Reading the claim
Before and after photographs, reduction percentages, inch loss, satisfaction figures, guarantees, finance and the phrases that sound regulatory but are not.
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.
Where fat reduction percentages come from and why we do not repeat them
Every device in this category has a number attached to it. This is where those numbers come from, what they are measuring, and why this publication will not print any of them.
The inch loss claim and what a tape measure measures
A tape measure is the cheapest instrument in the treatment room and the most persuasive. Here is what it is actually sensitive to, and how a small fluid shift becomes a headline number.
Courses, packages, guarantees and finance in non-surgical body treatment
The commercial structure of this category deserves the same scrutiny as the science. Prepaid courses, results guarantees and point of sale credit each change your position in ways worth understanding before you sign.
Clinically proven, medically approved and FDA cleared in UK advertising
Four phrases do most of the reassurance work in this category, and none of them mean what a reader takes them to mean. This is what each one actually refers to.
This article contains no commercial links of any kind. No affiliate links, no sponsored placements, and no links to any clinic, practitioner, device manufacturer, brand or retailer. Nobody paid for it, nobody previewed it and nobody outside the editorial team saw it before publication.
This publication does not name, rank, rate or review any clinic or practitioner, because it has assessed none of them. Our funding is set out in full on the about page and on the provider listings page, including what we refuse to sell at any price.
Nothing here is medical advice. Speak to a qualified clinician about your own circumstances.
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.