LAB RAT: A BEVERLY HILLS PLASTIC SURGEON’S CULT TREATMENT

Written by LENA RAFF

As a person who both lives in LA and works in the beauty industry, it would be fair to assume that I would have had every skin treatment under the sun. This Angeleno, however, is too afraid to take the plunge and potentially mess up a complexion she’s actually relatively (petty much, for the most part...) happy with.

For this reason, options like Botox and filler are off the table for me at this moment, about a month before my 36th birthday. The results are too variable, and luckily, wrinkles and loss of volume are not yet concerning enough that I’d be willing to risk a drooping brow or other such uncommon-but-unfortunate outcomes. No, my skin travails lie in the ever deepening and darkening circles under my eyes, and in stubborn hyperpigmentation likely earned in the years before daily SPF was gospel.

In my search for treatments that would address both of these issues—ideally with results in one go, that weren’t so intense that they would require days or weeks of downtime, and were administered by a true expert whose CV and reputation put my anxious mind at ease—I landed at the doorstep of Dr. Diamond’s Beverly Hills Face Institute.

Dr. Diamond, who practices on several continents, has earned his glowing worldwide reputation not only as a sought-after plastic surgeon, but for his commitment to constant adaptation, improvement, and creativity. It is this ethos of innovation that spawned the Diamond InstaFacial®—the four-step skin treatment that checked all my boxes.

In 2013, Kim Kardashian posted a bloody selfie after receiving the “vampire facial,” and turned the procedure, which involves drawing blood, separating the PRP (Platelet-Rich Plasma) and injecting or microneedling it back into the face. Like most Kardashian-endorsed endeavors do, the treatment became an overnight sensation. But even as it grew in popularity, Dr. Diamond was already working on making his version more effective and efficient. Tammy Goodarzi, Diamond Face Institute Chief Experience Officer, explains, “Our patients really don't have the ability to be out of commission for a few days, so we needed to be able to get creative and use the innovation that we had at our fingertips to create a proprietary treatment with a proprietary combination of modalities that would all work in synergy to prepare the skin for maximum absorption of the Platelet-Rich Plasma.”

This proprietary treatment became the now-famous InstaFacial®, and I had an appointment on the books. Arriving at the penthouse clinic via an elevator that opened to a manicured courtyard, I checked in with the front desk and was ushered into a private treatment room. I was given a soft, surprisingly comfortable robe and after removing my makeup, I took some “before” photos and chatted with Dr. Diamond’s team about my goals for the appointment. Madi Demyon, my medical assistant, drew some blood (to spin out the plasma) and applied a numbing cream.

After about half an hour and some incredulous musings from the team that I had never done anything to my skin, it was go-time. Sharon Shon, the Institute’s Laser Specialist, performed six passes of Clear + Brilliant Laser at the top setting. This step, Goodarzi informed me, “addresses fine lines and wrinkles, exfoliates, and prepares the skin for maximum absorption of the platelet rich plasma.” She says, “It provides a beautiful canvas as well, helping in its own right with pigmentation pore size, laxity, and texture.” This part was not nearly as painful as I anticipated—it felt like hot sandpaper rubbing against my skin.

The next stage involved injections of PRF (Platelet-Rich Fibrin, which has an even higher concentration of growth factors and platelets, proteins, and amino acids than PRP) where the face shows volume loss. For this, I saw the man himself. Dr. Diamond—authoritative and efficient yet warm—examined my photos and pointed out areas where he saw the beginning stages of collagen depletion: around the eyes and some just-starting-to-form marionette lines on either side of the mouth. The injections, he said “give an immediate volume boost and signal to the body to jumpstart the production of collagen, elastin, and other structural proteins.”

By this time, my skin was hot and very red from the laser, and I’m not going to lie—this next part did hurt, but it was fast. Now, do keep in mind that this was my first ever skin procedure, and I was able to handle it with a few squeezes of a (diamond-shaped and branded) stress ball. Dr. Diamond saturated my skin with my PRP and PRF, and used a microneedling roller to infuse it into the skin. This very minor injury prompts a collagen-promoting healing response from the body that is boosted by the regenerative plasma to, as Dr. Diamond says, "maximize the appearance of the overall skin and provide a glow that makes you look your best.” Lastly, a cooling collagen infusion mask was applied and I was dismissed with instructions to not wash or do anything to my face that evening, and going forward, use a gentle cleanser, daily SPF, and two of Dr. Diamond’s own skin care products (inspired by this very treatment), InstaFacial® Plasma and InstaFacial® Infusion to boost my results and help my skin heal.

I had survived my first-ever skin intervention. The sunburned feeling wore off after a couple of hours, and the redness was gone in another day or so. My skin took on a rough texture for another several days, but after about a week, I began to notice that my under-eyes looked fuller and brighter—I was less inclined to reach for a concealer every single time I planned to encounter another person. Soon, I was seeing day-over-day improvement in my texture, my dark spots began to look lighter, and my complexion took on a crystalline, radiant quality I didn’t want to diminish by wearing makeup.

As with all things, the results only improve with more sessions, and—after my experience with the welcoming and expert team, minimal recovery period, and the addictive quality of the glow, I will certainly be returning to see what can be accomplished with further downtime- and anxiety-free InstaFacials® by Dr. Diamond.