About the treatment
Sound waves, and a fat cell that cannot withstand them
Ultrasonic cavitation works on a principle borrowed from physics rather than from skincare. Low-frequency sound sent into the fat layer creates rapid alternations of pressure, and those alternations form microscopic bubbles which then collapse. The collapse happens against the wall of a fat cell, and the wall gives way.
The frequency is chosen so that only fat responds; muscle, vessels and skin sit outside the range that affects them. Laser energy runs alongside the ultrasound to encourage more of the contents out of the cells that have already been opened.
From the table it registers as a warm handpiece being worked slowly over the skin, and there is nothing to recover from. Everything that comes out of the cells then has to be transported and broken down by your body across the days that follow, which is the reason appointments at our Macleod Trail clinic sit a week apart instead of being stacked.
Where it applies
The areas worth treating, and the ones that are not
This treatment is built for defined deposits. Choosing the right target is most of the difference between a good outcome and a disappointing one.
Lower abdomen
The most requested area by a distance, and the one that most reliably shows a change in how clothing fits. Also the area people have most often tried and failed to shift with training alone, because it is a storage site rather than a fitness marker.
Flanks and lower back
The pocket that sits over the waistband. Its visibility depends far more on where it sits relative to your clothes than on how large it is, which is why a modest reduction here reads as a bigger change than the numbers suggest.
Outer and inner thighs
Both respond, and the inner thigh in particular is somewhere weight loss tends to leave behind. Expect a longer course here than on the abdomen.
Not a general answer to body fat
If the goal is to weigh less overall, this is the wrong purchase and we will say so at the consultation. It narrows a specific deposit; it does not substitute for anything.
The arithmetic
What committing to this actually looks like
Worth doing the sums before you book rather than discovering them in week four.
Six to twelve appointments
Spaced roughly a week apart, so a full course occupies two to three months of your calendar. A small area may sit at the lower end; a stomach usually does not.
The gap is doing work
Seven days is roughly how long the processing of the last appointment takes. Squeezing the schedule does not bring the result forward — it just puts energy into an area that has not caught up yet.
Judge it a month after the last one
Change continues developing after the course ends. Measure and photograph at the start, then again four weeks after the final appointment — not week by week, which tells you nothing useful.
Indications
What is it good for?
Localised deposits that diet and training have not moved.
The submental area is treated on its own separate page, and muscle tone belongs to muscle sculpting. The full list for south Calgary is on our Calgary SE clinic page.
Being straight with you
Four claims we will not make
That you will weigh less
Body contouring attracts more overselling than anything else we do. Fat is light. A visible change to the shape of your waist can happen with the number on the scale barely moving, and measuring the wrong thing is how people talk themselves out of a result they actually got.
That two sessions will do it
A handful of people notice something early. The change worth paying for accumulates across the full series. Any clinic advertising a transformation in a fortnight is describing something other than fat reduction.
That the machine is the main variable
It is not. What you drink is. The transport and breakdown of everything released depends on your fluid balance, and when we look back at photographs at the end of a course, that single habit separates the good outcomes from the average ones more clearly than anything we set on the equipment.
That it is unconditionally permanent
Whatever was destroyed during the course does not regenerate. Neighbouring cells can still expand, which means the shape you finish with stays put while your weight does. Stated any more strongly than that, it would not be true.
Getting ready
Pre & post treatment
Hydration on both sides, and it is not padding on this list — it is how the treatment finishes its job.
Before each session
- Start drinking more two days out. Nothing else on this page affects your result as much.
- Eat normally but lightly on the day itself.
- Nothing active on the area for three days: no retinoids, no exfoliating scrubs.
- No fresh tan and no burn on the zone being treated.
- Bare skin, loose clothes. Lotion and oil both interfere with the handpiece.
After each session
- A warm, faintly tingling feeling in the area. It passes within the hour.
- Keep the fluids up all week. The clearing stage is under way from the moment you leave the building.
- Give heat a miss for 48 hours: saunas, steam rooms and anything that leaves you sweating hard.
- No actives on the treated skin for about three days.
- Keep it out of direct sun, or cover it with sunscreen if it will be exposed.
Results
Laser lipo cavitation before and after
One of our clients, lower abdomen, photographed before starting and after finishing a course. Note that the change is to the silhouette and not to body size — that distinction is the whole treatment.
Outcomes differ from person to person depending on which area is worked on, how much of the course is finished, fluid intake throughout and whether body weight holds steady afterwards.
Also on Macleod Trail
Treatments that work well around this one
- Double Chin Removal in Calgary SE — the same technology, dedicated to the area under the jaw
- Butt Lift in Calgary SE — contouring and firming the lower body
- Muscle Sculpting in Calgary SE — builds tone underneath rather than reducing what sits over it
- Microneedling in Calgary SE — for stretch marks and skin texture over a treated area
- Laser lipo cavitation brand-wide — how the treatment works across all our clinics
