If you are looking for a facelift, PRP treatment is one that you may not have heard of, along with its dramatic nickname, the ‘vampire facelift’.
That sounds pretty dramatic, but fear not, because there are no bats involved and we carry it out at our premises here in west London, so you don’t need to travel to Transylvania.
PRP stands for platelet-rich plasma, which means it is taking a sample of your own blood (not someone else’s, so this won’t appeal to any real vampires) and isolating the plasma, which is full of proteins. Platelets are red blood cells, which help with growth and healing.
The way this works is through injections of the plasma into your face, which helps stimulate collagen production as well as improve skin tone through the use of micro-needling.
Direct injections of the plasma into the face give it the nickname ‘vampire facial’, whereas there is a second method that involves spreading the plasma on the skin and then using micro-needles to create gaps it can seep into.
Either way, it is an invasive treatment, so you will need to be OK with needles (and blood, of course). However, both the needling and the platelets help stimulate the growth of collagen.
If the term ‘vampire’ sounds concerning, the fact that your own blood is used makes it the opposite of being a real vampire, as such creatures in real life (like biting insects) need the blood of other animals for nutrients, such as iron.
Among humans, consuming blood is not standard, unless you really like black pudding, and if you have an iron deficiency there are many other foods you can get it from, as well as tablets.
None of those are the same thing as using your own blood in a facelift. Indeed, after such a treatment, the one thing you will not look like is someone who has just climbed out of a coffin!
