Shirley Ballas is definitely in her Benjamin Button era. For the past three Septembers, as a new season of Strictly returns, she has burst back on to our screens with her face looking fabulous, fresher and a fraction more snatched than last year – all thanks to another course of the NeoGen Plasma treatments.
At the age of 65, it’s a stellar achievement for the dancing show’s head judge. Once we’re over 60 and way past menopause, with our natural supplies of the lovely supportive collagen and bouncy elastin that kept our younger skin firm and springy having waned, it’s an uphill task to turn back the clock on droopy jowls and rough skin texture.
So what are the procedures that really work once you’re over 60? Well, as a 62-year-old tweakments expert who has tried every non-surgical cosmetic procedure under the sun over the past 25 years, here’s my shortlist of what’s made the biggest difference to my face since I turned 60 – and, yes, it includes NeoGen.
Alice Hart-Davis has had more than 200 anti-ageing treatments. Now she’s 62 she’s sharing the ones you need, starting with NeoGen which Strictly judge Shirley Ballas used
NeoGen Plasma: For the Shirley Ballas glow-up
I knew I had to try NeoGen Plasma when Shirley Ballas first credited it for her beautifully refreshed face in 2023. At 60-plus, it’s hard to get the kind of visible tightening that her before-and-after pictures were showing without resorting to surgery.
Yet Shirley had smoother skin, cheekbones with definition and a jawline that looked lifted. If it worked for her, why not for me?
So off I went to see Dr Raj Thethi, one of the UK’s leading experts to find the answer. The treatment involves plasma energy (created by passing radiofrequency through nitrogen gas) which penetrates the skin and stimulates collagen to regrow stronger.
Unlike lasers, it doesn’t burn through the surface barrier; the controlled damage the treatment creates is internal.
The crucial thing to know is that there are different ways of undergoing NeoGen, both of which yield the same results over time.
The first is as a series of comfortable, lightweight treatments with no downtime, which is the way Shirley Ballas does it. Alternatively, you can opt for one intense, hard-hitting treatment, which is what I tried – and after which I had to hide from the world for a week.
My session was medium intensity all over, plus a high-intensity blast around the eyes and mouth.
I have a high pain threshold and had numbing cream plus local anaesthetic, but it was still a bit prickly. The aftermath? My face was red, swollen, then my skin peeled in cobwebby sheets over the next few days.
Day one was what Dr Thethi called a ‘WTF day’: I felt battered, disoriented, wondering why on earth I had done this to myself. By day four, the shedding was in full swing. By day seven, I looked fine and was happy to stand in front of a camera.
After NeoGen, Strictly judge Shirley Ballas had smoother skin, cheekbones with definition and a jawline that looked lifted
The result? My skin was fresher and immensely smooth. My pores shrank, fine lines softened and I could already see hints of tightening, which continued for three months as the collagen levels in my skin powered up.
Would I do it again? Yes but, like Shirley, I’d spread it over several gentle sessions. Still, as a ‘reset’ for my face, it was terrific.
Microneedling: To help give collagen a boost
Clinical microneedling is neither new nor glamorous but, for me, it’s one of the quiet heroes of the tweakments world.
By 60, our skin has taken a hammering. Collagen production, already in slow decline, takes a nose-dive at menopause thanks to the drop in oestrogen. Imagine a graph where the line gradually slopes down, then suddenly falls off a cliff – that’s your collagen post-menopause.
Collagen-stimulating options do still work for my age group, but in a less impressive way, simply because our skin doesn’t have as much collagen to work on, so it can’t respond as robustly as younger skin does.
That means you need more treatments to get results, so it makes sense to choose one that isn’t wildly expensive. And microneedling is, as tweakments go, good value.
How does it work? A handheld device, studded with ultra-fine needles, creates hundreds of thousands of tiny, controlled punctures as it glides across the face.
These micro-injuries stimulate fibroblasts (the skin’s repair cells) to produce new collagen and elastin. It sounds barbaric but feels more like sandpapering with a buzz – and, with a numbing cream, it’s tolerable.
Afterwards, your face looks pink, maybe a little grazed and might feel warm for a day or two before it settles down. Do a course of three or four sessions, spaced a month apart, and you’ll notice firmer skin, improved texture and even softened lines and scars. I rarely do a full course of microneedling but will slip in a session whenever possible and admit that, for added oomph, I often have skin-regenerating exosomes or PRP (platelet-rich plasma taken from my own blood), needled into the skin during treatment, to give my skin cells a real kickstart.
It’s not a flashy treatment and it won’t dramatically lift your face but, in my sixties, anything that gives my skin more bounce, resilience and glow feels like it’s a win.
Lip filler: When you need a subtle touch-up
I hesitated for a long time before revisiting lip filler – which I used to have regularly 20 years ago.
My lips didn’t look filled, they looked softer, pinker (the extra hydration that the filler delivers perks up their colour), and in better balance with the rest of my face (Model pictured)
My lips had become thinner and drier with age, turning inwards rather than out, giving me that classic, unflattering older woman ‘pursed’ look. Plus, my philtrum (the groove between nose and upper lip) has lengthened over the years, and I feared filler might make my lips poke forward.
I consulted Dr Kuldeep Minocha, who I’ve known for years, and who is renowned for his light-handed approach. I told him I wanted hydration more than volume and definitely nothing that looked ‘done’.
He suggested not just giving my lips a touch of filler for shape and hydration, but giving me a touch-up all around the mouth, carefully rebuilding the philtral columns to make the whole nose-to-lip area look subtly shorter.
Dr Minocha also suggested adding a little filler to my marionette lines – the grooves that drop vertically from the corners of the mouth – to reduce their appearance.
The result was discreet yet transformative. My lips didn’t look filled, they looked softer, pinker (the extra hydration that the filler delivers perks up their colour), and in better balance with the rest of my face.
The fine ‘barcode’ lines above my top lip were softened, my upper lip tilted very slightly out, rather than in. The finished effect was natural.
It didn’t hurt (thank you, numbing cream) and Dr Minocha used less than 1ml of filler in total: Restylane Kysse (a stretchy, pliable filler) in my lips and Restylane Classic (which is a bit firmer) for structure around my mouth. The effect has lasted a year so far, and I’ve been thrilled with it. Enough to want to do it again.
- A consultation with Dr Kuldeep Minocha costs £275; lip filler, from £550, l-art.uk (London)
Polynucleotides: Fish DNA for radiant skin
Polynucleotides are a huge buzzword in aesthetics, although they have actually been around for years.
They are chains of DNA fragments derived from salmon or trout (yes, really) that are injected into the skin to stimulate repair by – guess what? – increasing collagen production. What they do brilliantly is improve skin quality, so you can expect hydration, elasticity and radiance.
The treatment itself involves a series of small injections across the face, neck or décolletage.
Pain-wise, with numbing cream, it’s a 2/10, maybe spiking to a 4/10 around sensitive spots. Not pleasant, but manageable.
Immediately afterwards, I looked as if I’d been stung by a swarm of bees, with little raised ‘blebs’, or blisters, where the product had been placed within the skin. But by the end of the day the swellings had gone from my face. (They take longer to fade in the neck.)
You don’t get instant results. The improvements seep in after a couple of months, once the fibroblasts have been stimulated.
The standard protocol is three sessions, two to three weeks apart, followed by top-ups a couple of times a year. I saw nice results but I know they don’t work for everyone, so get a proper assessment from a clinician as to whether you’re a suitable candidate before you jump in for these.
Why did I love them? Because they help my skin look much more radiant and supple than it has any right to be at my age.
They don’t erase deep lines, but they are brilliant for giving back the glow that’s particularly hard to recapture after 60.
… And don’t forget the benefits of Botox
This is the one I rely on the most, the one I have regularly, three or four times a year: muscle-relaxing toxin.
This is such an obvious tweak (it’s the most popular injectable of all) that it’s hardly worth mentioning, except for the fact there is a large body of popular opinion that declares you ‘can’t’ have toxin – Botox or any of the other brands of neuromodulator – once you’re over 60, because it ‘looks weird’ or causes dropped brows.Why on earth not? I certainly have no intention of stopping.
According to Dr Sophie Shotter, aesthetic doctor and president of the British College of Aesthetic Medicine, this misconception is down to two factors.
First, there’s an assumption toxin won’t work on older, thinner skin with less elasticity. And second, because the licence for most toxins states they are for adults up to the age of 65. That, however, simply reflects the age of the cohort on whom the clinical studies were done.
‘Toxin works by relaxing overactive muscles that cause dynamic wrinkles,’ says Dr Shotter. ‘And muscles still respond, whether you’re 25 or 75.
‘Age isn’t a barrier to treatment and doesn’t make treatment riskier. I find that older patients usually want a softening of their lines, rather than wiping them out completely.’
So how do you get Botox right in a 60-plus face? ‘Tailoring the dose is crucial,’ says Dr Shotter. ‘A soft touch keeps faces looking natural. It’s important for practitioners to understand which muscles become stronger with age and which become weaker, to maintain harmony in a mature face.
‘Less is often more, and overtreatment can flatten expressions, drop the eyebrows or highlight loose skin.
‘Besides, toxin is just one tool in our aesthetic tool kit. Best results often come from combining it with skin quality treatments, a touch of filler to restore volume, and lifting techniques such as ultrasound or radiofrequency microneedling.’
Alice Hart-Davis is founder of thetweakmentsguide.com
