This website gives information about a technique that we use at Absolute Aesthetics to tighten loose skin over the abdomen. Causes of such loose skin can be after childbirth, weight loss or liposuction.


Why do we get loose or crêpey skin?

In young people with normal skin, the skin is very elastic. Although a great many cosmetic advertisements and information sheets talk about a protein called collagen, the collagen in the skin provides the strength - but not the elasticity. We want elasticity in the skin for skin to bounce back to its normal shape after we have stretched it.

Elasticity in the skin, and in fact in all the human tissues, is provided by another protein called elastin.

Unfortunately, we are born with a certain amount of elastin, and we are unable to produce much more of this during our normal life. Although there has been considerable research to try and stimulate the body to produce new elastin, it is still not possible to do so.

Some creams claim to provide more elastin to the skin, but although they may well contain elastin, it does not get absorbed into the skin and therefore merely gets washed off at the next shower or bath.

As we get older, we slowly lose elastin from skin. We see this in the fact that skin springs back less after pinching it as we get older. There are other things that also destroy elastin quicker, particularly exposure to sunlight (ultraviolet light) and smoking.

Therefore in sun worshippers who smoke, you will often find that even in middle age the skin of the face is very baggy and when the skin is pinched, it does not snap back into shape but rather stays deformed in the way it was pulled.

This loss of elasticity results in a more wrinkles and bags in facial skin, giving jowls and deep lines with thin looking skin - the classic signs of looking older than your years.

Of course the same problem can occur elsewhere on the body. This website is dedicated to looking at this problem on the skin of the abdomen.