The Tweakment Tart: The I Feel Bad About My Neck Edition

There are times when I submit to a tweakment with very little hope of it doing anything at all. Maybe its claims seem preposterously overblown, or I haven’t really heard of it before, or it seems to quick to be true, or too non-invasive, or the website seems a bit flashy, or the tweakment names are a bit gimmicky. This is how I feel about Dr Nyla’s Tech Neck Tweak. ‘Are you finding the lines in your neck just seem to be getting deeper? Is the skin around your jaw just getting droopier? Then book in for Dr Nyla’s new Tech Neck Tweakment that eradicates wrinkles and sagging skin caused by constantly looking down at our phones and laptop screens. Nyla ‘multi-layers ultrasound, radio frequency and thermal waves to reverse tech lines and tighten sagging skin to give a youthful, lifted appearance’ according to the treatment spiel, the kind of breathless hype which, in my experience, can only lead to disappointment.

But the fact is, I am a little… concerned, about my neck. I try really, really hard not to ‘worry’ about any part of my face and body. It is what it is and I do what I can but hell. It will just keep on being buffeted by the rigours of life and time regardless, and I have to make – actually, no, I have already made - some peace with that. At the same time: time, a lot of pilates and boxing related crunchies (which do put some pressure on the musculature of the neck) and a whole lot more of gazing at a lap top, a phone, a Kindle, and even real-life paper books, have had some impact on the skin on my neck. I’m not at the Nora Ephron stage of ‘I Feel Bad About My Neck’. But I’m keen to manage it, in the meantime.

So it is that my cynicism regarding this Tech Neck Tweakment, is overridden by my desire to try stuff anyway. You know: just to see.

I arrive at Number One Harley Street, London’s flashiest destination for medical and cosmetic procedures, and am lead through a warren of rooms and floors and doorways and security locked gates and secret stairwalls, and into Dr Nyla’s treatment suite, where I am seen by Olivia, who I immediately like. Who knows why? Good vibes? Her soft Liverpudlian accent?

I lie down on her couch, and she begins: cleansing the skin on my neck, then applying the business end of a machine called the ‘Elixis Elite’ to my neck and jawline. This, she tells me, is a thermal treatment; it works by simultaneously cooling the surface skin to 10 degrees Celsius while heating the subcutaneous tissue to 40 degrees. This heat will, apparently, reduce fat cells in the area, and strengthen the collagen network for a sculpted appearance. Sounds unlikely, I think, but it doesn’t hurt: it feels like a light massage with a warm thing which occasionally gets a bit too warm for total comfort, but only very briefly… So fine.

‘This really is a brilliant treatment,’ Olivia tells me. She strikes me as generally disinclined toward hype or bluster, so I mitigate my cynicism some more.

After really not very long with the cool/hot business, she starts on the second phase of the neck-tightening process: she hits it with radio frequency, and ultrasound. The ultrasound is supposed to penetrate to 4.5mm of depth, and cause muscles to contract, which in turn will smooth out deeper lines and reduce sagging, and… Bullshit, right? Pseudo science and over-promises. Cynical me rises up like a phoenix with an attitude problem.

Also? This part hurts. Or at least, feels so peculiar – like my muscles are twinging, flicking, prickling beneath the pressure of the gliding machine head – that I assume what I’m feeling is pain. (‘I don’t know if I like this,’ I tell Olivia. ‘You will when you see what it does,’ she says. Sure, sure, I think.)

But it’s all over mercifully quickly, twenty minutes from the moment my arse first hits Olivia’s tweakment couch, I’m off it again, and looking in the mirror and… Bloody hell. Surely not. Surely I’ve somehow got the wrong neck? Or the lighting in here is just ridiculously good, or…?

‘It looks GREAT!’ I tell Olivia. Because it does! Really, really great! My neck looks smoother and suppler and more stable and less like it’s trembling on the brink of collapse. My jaw is tightened. Everything is lifted. ‘It’s amazing!’ Ah, but hang on:‘How long will it last?’ I ask, anticipating a week or three, max, a couple of months assuming I sign up for a course of treatments.

‘It’ll get better and better from this point over the next few weeks, we sometimes recommend a top up after a month, but after that: two years?’ she says.

‘TWO YEARS!’ I say. I think I love her. ‘You should see what I can do for your cheekbones,’ Olivia adds. I definitely love her. I bounce out of the building, barely half an hour after I went in, my new and improved chin held high, wondering at the miracle of a world that delivers, even after I was so sure it couldn’t possibly.

Would I pay for it myself?

Absolutely. It’s ridiculously effective, on an area I didn’t think could be helped without surgery – injectibles at the very least. It’s super quick, it involves absolutely no down time, it’s enduring. It’s perhaps one of my all-time faves.

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