My First Time: Trying the Morpheus8 Treatment

In her column for Just Bobbi, author, advisor and attorney Anjali Kumar is willing to try anything in the name of wellness (at least once).

No sweating, no make-up for three days. No acid exfoliation or retinol for 5 days. Hydration! Keep it simple, use mineral SPF. No oil for three days. These were the notes I jotted down in my iPhone after my first Morpheus8 treatment—one of a series of three that I signed up for over the course of the fall and winter—which promised to, well, do everything you can possibly imagine.

Treat fine lines and wrinkles? Check. Treat acne and scaring? Check. Tighten skin? Check. Reduce pore size? Duh. Check. Boost collagen?

Do you even need to ask? Obviously, check.

While I tend to live my life on the hopeful side of optimistic, to say I was skeptical going into this treatment series is putting it mildly. I have access to a lot of beauty products and treatments through this gig, but I have been avoiding anything remotely invasive (I am scared of needles) and don’t usually believe the hype of anything that promises to do too much.

Reader, believe me when I say Morpheus8 lives up to the hype.

How does it work? According to the team at Skinney MedSpa, Morpheus8 stimulates the production of collagen and resurfaces skin to bring out a younger looking you. As I am staring down a big birthday next year with slightly sagging cheeks and the first signs of wrinkles near my eyes (I prefer to think of them as “smile lines”), I put aside my fear of needles and signed up.

On arrival, my aesthetician, the very capable Josie at Skinney MedSpa, applied a generous layer of numbing cream on the areas to be treated. I did my face and neck but you can do other body parts where skin can get “crepey”—abdomen, back, legs—too. After about 45 minutes, I was ready for the Morpheus8 procedure.

The procedure itself (for my face and neck) took about 30 minutes. The device looks a bit like a checkout gun in a grocery store, but with a small square block of microneedles attached to the end. The needles penetrate to different depths as each area of skin is traced 2 to 3 times. I couldn’t feel much during the treatment due to the numbing cream. I felt a bit of a pinch along my forehead and parts of my neck and jawline, but it was all tolerable. It was more startling than painful.

Afterwards, Josie put a cold compress on the treated areas to reduce redness and swelling, a few drops of hyaluronic acid and sunscreen gently patted onto my face and neck, baseball cap on head (no sun!), and I headed home.

My skin looked fine immediately after—a little tender and light redness. The next morning, however, was another story. My neck was pretty irritated, I could see the square stamp pattern all over it. It looked like a really bad sunburn and took longer than the day or two after treatment I was expecting to get back to normal (my husband and daughter were not helping matters by exclaiming “WHY did you DO that?” and “Uh, is that going to go back to normal - ever??”) – but about a week later the irritation had subsided and I looked back to normal (thanks for the support, husband and daughter). The second and third treatments went the same way, so we decided to turn down the intensity a bit on my neck since I had such a strong reaction to the first treatment resulting in much less redness on my neck.

The results were incredible. I could tell I looked generally refreshed and that my skin looked more even and clear, but I could really tell it worked when I saw one of my best friends for the first time after my second treatment (makeup free, I should add) and she said “Did you do something? You look amazing!”

Ok yes, she is one of my best friends. And yes, we were happy to see each other. But I could tell by the way she said it that I did, in fact, look amazing. My skin felt tighter and more even than ever before. I have stopped wearing any foundation on a day-to-day basis because I don’t need to. And I really knew it worked when I met up with Josie for my “after” photos and she showed me the “before” photos. I couldn’t believe how much more toned and even my face looked after the treatments. I looked like I had pulled in my cheek bones and any fine lines around my eyes from before were noticeably softened.

The verdict: It is an expensive investment, but it works. Don’t do the treatment right before a big event. To be on the safe side, I would recommend doing it at least a week or longer before anything in case you have a reaction like I did.

To book an appointment: www.skinneymedspa.com