From their "what is SafeTox" page:
"Certain muscles close up the face and cause wrinkles. Safetox Beauty relaxes these muscles"While the former is true, I doubt that wrinkles due to lifelong "over-engaged frowning muscles" are going to disappear by 5 minutes of electrostimulation daily.
Muscles contract by getting a digital signal from the brain, a "pulsetrain". Without going into the details, the dutycycle of that pulsetrain largely determines how strongly the muscle is contracted. The total absence of any signal results in total relaxation. There is, as far as I know, no practical method of using electricity to
relax a muscle - only to
tense a muscle. By repeated tensing to the maximum contraction, a muscle can be temporarily paralyzed, indeed.
Medical literature mentions muscle relaxation by electric stimulation:
https://http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7557797..but this is about something totally different than the "Safetox" claims to do. Such medical studies are about relaxing very tense muscles by stimulating them to cramp up and relax all night, hours at the time. And then they claim to see marginal improvements in severe, pathological muscle tension. The studies are paid for by the manufacturers of those devices.
The "Safetox" claims:
"A 5 minute session each day over a period of weeks is enough to educate your muscles and restore the muscular dynamics of a youthful face"This is of course complete nonsense, and surely they have no research data to back this up in the slightest. The wrinkles we are talking about emerged over decades of using the frowning muscles. There is no way that a little bit of muscle stimulation from a tiny battery, a few minutes per day, is ever going to fix that. And there is no such thing as "educating" muscles. I assume they just made that up because it sounds plausible.
Note how their site is packed with very specific promises and improvement percentages, as if they have done all kinds of medical trials. However, when you read about those trials, their site says that they did the trials themselves, and they claim that independent labs also did trials. However they neither mention those labs, nor do they make available any medical research papers.
However, in their attempts to sound scientific and specific, they made a revealing mistake. Their improvement percentages have not just digits behind the decimal point, they give figures such as
-11.1% and
-8.9%. That implies that they were able to measure the degree of wrinkliness with the incredible accuracy of tens of percents. That's just complete nonsense. It would already be highly suspect if they would state increments of 0.5%, but 0.1% is pushing it too far. Their marketing department should shave of the rough edges here and there, lol. It's always the same with those atrociously overpriced pieces of junk claiming all sort of skin miracles. 317 dollars for a tiny piece of futuristic looking plastic costing less to produce than a ten dollar wristwatch. With not the slightest evidence to back up their unsubstantiated claims.
Of course I did some research into their claimed phenomenon of electro-inhibition but I only found their own patent:
https://http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2007/0276451.html(Note how the last paragraph mentions how cheap such a device is, to manufacture..)
All I can say is, if you believe that it can work and you have the cash to spare, by all means try it. I am quite sure it won't do much at all. However I have to concede that the patent holder of the Safetox, Pierre Rigaux, appears to be bona-fide in researching this topic, as he is the author of other material on electrostimulation of muscles:
https://http://www.hammernutrition.com/downloads/muscle.pdfThis by itself means nothing though. Any doctor can spend some money on any patent (the merit of an invention is never an factor in a patent application) to gain credibility for an overpriced gadget. I believe the claims when I see research from independent scientists or at least some credible trial material apart from some photo's that are wholly inconclusive. From what is offered on the Safetox website, we can only assume the device is a sham, and its vendor will make an estimated 80% gross profit on each sale, while promising the moon.
I would invest my money into things that have really proven to work, as countless plastic surgeons and other medical professionals are now using in their own practice. Microneedling + vitamins. Much more effort and pain, but solid, proven results. Piles of medical test data to back that up, dozens of real medical doctors vouching for its efficacy, and not a lone inventor claiming incredible results without a shred of evidence. People like to believe in shortcuts, in miracle devices that use hi-tech to effortlessly solve health problems. People are prepared to trade money for having to expend less effort. However, such devices still do not exist. Effort and pain are still the only ways to permanently improve skin problems. Even Botox lasts only a relatively short time.
Topic: Does the Safetox work? (opinion) (Read 19865 times)
