Many salons and spas offer a cellulite/weight-loss service where the body is tightly wrapped or dressed in special garments with or without a “specialty” cream or lotion applied first. Promising to take inches off your body, these treatments may cost $65 to $500, with the range depending on the salon and if the clientele is elite enough to warrant the steep price. Scientific-sounding information makes this process seem legitimate, but in the long run all it is doing is temporarily compressing your skin. (You could probably do this yourself with plastic wrap.) The skin will then return to its original shape in a matter of time, with the duration depending on your skin’s response. Impressive results often are delivered after measuring several parts of the body and adding up small, incremental changes; as a total, this ends up sounding far more impressive than it really is.
Infomercials, Internet sites, and some multilevel marketing companies sell at-home systems claiming to eliminate toxins and squeeze waterlogged fatty tissue dry. Luckily, you can’t squeeze toxins out of a cell. While you may be able to squeeze water out of a cell, that same pressure would concurrently injure other cells, which isn’t good for your skin. Plus, the water content would return to whatever level is natural for the body fairly soon due to homeostasis. All in all, there is no research whatsoever showing that body wrapping does anything positive, and it will not get rid of fat or cellulite (Source: Federal Trade Commission, www. ftc. gov/opa/2004/12/transdermal. htm).