The Science of Spas

Put on a Happy Face
Facials offer many of the same benefits as body treatments, but they concentrate on the area that the rest of the world sees every day. Mental health is an important part of spa treatments, too, and it’s well known that a healthy appearance contributes to a healthy self-esteem. “Skin treatments and facials can help you feel beautiful from the outside in,” Clements says.

Conversely, neglecting your face care can result in conditions from acne to redness or blotchy skin. “Unless you keep your skin hydrated and replenished, you’ll end up with dry skin,” Cook says. Of course, water is the best way to keep our skin hydrated; Clements recommends drinking half your body weight in ounces of water a day.

But even if you’re drinking plenty of water and have a good home face-care regimen, most can benefit from a facial from time to time to give skin an extra boost. This is especially true in the spring and fall when temperatures and humidity levels change drastically and skin is forced to adjust quickly, sometimes resulting in loss of moisture and vital nutrients. A facial can help ease this transition by using special products to give your face that extra moisture it needs, remove dead skin, and re-introduce nutrients that might have been depleted. Most spas offer a variety of facials depending on your specific needs and skin type.

Facials can contribute to a healthier appearance by creating smoother, healthier looking skin, but if you want to tackle cosmetic issues such as wrinkles, uneven pigmentation, or really dull-looking skin, there are more intensive treatments available at some spas. “Peels have great results for reducing the appearance of wrinkles,” says Christine Turner, advanced aesthetic educator at Simonson’s. “Depending on your level of wrinkles, we can penetrate at deeper levels.” Like peels, microdermabrasion works by removing “keratin” or dead skin, but the process is more of an active one. “Microdermabrasion does a lot of the same things as peels, but it’s more physical because the tiny crystals [aluminum oxide] used actually break up the keratin, which is then removed with a vacuum,” Turner says.

Lasers, which for some time enjoyed status as a cure-all for skin problems, have received some bad press lately, mainly due to improper use by inexperienced technicians. While the laser controversy has been brewing on the sidelines, a safer form of technology, called Gentle Waves, has come to the fore. “It’s similar to the laser but non-wounding,” Turner says. “Light emitting diodes, or LEDs, stimulate the skin to lighten pigment, minimize pore size, and decrease the enzyme that breaks down collagen in skin.”

With so many choices, it’s important to match each client with just the right treatment. A first-time consultation is a must to make sure there are no contraindications, or health conditions specific to a client that make the treatment too risky. Contraindications include conditions like light-sensitive seizures, light-sensitive migraines, and pregnancy.

Even if a client’s skin is too sensitive for the most common treatments, there are usually alternatives. “Myotonology is a microcurrent facelift that uses tiny electrodes to stimulate the muscle where the wrinkle originates; it’s like Botox without being invasive,” Turner says. “It’s great if skin is too sensitive for a peel or microdermabrasion.”

Looking to the East
Despite the many successes of modern medicine, there are still conditions that elude even medical specialists. People are turning to Oriental or Chinese medicine, which has been around for thousands of years, to treat such stubborn ailments. According to Chinese medicine, physical and mental health has to do with maintaining the right balance—what the Chinese call yin and yang—and “chi,” which best translates as energy or flow. “When people are stressed or are in pain, usually their chi isn’t flowing properly, which we call chi stagnation,” says Kent Marsh, licensed acupuncturist at The Marsh. “Chi is necessary to move blood through the system.”

By pinpointing the cause of the stagnation, Marsh, who has a masters degree in Oriental Medicine, can determine where to place the thin acupuncture needles to release stagnant chi and restore balance. The needles are inserted in “point combinations,” which can restore balance in the body to ease a certain ailment. Acupuncturists work with the twelve main meridians of the body, each meridian representing a certain organ of the body. The needles are very different from what we are accustomed to in the West when we get a shot at the doctor; they are much thinner and their purpose is to reduce pain rather than cause it.

Some of the most common ailments that can be eased with acupuncture are arthritis, lower back pain, sciatica, and stress. Marsh says he has also been helping clients who are trying to lose weight or lower cholesterol. “And there are other residual benefits to acupuncture, too, like people reporting that they are sleeping better,” Marsh says. “Some of the patients that are coming to see me are on lots of different prescription drugs, and they realize that by attaining balance they can cut down on those drugs—whether they’re taking them for emotional or physical pain.” Of course, Marsh says a change in medication should be discussed between a patient and his or her primary physician.

Easing both mental and physical pain is something that seems to be unique to spas. An increasing number of medical professionals believe that emotional factors like stress and depression are contributors to all kinds of ailments from headaches to chronic pain to cancer. By helping us heal both mentally and physically, spa treatments not only help ease problems that already exist, they can also help prevent them from occurring—or recurring—in the future. While modern medicine is here to treat us once we’re already ill, regular spa treatments can work a lot like a tune-up on a car, helping to prevent the need for future repairs.