What the device actually does, and what it cannot
Non-surgical body treatment is the most overclaimed category in United Kingdom aesthetics. This publication is written for the person deciding whether to spend money at all. For every treatment: what the mechanism is, what a mechanism of that kind can plausibly do, who it is a poor fit for, what a course costs over a year, and what happens when you stop.
Every claim gets one of five verdicts
The mechanism is established and the claim stays inside what that mechanism can do.
There is something real underneath the claim, and the claim as worded goes further than the underlying finding does.
The claim may or may not be true. Evidence able to settle it either way is not there, and the claim is being presented as though it were.
The claim requires the treatment to do something its mechanism cannot do. This is not a question of weak evidence, it is a question of the wrong instrument.
Whatever the science, the claim as worded raises a question under United Kingdom advertising or medicines rules, which is a separate matter from whether it is true.
The vocabulary is fixed and published, and every tag is set in the same colour, deliberately. A colour scale would turn a vocabulary into a score, and these five describe different kinds of problem rather than points on one line. No payment of any kind can influence a verdict. The full method is in our editorial standards.
Start here
Six pages that do most of the work. Together they take about half an hour, and in a sector with no licensing scheme currently in force they are the closest thing to a consumer protection that exists.
Who is a poor candidate for non-surgical body treatment
Every treatment page on this site carries a candidacy block. This is all of them gathered in one place, because the question of whether you are a good fit is the one the sales process is least equipped to ask.
How to read a before and after photograph
The most persuasive instrument in this category, and the least regulated in practice. A method for looking at these images that takes about ninety seconds and changes what you see.
What a course of treatment really costs and how to work it out
Session prices are not course prices, and course prices are not annual prices. A five minute calculation, done before the consultation rather than during it, changes what most people decide.
What happens when you stop a non-surgical body treatment
Some effects are banked and some are rented. Knowing which you are buying changes the price, the decision and how you should feel about the maintenance conversation at the end of a course.
Injectable fat dissolving and the UK regulatory position
The regulatory position on injectable fat dissolving in the United Kingdom is the most consequential and most misrepresented fact in this whole category. It is also not complicated once set out plainly.
Doing nothing is a legitimate option and what it looks like
The option that appears on no price list, in no consultation and in no advertisement, and which is the right answer for a substantial number of the people reading this.
The sections
Six of them, covering the devices, the injectable treatments and the regulatory position on them, how the claims are constructed, the physiology of body composition, the decision itself, and what to do when it goes wrong.
The devices
Cryolipolysis, radiofrequency, focused ultrasound, muscle stimulation, laser lipolysis, cavitation, cellulite devices and wraps: what each mechanism is, and what a mechanism of that kind can and cannot do.
Open the section3 articlesFat dissolving injections
Injectable fat dissolving, what deoxycholic acid does in tissue, and the United Kingdom regulatory position, which is widely misrepresented in advertising.
Open the section5 articlesReading the claim
Before and after photographs, reduction percentages, inch loss, satisfaction figures, guarantees, finance and the phrases that sound regulatory but are not.
Open the section5 articlesBody composition
Weight and fat distribution are different questions. Subcutaneous and visceral fat, skin laxity, muscle, GLP-1 medication, pregnancy and menopause, discussed as physiology.
Open the section7 articlesDeciding
Candidacy, what a course actually costs, what happens when you stop, what to ask, what a consultation should cover, and the case for doing nothing.
Open the section4 articlesRules and redress
How these devices are regulated, the licensing power that is not in force, what an advertisement may not say, and what to do when a treatment goes wrong.
Open the sectionWhat you will not find here
No fat reduction percentages, no satisfaction rates, no session prices and no before and after outcomes, even to argue with them. Those figures are the instrument under examination, and repeating one lends it a precision it does not have.
No ranked list of clinics, and no clinic named or recommended anywhere, because we have assessed none of them. And no photograph of a human body, anywhere on this site, ever. Body photography is the most persuasive instrument in this category and the least capable of showing what it is presented as showing, and a publication examining it should not be using it. Our imagery is cool physical abstraction and the absence is the point.
What we sell instead is a paid provider listing built only from disclosed facts a reader can verify independently: alphabetical, labelled as paid, no score and no badge. The rate card and the list of things we refuse to sell at any price are on the provider listings page.
When the rules change, we will tell you
One email when a regulatory position shifts in a way that alters what you should check, when a published advertising ruling changes what this sector may claim, and when a new article goes up. No treatment offers, no discounts and no clinic suggestions, because we do not make any.