  So start young and you should be on to a good trick. But the celebrities, they seem to look younger and younger – how do they do it?  I mean how do they do it?

T: A mixture.  A mixture of different things.  I mean we all try different things and some of the things we try are more effective than others.  You know some of the creams that are on the market today, they really do have an impact on deep lines and wrinkles.  Botox for example, by basically inactivating some of the – some of the muscles can avoid lines on the forehead, and the fillers that some of the filler products – hyaluronic acid injected directly into the wrinkle quite often is pushes the skin out from underneath

H: Yes.  But the celebrities have access to all these things don’t they Margaret and we don’t a lot of the time do we?

M: No we don’t.  We can’t afford them.  A lot of us can’t afford them

H: No.  And they have the best make-up artists etc etc so you know they have to look good don’t they?  Where the rest of us struggle to keep up a little bit don’t we, but there we are.  But the muscles in your face actually have quite a big part to play, and Trish actually knows quite a bit about this because Trish has a background in electro-muscle stimulation. There we go.  So Trish tell us how you got into this and what it exactly means?

T: Ok.  Well I trained as a medical student in Nottingham university and then once I qualified I studied cardiology, hospital cardiology for a few years before moving into industry

H: Right

T: And for the last probably 15 years – 10 / 15 years I’ve been working with small companies who have novel health care products that they’re bringing to market, and I came across this company who was actually using electrical muscle stimulation to rehabilitate muscles that had been damaged or weakened as a result of injury or in fact disease – stroke, multiple sclerosis – these products basically were really a medical products company, a medical devices company

H: Right.

T: And Slendertone is just the consumer arm of that, so we use exactly the same technology for our consumer products as well

H: Right.  And how important are the muscles – I mean it sounds obvious, but in keeping the  structure of the face?  Does that have a lot to do with ageing and how we look?  We’ve got some slides actually, I’ll put a slide up here of the facial muscle

T: Yes let’s talk a little bit about this – I mean basically the muscles, they sit on top of the skeleton of the skull, so they’re covering the bones of the face, otherwise you’d look very strange.  They basically – they are inserted into the skin. They’re called mimetic muscles, but as you can imagine like muscle everywhere in the body, as you get older, once you reach 30 pretty much they start to waste away.  It’s –

H: Waste away, that sounds terribly sad doesn’t it? At 30 as well, it’s starts quite young doesn’t it?

T: Well it’s the age-old story of use it or lose it

H: Yes

T: So unfortunately that wasting, as you can imagine the skin’s draped over those muscles so as they shrink, basically you do get a lot of hollowing and sagging and of course as they shrink also there’s more likely to be creases round the skin

H: Right so that’s where your wrinkles come from

T: They’re your wrinkles

H: That’s interesting – shall I move onto the next one now?

T: Yes you can

H: There’s a slide here

T: So effectively really what we’re trying to do here is gently exercise the muscles of the face. That’s how this new device works.  Gently exercise all of the muscles of the face so that you bring them back to the size that they were when you were younger

H: Oh right

T: And in doing so your muscles will fill out from underneath so it’s actually almost a natural filler

H: Right. Which sounds much more healthy maybe than injecting something in your skin

T: Absolutely.  Absolutely and basically as you can see on this slide, the product has two paddles.  It’s quite a cool looking device I think.  It’s like a headset, and the headset goes underneath the ears rather than over.  These two paddles on either side of the face sit just in front of the ear, and that is where the facial nerve which is a cranial nerve, the facial branch of the number 7 cranial nerve actually comes out from behind the ear and branches out, it supplies all of the muscles of the face, so by gently stimulating that nerve you can actually make all of the muscles of the face very gently contract and relax, and it’s important that it is very gentle.  So we’ve spent a long time working on the programs in this device to make sure that there isn’t too much contraction –

H: Right

T: Of those muscles, and as a result of gently stimulating those, what you get is a very tingling in the face almost – not movement.  If you’re getting a little bit of movement you need to just pull it back

H: Right

T: Because that gently stimulation has been shown in the clinical trials to be enough over a 12 week period to re-educate that muscle and rejuvenate the muscle, so that it increases in size and volume

H: Ok.  It all sounds very interesting stuff.  We’ve had  a few questions in already actually.  I think we’ve just answered this one – Jenny Young from Sutton Colefield said “how are our facial muscles affected by the ageing process?  At what age do our facial muscles begin to waste?”  you said 30

T: 30-ish

H: That’s about 30

T: I suppose it depends what your lifestyle is

H: Yes well exactly.  If you smoke a lot and you don’t look after yourself it could be older than that so -  I don’t know how old you are, but anyway it’s 30, so you’re either on the way down or you’re on the way there aren’t you?  Now Margaret you were actually involved in the clinical trials

M: Yes I was

H: Obviously for -  tell us sort of how it went, what exactly did it involve?

M: Well first of all I had to get an ultrasound done on my face, in the first week.  And then I took the product home with me and I used it for 5 days a week, and every week then I had to go off and get my photograph taken

H: Right

M: And on the 12th week again I had the ultrasound done again

H: Right ok.  And we’ve actually got some slides that show that, I’m not sure whether this is actually you but this is certainly somebody from the trials.  Now this looks a bit like someone who is having a baby to me, which is what an ultrasound is really.  But just explain to us a little bit about what is going on here?

T: Ok well you can basically see the markers on here – there’s a couple of crosses and a couple of little – I’m not quite sure what those other things are, but they’re actually – those are markers where we actually measured the thickness of the zygomatic muscle on the left side of the face.  So those markers are put in place by finding a bony prominence so that we could be sure that at each time point that we measured, we’re measuring in exactly the same place

H: Right.  That’s important isn’t it?

T: Yes it is.  So this was the start of the study, and you can see up in the left hand corner that the actual measurements, the 0.051cm – that’s actually the width, that’s those two markers are at the 0.051 – the length is the distance between the two areas that we were measuring

H: Right

T: And then on the next slide

H: Move on to the next one

T: This is after 12 weeks in fact, and what you can see is a substantial thickening of that muscle.  I think that’s about – it’s just shy of 50% in fact.  So we’ve measured in exactly the same place again, and you can see that the muscle has thickened, and that if we actually look – it’s slightly shorter as well.  Just slightly shorter

H: So what does this mean then?  What effect does this have on your face?

T: So effectively what you’re doing is you’re increasing the volume of the muscle, and you’re probably just shortening it a little bit. And that’s very important because muscles of the face actually insert into the skin.  It’s the only place in the body where this happens, so as those muscles tighten and shorten, they’re actually tightening the skin on the face

H: Right

T: And they’re also of course giving it a gentle lift up

H: Yes so gentle is the key I guess?

T: Gentle is the key.  That’s absolutely what we’re trying to do, and this is a very comfortable – it’s a very comfortable treatment I think – well that’s the best way to describe it

H: Yes.  So Margaret you actually took part, so tell us a little bit about what it feels like?

M: Oh it’s just very – it’s very, very gentle.  It’s a very gentle like a tingling – almost a tingling sensation

H: And when did you do it, when you were watching the telly or –

M: Yes you could be doing your ironing, you could be watching the telly, you could be reading a book, and really and truly it’s only 20 minutes out of your day.

H: Yes

M: It’s quick and easy to use

H: Yes

M: And –

H: Did it hurt?

M: Not a bit – just a slight tingling.  No not a bit.  Didn’t hurt at all

H: Yes.  And do you have to sort of prepare your face at all before you put the product on?

M: You couldn’t be wearing – you have to cleanse your face.  No make-up on

H: Right so no make-up.  And why is that

M: You’ll destroy the pads

H: Oh right, I see

M: You know just have your skin completely clean

H: Yes

M: But you do really feel your skin is firmed and toned afterwards, definitely

H: So you really noticed a difference did you?

M: My colleagues did at work

H: Oh that’s interesting

M: First of all before I did.  I think I was using it for about 12 days and one of the girls I was working with said your skin looks radiant, you look different

H: Isn’t that interesting?  So other people actually noticed.  And so how long do you have to use it for?

M: I think you’d have to use it a few times a week on an ongoing basis really.  It’s like anything

H: Yes.  It’s a muscle at the end of the day isn’t it?

M: You’ve got to keep using it, yes

H: And is it dangerous at all?

T: No.  No.  I mean the amount of electricity that we put through, and it basically it’s delivered through the pads on the facial units of – these things are just sat just in front of the ear, these two pads, and this goes behind, under the ear and round the back of the neck. And basically the amount of electricity coming through here, this is the controller here – quite a cool looking thing

H: Yes.  It’s very futuristic looking isn’t it?

T: It is actually, it is.  It looks a bit like an Ipod I suppose.  Anyway basically the amount of electricity that you need to deliver to those muscles to make them contract and relax is very small.  It’s no more than if you’re – if you’re talking to somebody and they make you laugh

H: Right

T: Your brain tells you to smile and the muscle contracts, and out come the corners of the mouth

H: Yes

T: Well it’s exactly the same, so there’s no more electricity than you would normally have naturally in the body

H: Right I see.  So it’s not dangerous. That’s a good thing isn’t it?  Ok so we’ve had a few more of your questions in actually we’ve got one from Julie. She says “I’m in my late 20s and I’m beginning to notice lines.  During the day make-up does the trick but in the long run I’m going to need some muscle stimulation, aren’t I?”

T: Well it won’t do any harm, let’s put it like that.  I think what I would say is yes it will help but it needs to be started now really

H: Right

T: On a regular basis, and combine it with the other parts of your beauty regime and stay healthy.  Don’t smoke.  Plenty of water, a little bit less of the alcohol possibly

H: Yes

T: And a good diet.  You know we all talk about antioxidants and berries and vegetables etc

H: And stay out of the sun as well

T: Stay out of the sun

H: The sun is such an ageing thing isn’t it?

T: Yes

H: But a lot of moisturisers have the factors in them now don’t they?

T: Yes, which is great

H: Exactly I think that does have a big impact.  Maria has written in, she says “once you start using a muscular stimulator do you have to use it forever?”

T: Well I think it’s like any exercise regime, you know the benefits are there so it’s much better to maintain an exercise regime, and the same with the facial muscles.  They’re no different

H: Yes.  I mean it’s a bit like cleaning your teeth, once you sort of get into the routine of doing it, you just do it

T: Use it a couple of times a week for 20 minutes – it’s nothing, you know it’s literally you can do this while you’re doing anything else around the house or sitting in your garden – whatever

M: In bed, lying down, having a rest

T: Having a read

H: Just don’t go out with it on ladies alright, just don’t get on the tube - actually people will probably think it’s an Ipod so –

T: Yes probably

H: I’ve seen people wearing much worse than that on the tube, can I say that.  Now we’ve had a question in from John, “my lady’s in her early 30s, would she be upset if I bought this for her as a Christmas present?”  Ah – well you like her to look young.  What do you think?  You’ve used it, do you think you’d be happy?

M: Oh I’d be delighted to get one, absolutely

H: So there you go, that’s your Christmas present sorted out.  And on that note, where can we actually get one of these?

T: Basically it’s available exclusively in Harrods at the moment, for the next 3 months in Harrods and also online harrods.com or if you need further information then go to Slendertoneface.com and you can probably get most of your questions answered there

H: On that one, ok . Last question from Sylvia. She says “people often say I look good for my age and I put this down to getting plenty of sleep and drinking lots of water.  Is this the case?” 

T: Possibly

H: We don’t know do we Sylvia?

T: She’s probably got good genes as well

H: Yes it does help actually doesn’t it ? If you look at your mum and you look at your mum

T: Absolutely

H: It does help doesn’t it? Yes well thanks very much for coming in and talking to us about this, Trish and Margaret, it’s been really interesting.  And keep looking after yourself ladies, that’s the main topic of conversation isn’t it, so keep looking after yourself and keep staying young. And if you do want any more information then you can go to the website which is slendertoneface.com . Well that’s all we’ve got time for today.  Thanks for watching, bye bye