The Journal
Honest answers to the questions people actually ask about aesthetic treatments — written by the clinic, not by the internet.
How Long Does Tear Trough Filler Last? Why the Under-Eye Is in No Hurry
Under the eye is about the quietest place on the face to put filler, and people commonly find it holds on longer there than in a lip. Here's why, what the fade actually looks like, and honest answers on the sting, the first days, and the safety of it.
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Tear Trough Filler: Why You Look Tired When You're Not
The groove under your eye casts a shadow, and a shadow reads as tiredness however well you slept. Here's what under-eye filler softens, who it suits, and who it honestly doesn't.
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Thread Lift vs Facelift: How to Know Which One You Actually Need
A thread lift redefines sagging contours without surgery. A facelift goes further, for skin that has moved beyond what threads can hold. Here's how we honestly decide between them.
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Double Chin Treatment: Why It Won't Shift, and What Actually Does
The fold under your chin is often the last fat your body will part with, and sometimes it was never fat at all. Here's what genuinely shifts it, and how to tell which kind you have.
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Microneedling Before and After: Why the Best Results Photograph Worst
A microneedling result is a change in texture, and texture is the one thing a camera decides for itself. Here's how to read the photographs honestly, and what an honest set would show at every stage.
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Blepharoplasty Before and After: Look at the Eyebrows First
The eye is the smallest area of a face anybody sets out to photograph, so a millimetre shows, and part of what impresses you in an 'after' can be the work of eyebrows that quietly went up. Here's how to read an eyelid surgery before and after.
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Botox vs Fillers: Which One Does What (and Which Do You Need?)
Botox relaxes the muscles that crease your skin. Fillers replace the volume your skin has lost. Here's how to tell which one your face is actually asking for.
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Laser Hair Removal: How Many Sessions Will You Actually Need?
The honest answer is six to eight sessions, four to eight weeks apart — and there's a good biological reason why. Here's how laser hair removal courses really work.
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Mole Removal and Skin Tag Removal: Two Very Different Jobs
A mole sits in your skin and a skin tag sits proud of it, which is why they're two different jobs. Here's what each one is, why people have them taken off, and what happens before anything is removed.
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What Happens at an Aesthetics Consultation? A First-Timer's Guide
Thinking about a treatment but nervous about the first appointment? Here's exactly what happens at an aesthetics consultation — and what should never happen at one.
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Filler Before and After: Why Good Work Vanishes Straight On
Filler changes are three-dimensional, and nearly every photograph is taken from the one angle where depth goes missing. Here's how to read a cheek, chin or tear trough filler before and after honestly.
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How Long Does Masseter Botox Last? The Muscle That Takes Its Time in Both Directions
The jaw gives this question two answers, because the treatment does two things and they leave on different timetables. Here's why the slimming outlasts the relaxing, why the gaps between rounds commonly grow, and the aftercare that belongs to this muscle alone.
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Microneedling for Acne Scars: Why They Sit Below the Surface
Your acne cleared years ago and your skin still has the dents. Here's why acne scars sit below the surface, why microneedling works from underneath, and what it can honestly change.
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Masseter Botox Before and After: The Change a Camera Notices Last
Jaw slimming arrives long after the ten days that everything else is judged by, which is why these photographs are so easy to misread. Here's how to read a masseter Botox before and after, starting with the angle nearly every one of them is shot at.
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Blepharoplasty: What Eyelid Surgery Actually Removes
Every non-surgical treatment for hooded eyes works with the skin you have. Eyelid surgery is the one that takes some of it away, and here's what that means, who it suits, and why the surgeon looks first.
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Chin and Jawline Filler Before and After: Check the Ears First
Tuck your chin a centimetre and you change the line between jaw and neck more than most syringes ever will. The ears, the height of the lens and the light overhead decide most of what you are looking at in a chin or jawline filler before and after.
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Skin Boosters: The Injection That Feeds Your Skin
It arrives through a fine needle, just like a filler, then goes on to do a completely different job. Here's what a skin booster genuinely does, and the one thing it will never do.
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Botox Before and After: You Can Take Both Photographs Tonight
Frown at a mirror, then let your face go, and you have made a thoroughly convincing before and after with no treatment in it anywhere. Two questions sort the honest Botox photographs from the rest, and your own ten days answer everything they can't.
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Microneedling Aftercare: Why the Redness Is the Part That's Working
You leave looking as though you've caught the sun, and that flush is the treatment working rather than a price you're paying for it. Here's the first evening, the tight flaky stage, and honest answers on downtime, make-up, sun and the gym.
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Best Treatment for Acne Scars: Which One Suits Which Scar
Ask which treatment is best for acne scars and everybody names a different one. Here's the honest map: the four marks people call scarring, which method suits which, and why the best treatment for scars is always a question about your own skin.
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Jawline Filler and Chin Filler: The Line Does the Work
A jaw reads strong or soft by how clearly its border is drawn, not by how much sits behind it. Here's what chin filler does for a profile, what jawline filler defines, and what it honestly won't.
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Laser Hair Removal on Your Face: Why It's a Different Job to Legs
Facial hair keeps its own schedule, and your face is the one part of you that never gets to stay covered. Here's what laser hair removal on the face involves, and why shaving stays on the list.
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How Long Does Botox Last? Why Nobody Can Answer That Down the Phone
Four things decide how long your result holds, and not one of them can be judged before somebody has watched your face move. Here's what settles it, what the ten days actually feel like, and how your own first round becomes your answer.
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Excessive Sweating: The Injections That Quietly Switch It Off
Hyperhidrosis runs more lives than people admit: dark clothes only, jackets kept on, handshakes dreaded. A short course of injections can switch the sweating off.
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Baby Botox: What You're Actually Asking For
Baby Botox is a nickname for an amount rather than a treatment of its own: less of it, a softer change, your face still moving. Here's who asks for the lighter hand, and the honest trade that comes with it.
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How Often Can You Have Botox? The Rhythm Your Own Face Sets
The honest answer is a signal rather than a date in the diary: when your movement comes back, you can be treated again. Here's why the gap between rounds earns its place, why more often isn't the goal, and a calm answer to whether Botox is safe.
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Smile Lines and Marionette Lines: Why We Don't Fill Them Flat
Smile lines and marionette lines frame your mouth, and hardly anyone knows their proper names. Here's what filler does about each, and why flattening them completely isn't the goal.
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How Long Does Laser Hair Removal Last? Why It's Called Reduction
Treated follicles stop making hair, and that part genuinely doesn't expire — but skin can put up a little new hair over the years. Here's what lasts, what doesn't, and what a top-up session actually is.
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Vampire Facial: What the Name Gets Right, and What It Doesn't
A vampire takes blood away and keeps it, which is the one detail the nickname gets backwards. Here's what a vampire facial, or PRP facial, actually involves, and why nothing goes into you that wasn't already yours.
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Lip Filler Aftercare: The Swelling, Day by Day
On day one your lips are holding two things at once, and only one of them is staying. Here's the honest swelling timeline, what to leave alone in the first day or two and why, and when to simply ring us.
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Cheek Filler Before and After: The Answer Is Below the Cheekbone
In most cheek filler before and afters, the light and the height of the camera have more to say about the cheekbone than the filler does. Here's how to read a pair honestly, and why the change worth finding usually sits below the cheek.
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Gummy Smile Botox: The Small Change That Gives You Your Laugh Back
A gummy smile is a muscle lifting your top lip further than your smile needs. A small amount of Botox® eases that pull, and the lip can settle where you always wanted it.
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What Is a PDO Thread Lift? The Stitches That Lift, Then Dissolve
A thread lift places fine dissolving stitches under the skin and lifts the sagging tissue there and then. Here's what the threads are, what happens in the appointment, and what your own collagen does once they've gone.
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Does Botox Hurt? The Sting Is Measured in Seconds
A very fine needle, a few quick pinpricks per area, and a sting most people describe as sharp for a second and then finished. Here's what the appointment honestly feels like, why no anaesthetic is needed, which areas tend to be felt more, and what you notice for the rest of the day.
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Profhilo Before and After: The Part of the Picture Light Decides
Nothing about the face has changed shape, so the comparison rests entirely on the surface of the skin — and the surface is the part light gets to decide. What an honest set of these photographs would need, why one session never settles it, and the treatment we use for the same job.
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Aqualyx Fat Reduction: What It Dissolves (and What It Doesn't)
Some pockets of fat won't shift however well you eat or train. Aqualyx injections dissolve them. Here's what the treatment genuinely does, and the one thing it isn't.
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Botox Brow Lift: The Tug of War Happening Above Your Eyes
Your eyebrows sit wherever two sets of muscles stop pulling. Relax the ones pulling down and the brow rises by millimetres, which is enough to change the whole eye area.
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How Long Does Lip Filler Last? The Range and What Moves It
Lips hold filler for less time than anywhere else on the face, and the reasons are plain once somebody sets them out. Here's the honest range, what stretches it, what shortens it, and what fading actually looks like from the inside.
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How Long Does Botox Take to Work? Why Day One Is Meant to Show Nothing
Nothing happens on the first day, and that is the treatment behaving exactly as it should. Here's why the wait has to exist, when the first change usually turns up, and why the face you keep checking midweek isn't the one you're going to keep.
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Russian Lips: What People Actually Mean When They Ask for Them
Russian lips is a name for a look rather than an item on anybody's treatment list. Here's what people are really describing, why shape and volume are separate questions, and how far your own lips can take it.
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Masseter Botox: The Jaw Muscle That Works All Night Without You
Clenching and grinding build the jaw muscle the way the gym builds any other muscle. Relaxing it eases the morning ache, calms the grinding, and can soften a squared jawline.
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Microdermabrasion: What the Thirty-Minute Facial Actually Takes Off
Your skin is carrying a layer of cells it has already finished with, and that layer is most of what you mean when you call your skin dull. Here's what a microdermabrasion facial lifts away in half an hour, and what it honestly won't reach.
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Cheek Filler: Why Facial Ageing Starts Higher Than You Think
The cheek holds up everything below it, so when its volume goes, the fold beside your nose and your jawline change too. Here's why cheek filler softens creases it never touches.
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Chemical Peel Before and After: How to Tell Which Peel You're Looking At
The peel photographs with the biggest difference in them often come from a deeper, more medical procedure than the one most people are booking, and nobody writes that underneath the picture. Here's how to tell one from the other, why smoother skin is so hard to photograph, and what your own honest before would need.
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Botox Aftercare: What Those First Few Hours Are Actually Protecting
Every rule on your aftercare list is protecting one thing, and it takes about an afternoon. Here's the reason behind each one, what the little bumps and the occasional bruise really are, and where the review appointment fits.
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Skin Tightening Treatment: The Three Different Things It Can Mean
Three different jobs share the one word tightening, which is why the answers you get never quite agree. Here's what non-surgical skin tightening actually firms, and how to tell which of the three your skin is asking for.
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Hooded Eyes Without Surgery: How the Plexr Eye Lift Works
Hooded eyelids used to mean surgery or nothing. Plexr tightens the excess skin with no cutting and no stitches, and most people go back to work the same day.
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Chemical Peels: What They Actually Do, and Why the Name Frightens People
The word chemical does this treatment no favours at all, and it hides a very ordinary idea: taking away the layers your skin's damage is sitting in. Here's what a chemical peel removes, what the Obagi Blue Peel RADIANCE is, and what the blue is for.
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Does Microneedling Hurt? Why It Feels Different Over Bone
Most people describe pressure and a fine scratchy vibration rather than pain, and a forehead notices far more of it than a cheek does. Here's why bone changes the answer, what the first hour is like, and the honest answer on safety.
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Does Laser Hair Removal Hurt? What It Feels Like
Most people describe it as the flick of a small elastic band. Here's what laser hair removal feels like, area by area, and why it's safe in trained hands.
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Microneedling: What It Actually Does to Your Skin
To improve your skin we make thousands of tiny holes in it, which sounds like the least sensible idea in skincare. Here's why the repair that follows leaves your skin better than it started.
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Arrange your consultation
Every treatment at Broadway Retreat begins with a consultation, so we can understand what you want to change and tell you honestly what will achieve it. Call us, email us, or come and see us on Broadway.
8 Broadway, Manchester M40 3LN