Many products on the market claim to offer results when it comes to weight reduction. CoolSculpting is no different.

After many medical practitioners from Harvard Medical School’s primary teaching hospital backed the product, it’s been successful, generating more than $2 billion in over a dozen years. 

In recent weeks, the product has been exposed for causing harmful side effects, with facial disfiguration being one of them, according to The New York Times.

How fat freezing works

The medical term for fat freezing is cryolipolysis. The device is placed on a specific part of the body, to kill off the fat cells. 

In successful cases, the body then absorbs the dead fat cells.

The device became popular in the dermatology world, in plastic surgery realms, and even at spas due to its non-invasive solution. 

Dr. Sue Ellen Cox, a dermatologist in Chapel Hill, N.C., who has conducted clinical trials on behalf of CoolSculpting, called it “the gold standard of noninvasive [fat-reduction procedures]”.

The rare side effect: Paradoxical adipose hyperplasia (PAH)

Medical studies endorsing the product reported less than 1% of people suffered from PAH as a result of using CoolSculpting. In these cases, instead of the fat cells reducing, they thicken and expand.

But according to an investigation by The New York Times, this number may be deflated.

In 2017, a doctor along with two co-authors wrote in Aesthetic Surgery Journal that the side effect of using CoolSculpt should be reclassified from “rare” to “common” or “frequent” due to the number of people who suffered from PAH after using CoolSculpt.

In order to correct the damage caused by PAH, patients will require surgery, which completely negates the point of the FDA-cleared, non-invasive solution.

Supermodel, Linda Evangelista is one of the patients who suffered from PAH.  Back in 2015, she underwent multiple treatments with CoolSculpting. Within three months, Evangelista found bulges in the areas that she had treated using CoolSculpting. Eventually, those areas turned numb.

Zeltiq Aesthetics Inc., CoolSculpting’s parent company offered to cover Evangelista’s liposuction treatment and according to Evangelista, on the eve of her procedure, Zeltiq let her know that her costs would only be covered on condition that she signed a confidentiality agreement, to which she declined.

At this time, it’s safe to say that when a product seems too good to be true, it probably is.

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