Transcript
Vampire Facelift® Official Website
Vampire Facial® Official Website
Apply for Training for the Vampire Facelift®
Apply for Training for the Vampire Facial®
Altar™ (A Vampire Skin Therapy™)
More about Dr. Charles Runels
Charles Runels: Hello, I’m Charles Runels, the inventor of the Vampire Facelift®. I received a letter today that had a thoughtful question, so I thought it might be helpful to read to you the question and answer it for you. In the process I’ll explain to you what the Vampire Facelift is, the difference between the Vampire Facelift and the Vampire Facial®, and how to receive training, how to know which one you should be trained on, and how to find the best provider, and how to know which methods, devices, and materials you should use.
So here’s the question…
I am interested in becoming a provider of the Vampire Facelift. I wanted to ask you if you felt that the facelift works better with the use of the micro derm-abrasion pen, or with injections. Do you feel there is a difference in the results? Thank you for your time.
So first of all, how this came to be, I think that will help you understand the procedure. I don’t like the fact that if you see advertisement for, let’s say, Juvederm, or Restylane, then you don’t really know the method that will be used. For example, if you see an advertisement for beef or pork, but you can’t tell if it’s a fast food restaurant or a gourmet restaurant, that would not be so useful. You see the name of the restaurant, and then you assume that materials and the methods used will be excellent, or not as excellent based on the name of the provider of the food. Unlike that, if you see an advertisement for, let’s say Juvederm, you’re not sure if the provider is of excellent quality or not. At the present moment in the United States there is no board exam where people are tested in detail about the methods of injecting facial fillers. Surprisingly, no board exam claims it.
So, you have sometimes facial plastic surgeons who are excellent, but yet sometimes you go to the facial plastic surgeon’s office, and it’s a nurse practitioner who’s doing the procedure in a very excellent way, or a family practitioner who does amazing facial cosmetic injections, sometimes better than the other specialty that might be down the street. So there’s really no way to know looking at the board exam, or by looking at the material you use, whether you will come out of there having either duck lips, or sausage lips, or a very natural beautifully restored mouth.
So, because of that, when I developed the way of using platelet-rich plasma in combination with facial fillers, then I wanted a name that meant the way it might be used in the most excellent way. So it should define how the fillers should be used, and how the plasma should be both prepared and used in combination with those facial fillers. Now, obviously I can’t be in someone’s office every time they do a procedure, but what I can require is that if someone is licensed to use the name Vampire Facelift, they at least demonstrate an understanding of some basic principles that I think are required to provide an excellent procedure.
For example, they should be using a platelet-rich plasma kit that’s approved by the FDA as a device for putting plasma back into the body. The FDA does not evaluate or approve any procedure, whether that be a hysterectomy, a cholecystectomy, any kind of C-section, there is no procedure that the FDA approves. It’s the F, food, D, drug and devices administration. Food and drug administration, but that includes devices, but it’s not the food and drug and procedure administration. They do not evaluate procedures. Physicians do that. The FDA is neither qualified, equipped, or determined to in any way regulate that.
So, having said that, the FDA does and should evaluate facial fillers, and has approved Juvederm and Restylane as a device that can be injected to create cosmetically appealing shape in the face. Now, what happened was, when I used the facial fillers, being lucky enough to study with some amazing people around the world, I was able to develop a technique that I think creates a natural and younger shape a large percent of the time. A large percent of the time, almost all of the time, without creating anything weird or any weird side effects. It’s a safe way to create a younger natural shape. So, everyone who is certified by the Cellular Medicine Association, which is the organization that started to help regulate and think about these ideas, which has garnered amazing input from brilliant brains around the world.
So, using our collective mentality, we come upon ways that we modify and make better, based on research and ideas from the group, which includes many professors of many medical schools around the world, and we come up with a way to do something, and then everyone in the group agrees to follow that method, modifying it as needed based on what that individual patient might demonstrate in the office, but always maintaining certain standards, such as using an FDA approved kit to prepare the plasma, by using an FDA approved hyaluronic acid filler, and using an FDA approved micro needling device when doing the Vampire Facial.
So here’s the difference between the two; if you go here, this is the website for the Vampire Facial, and you’ll see that I’m using a micro needling device. This is me doing a procedure, a Vampire Facial, on Yasmin, a beautiful reporter there for CNN News. Here’s photographs you can see of Kim Kardashian where she had her Vampire Facial, she had it while she was pregnant, she recently blogged about this again, and much of her pain was because she’s tough enough that even though she was not able to use the numbing cream because she was pregnant, she went ahead with the procedure because of her intention to have it as part of her television show. So the procedure, which is normally minimally uncomfortable, was more painful for her, but a nice point about that is the plasma itself was safe to use even while she was pregnant, because it’s her blood. There’s never been a serious life threatening infection or brain neuroma from platelet-rich plasma.
So you can see that other amazing, gorgeous, and brilliant people have had the procedure, like [inaudible 00:07:23], and Giselle, and other, if you go online, many other movie stars, because this is a beautiful safe way to create colored texture changes. So, obviously you can see Kim, she’s young here, and she’s full of hormones, and Ms Kardashian, as a pregnant woman, had a beautiful shape already. So the facial was the perfect procedure for her. Facial meaning using a combination of micro needling with platelet-rich plasma applied on top of that, and now we add to that procedure by using a patented material that is in our Vampire Skin Therapy cream, called Altar, A-L-T-A-R, as in your body being a holy temple, and then using Altar immediately post procedure you get a more rapid healing from the micro needling.
So the Vampire Facial is prepare platelet-rich plasma, use micro needling, apply platelet-rich plasma both during and after the micro needling, then apply Altar, and then you go home. And what you see is over the next week to six weeks, full effect is probably eight to twelve weeks because you need collagen production. The micro needling causes channels, those channels heal in, just as they would if you did a fractal laser, one without the threat of burning, and you can use it with all skin types. So doing that, we have split face studies showing we can help acne scarring, we can help colored texture, but you don’t do that much for shape. So if you have cheeks that are going flat, or if you have a mouth that’s turning in, then the Vampire Facial would not be the procedure. For that, you would do the Vampire Facelift.
The Vampire Facelift, which you can see here, is a combination of using a hyaluronic acid filler, like Juvederm or Restylane, to create a beautiful shape, and then you take the platelet-rich plasma and you inject it subdermally, so you go under the skin. The reason we call it a facelift, as opposed to a facial, is that HA filler goes under the skin and lifts the skin away from the skeleton of the skull creating that beautiful natural shape you had as a child, or a teenager, or closer back to that shape by lifting the skin away from the skull. Then, the PRP recruits stem cells to the area from your own bone marrow, so the PRP releases active growth factors and cytokines from the platelets when it’s injected subdermally, then those pluripotent stem cells come to the area and then mature into collagen, blood vessel, nerve, and the HA filler acts as a substrate, or a scaffolding on which that grows. It creates a very beautiful, natural shape. We still like to use our Altar cream to enhance that effect.
The SBD-4, which is in Altar, has been shown to decrease the number of senescent cells, so in biopsy you can tell which cells are old and which cells are young, and the active ingredient in Altar, SPD4, causes an increase in numbers of the younger of the cells, along with the cytokines and the growth factors, over 20 of them in platelet-rich plasma, causing new cell growth, new collagen. There’s a really amazing, amazing synergistic effect, and sometimes we’ll even add amnion to the PRP for an even greater effect, from the peptides that are in amnion that cause even more astounding effect. So there can be a synergy base in all this.
Now, this is not going to make 80 years old look 18, but if you have the Vampire Facelift you should leave the doctor’s office looking younger and still looking natural with a more youthful shape, and you’ll get colored texture changes. You can get a more dramatic change for things like acne scarring and crepe papering under the eyes with the Vampire Facial, but not much change in shape. You can get a very dramatic change in the shape with the Vampire Facelift, but not as dramatic change in the crepe papering under the eyes.
So, a little more about who can do these procedures. The facial, because there’s no injecting subdermally of the HA filler, there’s micro needling and topical application, varies from state to state and from country to country, but the skillset and the licensing required is usually less stringent. In many states a esthetician, in most states actually, an esthetician can do the micro needling, but handling the blood, usually in almost every state and country, now you involve an RAN usually, or a physician’s assistant, or a nurse practitioner. So, but because there’s no subdermal injection of a filler, the skillset involved is different and less stringent with the facial.
Now, with the Vampire Facelift, because it involves injection of Juvederm of Restylane, the licensing varies, and it should be and it is, more stringent, because you’re if you’re not sure what you can do, you can hurt people with a filler much more easily than you can applying PRP topically. To hurt someone with PRP topically you have to do something stupid and get people’s blood mixed up, which we just don’t do. But for injecting fillers, if you’re not sure what you can do, you can create a weird shape, and you can also cause serious problems like skin necrosis, and even blindness. So you have to know what you’re doing.
Now, the licensing requirements for the fillers varies from state to state. In Alabama you have to be a licensed physician. In most states though, a well trained RN or nurse practitioner can inject fillers. Nurses and physician’s assistants often do extremely dangerous things, like I.V.s, and pushing I.V. drugs that could be life threatening if done wrong. So in my opinion it’s extremely reasonable for an RN to be able to inject fillers, but they need a different level of training, and we are very strict about following the licensing guidelines of the state. So in Alabama, where at the present moment an RN cannot do fillers, there are no Vampire Facelift providers, but there are Vampire Facial providers, because the facial’s micro needling and PRP, the facelift is subdermal injections of the filler followed by subdermal injections of PRP.
So, if a provider is already skilled in Juvederm, or Restylane, or some sort of subdermal hyaluronic acid filler, they can easily learn to do the Vampire Facelift by learning to do the plasma portion of it, which never creates an odd shape because it’s growing based on the man or woman’s genetic code.
Now, if you are a provider then, hopefully this is the answer to some of your questions, and you’re trying to decide which procedure you would like to learn to do, I recommend that you do the facelift if you are proficient in fillers, and the facial, because you could vary the procedure based on what you’re seeing. If you’re not already proficient in using the fillers, and your state allows you to learn that, then I recommend a hands on course. It’s possible for someone who’s already proficient in fillers to learn the Vampire Facelift, as in the PRP portion of that, using our intensive online training materials, with testing following. The facial is if you are a licensed RN or physician’s assistant, the last we checked, check with your state, but the last we checked every state in the United States and most countries will allow an RN or a physician’s assistant to do the Vampire Facial. Some countries are more particular about the platelet-rich plasma portion of this, so check with your country and check with your state to see if something has changed with that recommendation.
Now, if you are a patient, this is very important. If someone’s advertising the facelift, and they’re not listed as a provider on this site, so if you go to vampirehair.com and you click on ‘find provider’, if they’re not listed in this site, they may be doing wonderful work, but they have not been licensed by the Cellular Medicine Association, and so they may not know our methods. So here’s the countries that we have people in at the present moment. We have almost every state, we have people listed, and you can search by zip code and it will list people by nearest to farthest. Obviously it’s listing me first, because I’m the closest person to me at the present moment. But it will list people nearest to farthest from where’ve you’re sitting, or you can put in a zip code and find it.
So, this is where you go to find someone who understands, and has agreed, and has been licensed to use the name, and they understand and agreed to use an FDA approved kit to prepare the plasma, to use an FDA approved device, if they’re doing micro needling, to use an FDA approved hyaluronic acid filler, if they’re doing the Vampire Facelift, using the FDA approved micro needling device if they’re doing the Vampire Facial. Now, the micro needling is different than micro dermabrasion. Think of micro dermabrasion sort of like a scrubbing, sandpapering of the face, which is a nice procedure, but the Vampire Facial should involve micro needling. So you have 10 to 12 needles that are going at a very precise amount, anywhere from half a millimeter to two and a half millimeters. You can see it’s asking me now if it’s okay to know where I am so it can list people from nearest to farthest. So if you so micro dermabrasion followed by PRP, that’s not the Vampire Facial either. The Vampire Facial should involve using micro needling devices that are FDA approved.
Now, why do you need FDA approved? Because the old devices would sometimes pull blood up into the handle, which made them an infectious disease problem. So you should have a device that’s been approved by the FDA. If you ever needed the FDA to approve something, it would be a device that actual punctures the skin, creating both the dermal puncture wounds, and possibility of blood cross contamination. So make sure you find someone on this website, so you find someone who’s agreed to following these guidelines, because I promise you, I promise you, not all providers are following these guidelines.
So, if you’re a provider, you can go to these websites. Let’s say you’re on Vampire Facelift, you can go to ‘for physicians‘ and there’s a place there to give us your information, and we will give you information on how to apply for online or hands on training based on your qualifications. So the Facial has the same possibilities, you just go to vampirefacial.com, if you’re interested in becoming a provider you click on ‘for physicians’, and then you fill out the form. And we will send to you everything you need to know to find out if this procedure’s for you. So, thank you very much, it was an honor to spend some time with you.
