A cool way to rid your body of flab

Scientists have developed a device that freezes body flab to remove love handles and beer bellies. Known as CoolSculpting device, it is being promoted as a painless alternative to...

Scientists have developed a device that freezes body flab to remove love handles and beer bellies.



Known as CoolSculpting device, it is being promoted as a painless alternative to liposuction, features a gel patch that clamps on to flabby parts and freezes fat cells.



The sub-zero temperatures kills the fat cells, which are re-absorbed and flushed away by the body over the next few months, leaving the patient trimmer.

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It was designed by scientists at Zeltiq in California. They realised that although fat freezes at a lower temperature than other types of tissue, skin and muscles can survive sub-zero temperatures without suffering lasting damage.

Last week, the treatment was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, reports the Daily Mail.

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The first 80,000 pounds 'CoolSculpting' device has arrived in Britain and is already being offered to patients at a London clinic.

Liposuction - where fat is sucked from the body - is big business for cosmetic surgeons and has overtaken breast enlargement as the most popular type of plastic surgery.

The new treatment costs around 800 pounds - about a quarter of the price of liposuction - and takes between one and three hours. The treatment, which is non-invasive, can be carried out in a patient's lunch break.

Mitchell Levinson, Zeltiq's founder, said patients have been monitored for three years without the fat returning.

A single treatment is usually enough for each love handle. A larger beer belly or a set of flaps of fat under the arms may need two treatments.

The device's creators say it is designed for those in need of a little fat removal and is not suitable for treating obesity.

A spokesman for the company said patients feel a sensation of intense cold, but this "soon dissipates".

Debbie Scott, 60, an American living in London who went to Paris to have the treatment, said: "It's uncomfortable but not painful. For the next couple of days you touch the area and it's numb but after a month the bulge had shrunk."