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Train in Hyperhidrosis and Make a Difference!

Going into business with Botulinum Toxin does not have to be all about banishing wrinkles and filling-in frown lines.

To the contrary, a number of techniques with Botox (particularly the Advanced Level procedures) allow sophisticated re-sculpting such as the Cheek and Jowl Lift or Platysmal Band treatment.  Others offer greatly increased standards of living to patients in terms of improved confidence and well-being: these are far more than “aesthetic” procedures and there is no finer example than Hyperhidrosis Treatment.

Hyperhidrosis is just a fancy name for excessive sweating. In about 1.0% of the population (according to The Hyperhidrosis Support Group) the sympathetic nervous system works at an overly high level. This means that, instead of simply regulating body temperature, Hyperhidrosis sufferers sweat profusely from certain body parts, often at inappropriate times, causing extreme embarrassment.

The most common areas for patients to experience Hyperhidrosis are:

  • The palms of the hands (Palmer Hyperhidrosis)
  • Soles of the feet (Planter Hyperhidrosis)
  • The armpits (Axillary Hyperhidrosis)
  • Also: the face, head, groin and back.

So Where Do You Come In?

Firstly, you need to be confident in diagnosing Hyperhidrosis rather than simply heavy sweating. If you are unsure, you could always suggest that the client sees their GP first and asks for a referral.

Excessive sweating is not always due to Hyperhidrosis: it can be because of illnesses, such as hyperthyroidism, psychiatric disorders, menopause and obesity. It is obviously important to consider these possibilities. According to Dr Prashant Murugkar in Body Language Magazine, there are other characteristics to look out for when making your diagnosis:

  • In Secondary Hyperhidrosis (where the cause of excessive sweating is known) you should expect the patient to also have a Thyroid disorder, Diabetes Mellitus, Menopause or similar which could be responsible.
  • In the more common Primary Hyperhidrosis (where the exact cause remains unknown) things to look for include: patient aged 25 years or over; family history of similar problems; excessive sweating beginning suddenly over the past 6 months; sweating so badly that it is interfering with daily activities;  excessive sweating stops when the patient is asleep.

The Iodine Test is commonly used for diagnosis. Apply 2% iodine solution to both armpits, allow to dry then brush corn-starch powder onto the area. If the light brown colour turns dark purple, this is a positive test for sweat.

Treatment

 

As Dr Murugkar quite rightly recognises, Hyperhidrosis is often underdiagnosed and undertreated. This is despite the fact that 1-2% of the population suffer from the problem and it causes great embarrassment and discomfort. Many Hyperhidrosis sufferers refuse to wear any colours other than black or white to try to hide their sweat patches and hate public situations. The NHS has no specific guidelines for Hyperhidrosis and many GPs are unsure what to advise. This leaves a huge niche in the market for trained medical professionals who can offer a sensitive, professional service to help Hyperhidrosis sufferers.

Apart from Antiperspirants (of which strong roll-on gels and powders like Driclor are an option), the only known successful treatment for Hyperhidrosis is Botulinum Toxin Type A.

You can choose from Botox or Dysport for your Botulinum Toxin Type A. The purified neurotoxin, derived from clostridium botulinum, blocks the over-active release from the sympathetic nerve fibres triggering the ecrine sweat glands.

Using a very fine needle, small amounts of Botulinum Toxin solution are injected into 10 to 15 places about 1cm apart and spread evenly in each armpit. Sometimes a dye is used to show up the areas where sweating is greatest and where the injections should be placed. A course of treatment takes about 30 minutes.

Within 1-2 weeks, most patients have benefit from Hyperhidrosis Treatment with Botulinum Toxin, which usually lasts 6-18 months.

Hyperhidrosis Treatment is well worth training in. It is simple to administer if you are a trained medical practitioner. Moreover, as Dr Murugkar neatly summarises,in terms of benefits of training in this Technique, ‘Relief from the misery of Hyperhidrosis tends to be a very rewarding achievement and creates satisfied patients for the practitioner’.

Happy patients; Happy practitioners…..Happy Hyperhydrosis Training!

Cosmetic Courses offer expert fully supervised Hyperhidrosis Training to medical professionals as part of our Advanced Level Course. We can also offer Advice and Support in setting up your business using this Technique. Call us today on 0845 230 4110

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Cosmetic Courses join the Big Beauty Therapist Botox® Training Debate: Should Beauty Therapists be allowed to Inject?

Back in March, The Consulting Rooms’ Ron Myers reported on the medical aesthetic industry’s “hot” controversy: should Beauty Therapists be allowed to inject Botulinum Toxin and Fillers?

Traditionally, as at Cosmetic Courses National Training Centre, training in botulinum toxin and dermal filler treatments has been the exclusive domain of the medically qualified. Cosmetic Courses lists surgeons, registered nurses, opthamologists, doctors, dermatologists, dentists, dental hygienists, dental therapists and certain paramedics amongst its accepted delegates; no mention of Beauty Therapists, despite the hundreds of calls a year from eager candidates.

The logic behind this is strong. To date, the Independent Healthcare Advisory Services’ (IHAS) Treatments You Can Trust Register has refused to provide quality assurance accreditation to cosmetic injectable providers who do not fall into the above job fields. This is typical, Cosmetic Courses Coordinator Rachael Langford confirms, of industry attitudes generally. Insurance is very difficult to obtain to train non-medical delegates in cosmetic injectables and, in our experience, a Beauty Therapist is likely to have a very tough time finding insurance to set up their business afterwards. As Ron Myers points out, the manufacturers and major suppliers themselves of these products do not support their use by non-medically qualified practitioners, which surely speaks volumes.

Many Beauty Therapists are keen to come on botox® training courses, however, and very vocal about their rights to become Medical Aesthetic Practitioners. In such difficult times of economic recession, practitioners from all backgrounds (Myers acknowledges) ‘want to generate an income from this evolving market segment’. As Dr. Phillip Dobson points out,  technically there is nothing illegal about a Beauty Therapist administering botulinum toxin (if a doctor or dentist has signed the scripts for them) and dermal fillers, so long as they do not mislead their patients into believing that they are medically qualified; it all comes down to patient consent. Many Beauty Therapists who telephone Cosmetic Courses argue that they have a better understanding of the skin than, say, a dentist and a number of them have already attended anaphylaxis or resuscitation training. They claim that there is too much “superiority” and “snotty remarks” in the industry and they may have a fair point; even amongst those who are accepted to inject, some Cosmetic and Plastic Surgeons still frown upon Dentists and Nurses who do so. Now an organisation called the CTIA (Cosmetic Treatments and Injectables Association) has been founded to challenge the exclusion of Beauty Therapists from cosmetic injectables, on the understanding that all practitioners should be inspected regularly for quality.

Yet as Dr Samantha Gammell, President Elect of the British Association of Cosmetic Doctors (BACD) maintains:

“A one day training course does not provide non-medically qualified ‘therapists’ with the depth of knowledge required for these types of treatments nor the understanding or skills to deal with the complications that can occasionally arise from them. The public needs to protect themselves by demanding to be treated in a safe medical environment by a competent, well trained cosmetic doctor or a suitable healthcare professional who makes the patients interests his or her first concern. It may be cosmetic but it is still medicine.”

Whilst Cosmetic Courses sympathise with the frustration of Beauty Therapists, founder Mr Adrian Richards emphasises that we fully support the BACD. “At the end of the day,” says Mr Richards, “dermal fillers and botulinum toxin are injectable substances that can cause harm. We believe they should only be used by trained medical professionals with the appropriate training. This is why we set up Cosmetic Courses, to offer the highest standards of training and make every effort to ensure that the safety of patients is of paramount importance.” The Cosmetic Courses team are looking into possible alternative training options for Beauty Therapists rather than injectables, so that they can still support their enthusiasm for the Medical Aesthetics industry…more on this coming soon!

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The Curse of Leslie Ash: Permanent Fillers cause Permanent Problems

When you set up your own Medical Aesthetics practise, you will quickly find a Ghost that haunts you. You will particularly experience her looming shadow if you decide to offer Lip Filler treatments. But we can pretty much guarantee that her name will crop up over and over regardless. “I don’t want to end up looking like Leslie Ash!”: it is a plea from your clients that will become all-too familiar.

The Leslie Ash “Look” is certainly not high on most people’s aesthetic wish-list. You have most probably seen the recurrent pictures in the media of her now infamous “trout pout”. The unfortunate woman has been hauled over the coals as an example of Cosmetic Surgery Gone Wrong in every woman’s mag. article of that theme ever since her Lip Body treatment in 2002.

Ash originally claimed she had collagen Lip Implants to correct her disappearing top lip (an unfortunate but common side-effect of ageing) and maintain her image in the public eye. Ironically, the treatment had the opposite effect, bringing her notoriety for all the wrong reasons. Back in 2003, the actress typically told the Press that her permanently swollen, upwards-curled top lip was a terrible accident and the result of a reaction to the collagen in the implant. By 2010 she had conceded that it was not an implant at all, but an injection of liquid silicone (the same lethal cocktail responsible for the recent death of Claudia Aderotimi) which had caused the ridiculous effect.

“The Curse of Leslie Ash” is therefore that hundreds of women who would otherwise have considered lip-enhancing treatment have now been put off completely. And of those that do approach you for procedures, a large number will need reassurance that they will not leave your Clinic looking similarly over-the-top or caricatured.

In his talks to delegates attending Medical Aesthetic courses at the Cosmetic Courses National Training Centre, Mr Adrian Richards (Consultant Plastic Surgeon) is always keen to set the facts straight. For starters, there should be broader awareness of precisely which treatment Leslie Ash underwent: it seems very wrong that by initially shielding the truth, she has created mistrust and fear of both Lip Fillers and Lip Implants. Prospective clients do not realise that Dermal Fillers are not the same as the injections which she had, and can give lovely subtle enhancement to both the lip body and border (in the hands of a qualified, trained medical professional). Nor do they always understand that she did not have a Lip Implant at all and that it is therefore well worth investigating the potential of Permalip implants. In fact, Mr Richards highly recommends the Permalip implant as a method of augmenting the lip body: these implants come in a huge variety of sizes and shapes, are sculptable, safe and above all can be removed if necessary.

In contrast, Liquid Silicone injections, like Ash had injected into her lips by a plastic surgeon whilst at a friend’s house, is permanent. And as Mr Richards warns all his trainee Aesthetic Practitioners, ‘Permanent fillers cause Permanent problems’. In Leslie Ash’s case, the silicone set around the muscles in her lips and it is now impossible for surgeons to remove it.

So there you have it: of course, however silly the actress may have been, she is also incredibly unfortunate. She is certainly not alone, but possibly receives more publicity about the matter than most and will almost certainly be one of the names you come to regard as a bug-bear. Instead of getting irritated by this, however, try to see your role as educating your clients, so that others do not make the mistakes of Ash and others. With this knowledge, you can ensure that you offer only the best and most suitable treatments and therefore provide genuine reassurance that your clients will not walk out of your Treatment Room and straight into the Gossip Columns!

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