What’s the Difference Between Warm Sculpting and Cool Sculpting?

Whether they’re nearing the end of a weight loss journey or are simply noticing changes to their body with time, there are many reasons our clients come to us with stubborn pockets of body fat they want to see gone for good. Enter body sculpting: the liposuction of the 21st century that is non-invasive with next to no downtime and of course, achieves great results.

As one of our most sought-after treatments, our team receives many enquiries about body sculpting – what it involves, whether it’s painful or not and if it really works. The answer to the latter at least is a thorough yes, with warm sculpting destroying up to 24% of subcutaneous fat and 98% of patients reporting being satisfied with their results. 

Our treatment of choice is warm sculpting using technology from SculpSure. But if you’re considering sculpting and doing your research, you may come across several non-surgical sculpting products, including cool sculpting. 

Technically, both warm sculpting and cool sculpting treatments involve the same process: they destroy fat cells in a targeted area and the dead cells are processed and permanently ejected by your body’s natural lymphatic system. And as inferred from the name – warm sculpting does this by heating up the cells, while cool sculpting freezes them. But let’s go a little deeper into each.

How does warm sculpting work?

For a SculpSure treatment, you simply lie down comfortably and the applicator is applied flat directly to the treatment area – at Lumea Aesthetics we can treat the back, abdomen, sides, inner thighs, outer thighs and upper arms. A high-tech 1060nm laser delivers targeted heat, warming fat cells to about 41 degrees celsius accompanied by constant cooling.

The vast majority of our clients have reported waves of cool and heat, with sometimes mild stinging and tingling – they find the experience very tolerable, and settings are customised for each client as required.  

It’s also important to note that body sculpting is not a weight loss tool and is instead best for pockets of body fat that are resistant to diet and exercise , with the ideal candidate having no more than a BMI of 30. 

How does cool sculpting work?

Cool sculpting — scientifically known as cryolipolysis – involves a process and technology similar to that of warm sculpting, but works by suctioning the targeted area into an applicator and freezing the fat cells down to a temperature where they become irreversibly damaged. 

The treatment can target all the same areas as warm sculpting and while the cooling effectively numbs the area, can still be quite uncomfortable. With the vacuum-like applicator, a pulling sensation is usually felt, as well as massaging the area immediately after treatment which can also feel a little strange.

Warm sculpting with Sculpsure at Lumea Aesthetics 

We’d never provide a treatment we wouldn’t go through with ourselves, so after careful consideration we selected to only use SculpSure and so do not offer cool sculpting. SculpSure is the provider of the world’s leading warm sculpting technology, whose laser we have in our South Yarra clinic. 

There are several practical reasons why we only offer warm sculpting. 

Firstly, cool sculpting’s technique of suctioning the treatment area means there needs to be enough to pinch into the applicator, which sometimes isn’t possible. With SculpSure’s flat plates, any amount of subcutaneous fat can be targeted.

Another consequence of this is that only the body fat that is in the device can be frozen and therefore treated, which can result in uneven, unnatural divots or a ‘shark bite’ look around the treatment area. Here again, the flat plates in warm sculpting mean a more distributed, ‘feathered’ effect of fat cell loss for a more natural look. 

And from a client’s comfort perspective, while both treatments have minimal downtime, warm sculpting takes barely 25 minutes and in our experience is tolerated better, while cool sculpting usually lasts an hour and requires some significant massaging of the area before leaving to continue with your day. 

As always, each treatment plan is unique for each client and starts with an in-depth, personal consultation. Book one in now right here to see if you can be another of the thousands of people who have discovered newfound confidence in their body with warm sculpting. 

Dr Toro & The Lumea Aesthetics Team