NeoGen in the Press

Why I regretted my £2,500 facelift – and then changed my mind The treatment seemed to work wonders for Shirley Ballas, so would NeoGen Plasma convert me, too?

Alice Hart-Davis7 February 2024 • 4:32pm

Compared to pre-treatment (left), Hart-Davis has noticed an overall tightening of her face, which she says feels as if it's been “lightly shrink-wrapped” I can smell burning keratin. “Hey, is that my skin?” I ask Dr Raj Thethi, as he works his way around my face, zap by sizzling zap, with the latest skin-tightening device.

“No, just all the little hairs on your face,” he replies. “Think of it as free dermaplaning.” I’d laugh if I wasn’t concentrating so hard on keeping still, lest the wrong bit of my face got a zap. At least it doesn’t hurt, as I’ve been numbed to the eyeballs with anaesthetic cream, though there’s still a strong prickling sensation.

If you’re wondering why on earth I’d want to do something like this, I’d say: Shirley Ballas. When she showed off a beautifully refreshed face in 2023 and credited it to a course of NeoGen Plasma sessions, well, I wanted it, asap. It’s hard to get major changes on a 60-something face with a non-surgical procedure, yet here was Shirley with smoother skin, lovely, contoured cheekbones and a jawline visibly tighter than in the “before” photos.

Shirley Ballas, pictured at the Pride Of Britain Awards 2023, credited her glowing complexion to a course of NeoGen Plasma sessions CREDIT: Karwai Tang/WireImage NeoGen is one of the newer “energy-based devices”, which are offered in aesthetic clinics to smooth and tighten the skin – they are increasingly popular with people who don’t want injectable fillers or wrinkle-relaxing toxins. Energy-based devices use anything from light energy (laser) to sound energy (ultrasound) to create a bit of controlled damage in the skin, which might sound like a bad idea, but it’s the principle behind most skin-tightening treatments. Traumatise the collagen – the protein that gives skin its strength and structure – and it will grow back stronger, hence fresher, less wrinkled skin.

“Plasma energy”, which NeoGen uses, sounds like gobbledygook but the science is perfectly serious. It’s not the stuff from those “plasma ball” executive toys that were popular in the 1970s, nor is it blood plasma, which is used in other tweakments such as PRP, aka platelet-rich plasma. (That’s the one where blood is taken from your arm, spun in a centrifuge to create the platelet-rich plasma, which is then injected and the platelets release their growth factors to reinvigorate the skin.) It’s also not those cheap plasma pen treatments that are advertised on social media, either, which leave you covered in tiny dotted burns which might – if you’re lucky – tighten your skin a little but may also leave you with dozens of tiny scars.

The results from Shirley Ballas's NeoGen Plasma procedure spurred Hart-Davis to try it out herself CREDIT: Dr Judy Todd The kind of plasma used in NeoGen is the sort that results when you ionise a gas, which I’m told is the “fourth state of matter”. Stick with me on this, and think of water. When it’s solid, it’s ice. When it’s liquid, it’s water. When it’s a gas, it’s steam.

If you super-heat that steam, it becomes plasma. NeoGen creates plasma by passing radiofrequency energy through pure nitrogen, to get nitrogen plasma, and unlike a laser treatment, which burns its way through the skin from the outside, NeoGen creates damage within the skin without destroying that skin barrier – the idea is that the treatment gives the same results as heavy-duty laser treatment, but with less downtime.

“Still, isn’t it a bit like taking a blowtorch to your face?” mused one friend. Sort of. It depends on how hard you go at it. With NeoGen, you can have a handful of lowintensity sessions (nice and gentle, and next to no downtime) spread out over six months, which is what Shirley Ballas did, or you can have what I tried and pack it all into one session, to get the same results in a shorter time.

Having one medium-intensity “pass” all over my face and neck, followed up with a second, high-intensity dose around trouble spots such as my mouth and eyes – it can show decent tightening on hooded eyelids – means significant downtime. I knew I’d be hiding at home for a week with a scorched-looking face while the skin repaired itself.

You obviously want a practitioner who really knows what they’re doing with this device, so I went to see Dr Thethi at the Yorkshire Skin Centre in Leeds. He is the brand’s key ambassador and he counselled me carefully on the ups and downs of the healing process – protecting the skin with Aquaphor cream (which is like Vaseline), not picking at it when it started to peel, and avoiding the sun at all costs.

“You may get a WTF day,” he thoughtfully informed me. Oh great. As a veteran of many intense procedures, I know there’s often a psychological blowback a day or two later when, after the mad exhilaration of surviving the treatment and optimism about the coming transformation, your mood plunges and you wonder why you’d do such a thing to your poor face and why you’re so stupidly vain in the first place…

Immediately afterwards, my face and neck were bright red and mottled, and everyone on the train back to London stared, before looking quickly away. “Is it good for acne scars?” asked the taxi driver (yes, it is), and requested Dr Thethi’s contact details.

Overnight, the traumatised tissues started to swell. It didn’t hurt, but it looked awful, as if I’d been beaten up. I posted updates on social media and everyone was appalled; I’m not putting the pictures in here. I don’t want to put you off your breakfast. In retrospect, the WTF day was day one; I felt stupefied, barely able to focus, overwhelmed by concerned messages online. I stayed inside, apart from lunch on day two with friends, who nobly said: “You look great!” (I didn’t). But, by days four and five, it was all shedding nicely, in large spider-webby skeins and on day seven, with make-up hiding the remaining red bits around my eyes, I was back out filming.

Now, six months later, was it worth it? Absolutely. Some hi-tech Visia skin imaging analysis showed that after two months, my skin surface was greatly improved with less sun damage and less pigmentation and fewer wrinkles than before. The pores on my nose had shrunk to nothing and the tiny hairs on my face were re-emerging.

Tantalisingly, it took a couple more months for the fresh, remodelled collagen to show up, but in due course, it presented itself in the form of a gentle, overall tightening as if my face has been lightly shrink-wrapped, which meant the skin is firmer over my cheekbones and tighter along my jaw, hallelujah.

But regarding that downtime… if you’re intrigued by this treatment, my advice is to take it slowly like Shirley Ballas did – you’ll still get the results, but you won’t have to hide away from the world for a week.

Alice received her treatment courtesy of NeoGen Plasma. A session costs from £800, depending on location and extent of treatment. NeoGen Plasma with Dr Raj Thethi costs £2,500; yorkshireskincentre.co.uk. Alice Hart-Davis is founder of thetweakmentsguide.com