Why you won’t find us offering Lemon Bottle fat dissolving injections at our clinic
Social media is a powerful force to be reckoned with, even more so for its ability to hype up aesthetics and medical treatments.
We’ve seen this in the past with aesthetics trends that have risen to fame on social media including the ‘fox eye lift’, ‘buccal fat removal’ and ‘Barbie trap Botox’ – but the latest trend sweeping platforms by storm is Lemon Bottle fat dissolving injections, with #lemonbottleinjections reaching 21.5M views and #lemonbottleUK reaching 40.0M views on TikTok.
On their website Lemon Bottle claim to be a “high-concentration fat dissolve solution” containing key ingredients Riboflavin, (Vitamin B2) which induces activation of fat metabolism, Bromelain, which helps to break down fat and remove inflammation and Lecithin which destroys and transports unnecessary fat cells, stating their “products are 100% safe and made from premium ingredients”. They claim that the precision guided technique use offers patients a “virtually painless experience with little to no swelling or bruising post-treatment”.
What’s our thoughts on first glance?
First, let’s take a look at the product itself, where you can purchase it and its claims. At Paragon Aesthetics, we like to do thorough research before choosing to invest in products to bring to our clinic, as patient safety is our utmost importance.
Lemon Bottle claim their fat dissolver is deemed “100% safe” – this immediately raises our concerns as no injectable is 100% safe, whether it even be common short-term side effects like discomfort, swelling, bleeding, bruising, risk of infection – no injectable is devoid of these risks. Plus, despite Lemon Bottle claiming to have “excellent safety and efficacy data” we could not find any high-quality clinical studies performed on humans that prove this product’s safety efficacy claims – therefore we don’t know the potential risks both short-term and long-term with this product.
With regards to the claims made that the treatment is “virtually painless”, we struggle to ever support that anything injected into the body is pain free, yes discomfort can be minimised when performing aesthetic procedures but we struggle to see how a procedure that takes needle to skin and has the mechanism of eliminating tissue from the body can be virtually devoid of pain.
The product claims to be a type of lipolysis treatment meaning that it breaks down fat cells as a fat removal solution. Usually for medical products to be able to make claims over the results they can produce, this has to be substantiated by rigorous clinical trials. Most fat dissolvers on the market contain the widely recognised and extensively researched ingredient ‘deoxycholic acid’ and are classed as ‘medical products’. This means that under this classification these products have to be subjected to rigorous phase 1 and phase 2 clinical trials to first prove their safety and then their effectiveness. On the other hand, Lemon Bottle is formulated from natural ingredients with no active pharmaceutical ingredients. Thus the product is marketed as a cosmetic product meaning it is not subjected to such rigorous safety testing.
Looking through Google it is widely available to buy online via eBay, Etsy and even websites that sell eyelash extensions. Usually, the medical products we use in clinic are ring-fenced to only be available to purchase by medical professionals, from registered pharmacies.
A medical professional perspective
As a clinic we noticed we have not seen any of the medical professionals we are aware of offering this treatment, and when scouring the hashtags on social media this is certainly a product that seems to be favoured by non-medic injectors.
We decided to ask the medical professionals following Dr. Elle on Instagram, what they thought of the product via an Instagram poll:
A whopping 96% of medical professionals, 82 out of 85 people responding, said they are not offering Lemon Bottle:
When asked what their reasons are for not offering Lemon Bottle, 67% of medical professionals said it was due to a ‘lack of clinical evidence’, followed by 12% who said ‘limited information on ingredients’ and 9% saying it was due to ‘prevalence among non-medic injectors’.
As 12% said ‘limited information on ingredients’, we dug into this further and noticed Lemon Bottle have withheld information to public (and injectors) on the full ingredient list and the ingredient percentages – without this knowledge it becomes incredibly difficult to justify using it and is a huge red flag.
About fat dissolving treatments in general
As a freshly qualified medical injector, Dr. Elle initially trained in a different fat dissolving treatment, but decided not to take it up in to clinic due to the risk of treatment, the side effects and downtime associated with it, also finding it difficult to find the line between there being sufficient fat to make the patient appropriate for treatment, but not so much that they were precluded because they need to assume a healthier lifestyle and manage their weight. When asked about fat dissolvers she said: “Even though I am confident and an experienced injector, for me the risks were too high. I found the most popular area patients requested was under the chin, treatment to this area risked being too shallow and dissolving the skin, being too deep and dissolving the airway – though risks were low, even a less than 0.5% risk was too high for me.”
During our research on fat dissolving, we also found reported concerns from other brands of fat dissolving treatments, which included infection, disfigurement, inflammation and even worse, tissue death. So much so, that fat dissolving treatments have been banned in Brazil.
Throughout our time in medical aesthetics, we’ve also noticed a shift over years whereby many practitioners who once provided treatment, now no longer offer it in clinic.
So, what’s our verdict?
We are always very cautious of ‘trends’ as we don’t agree that aesthetics should be trend-led, our preferred route is perusing treatments that have years, if not decades, of clinical evidence behind them. A good example of the backlash of trends is the surgical procedure of buccal fat removal, which had a real moment on social media last year only for surgeons to come out in their droves to say they no longer perform the procedure and are warning against it.
So, will we be joining the hype and offering Lemon Bottle in clinic? We’re not coming for Lemon Bottle and we also won’t judge you if you choose to offer it in your clinic, this is just our opinion and for us based on the research we have gathered, it’s a firm no.
Disclaimer: All views and opinions in this blog are our own. We advise you to carry out your own research before undergoing or offering any aesthetics treatment, including Lemon Bottle. We also accept our survey via Instagram is not a professional survey or clinical evidence, and rather the opinions of individual users.