Ageing Neck

Yes, within limits, and the limits decide what you get for the money. HIFU and RF skin tightening both deliver energy into the deeper layers of tissue, where they stimulate the skin to build new collagen, and the tightening that follows arrives over the weeks and months after a treatment rather than on the day. What they do well is firm tissue that has lost tension, improve the angle under the jaw and tighten crepey skin. What they cannot do is remove skin. Where the envelope is genuinely loose, where there is excess skin hanging rather than slack skin that has lost its spring, no energy-based treatment will take it away, and the honest answer is that surgery is the treatment for that. The distinction between lax and loose is the single most useful judgement at a consultation, and it is the reason two people with similar complaints get different answers. Skin quality also decides how much you get: a neck with reasonable thickness responds better than one that has thinned a great deal. Being told what a treatment cannot reach is more useful than a course that was never going to deliver what you pictured. One check at home gets you close: pinch the skin under your jaw and let go. Skin that settles back slowly has lost tension, and skin that stays standing in a fold has gone past what energy treatment reaches.

They reach different depths, which is why the choice depends on your neck rather than on which is newer. HIFU uses focused ultrasound to deliver energy to a deep plane in a precise line, which suits structural looseness and the angle under the jaw where lifting is the aim. RF skin tightening with Endymed 3Deep delivers radiofrequency energy across a broader area in the deeper layers, which suits crepey skin spread over the whole front of the neck as well as firming under the jaw. Skin thickness, how much laxity there is, where it sits and what you want changed all feed into the decision, and in some cases the two are used for different parts of the same neck. Both build collagen, so both work on a timeline of weeks to months rather than days, and both need the result maintained rather than treated once and forgotten. Someone assessing your neck in person can tell you which of the two suits what you have, and that assessment beats any comparison written in general terms, including this one. Neither is a single appointment that finishes the job, and both are planned as a course with the result looked at afterwards rather than on the day.

Often yes, because the jawline and the neck are the same problem seen from two angles. The clean line people miss is the angle between the jaw and the neck, and it blurs for three reasons at once: the skin loses its hold, the fat pads of the lower face slide down over the jaw, and fat under the chin blunts the angle from below. Energy-based tightening works on the first of those, firming the tissue so the line is better defined. Where fullness under the chin is part of what you see, lipolysis addresses the fat rather than the skin, and the two together do more than either alone. Where the fat pads of the face have descended, that is jowling, which is treated on its own terms rather than as a neck problem. Which of these is doing the most to your jawline is not something a photograph settles, and it is the first thing a practitioner looks at. A plan that treats only the neck when the fat pads have moved will underdeliver, which is why the whole lower face gets assessed rather than the part that bothers you. A photograph taken from slightly below shows the angle the way other people see it, and bringing one to the consultation says more than describing it does.

Cost depends on which treatments your neck needs and how many sessions, so a number quoted before an assessment would be a guess. HIFU and RF skin tightening are priced by the area treated and by the session, and both work across a course with the result building afterwards rather than in a single appointment. Microneedling and Intensif are priced by session and by course. Botox for platysmal cords is priced by the units used. Lipolysis is priced by the area and by the series of injections it takes. A neck with good skin quality and mild laxity is a simpler, cheaper plan than one needing tightening, skin treatment and fat reduction together. The complimentary consultation is where the assessment gets made and where the plan and cost are set out for your own neck. The treatments also keep different schedules, since collagen built by energy treatment does not wear off the way an injectable does, so what you spend in the first year differs from what maintenance costs after it. The muscle, the skin and the fat are three separate decisions as well, so a plan can start with whichever bothers you most rather than all three at once.

Losing weight removes volume, and skin that has lost elastin does not always contract to match it. The envelope was filled before; now it holds less, and the slack shows as crepey texture, folds or a looser line under the jaw. The amount lost, how quickly it went, your age and how much elasticity your skin still has all affect how much the skin recovers, and some of that recovery continues over months rather than finishing when the weight stabilises. What helps is treatment aimed at skin quality and tightening rather than at fat, since there is less fat to address than there was: RF skin tightening and HIFU for the laxity, microneedling or Intensif for the thickness and quality of the skin. Where the slack is genuinely excess skin rather than reduced tension, surgery is what removes it, and you will hear that plainly rather than discover it after a course of something else. Waiting until your weight has been stable for a while before planning treatment is reasonable, because the starting point keeps moving until then. If your weight is still changing, repeat the assessment once it has settled, since how much skin is left over is the thing the plan turns on.