The tranquil atmosphere inside the spa at The Peninsula Hotel—complete with soothing music, dim lighting and citrus-tinged water—is in stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of Fifth Avenue outside. Just hanging out in the locker room (read: steam room, sauna and amazing showers) is a welcome break from everyday life, but I’m here for a more specific reason: the MBR Age-Defying Customized Facial.
The Peninsula is one of few locations in the United States to use products from the super high-end European skincare brand Medical Beauty Research. During my facial, the esthetician looked at my skin and used products to address my specific issues—all of which left my face feeling brand new.
After the heavenly experience, spa manager Erica Schumacher filled me in on exactly what was going on with each twinge and tingle I felt, and in the process revealed that aside from being a luxurious way to spend an afternoon, making MBR products a part of your skincare routine can help ensure you get the best results possible if you decide to go under the knife.
Below, she elaborates on how to use this highly concentrated line of products to optimize the results of your next plastic surgery procedure.
If someone is thinking about having a surgical procedure on their face, what kind of skincare regimen do you recommend to best prepare the skin and enhance results?
In regards to pre and post-op surgery, basically the recommended regimen is that you would start to use the Medical Beauty Research products three months prior to your surgery and then three months after. Essentially, it’s going to assist with refining the structures of the skin and the cells themselves. It actually brings hyaluronic acid back in. Natural production of hyaluronic acid, collagen and elastic fibers. That’s just on a broad scale—there’s a lot more on a cellular level that goes on. It’s like a superfood for the face. Essentially, when you go in for surgery, this would actually allow precision cuts with scalpels to heal quicker, to actually have less micro-tearing during the procedures themselves, so you get better results. It also works alongside injectables, where it will actually sustain injectables longer. Let’s say that you got fillers or Botox or something like that, what the product would do is go into the skin and the cell itself and would actually allow natural production to occur to actually increase the life of the injectable so that you’re not wearing away the injectable and that you’re actually producing your own, say, hyaluronic acid or lipid bilayer—whatever was being injected.
The Peninsula Hotel
What makes these products work so well?
A lot of this is on a cellular level. It’s not on the epidermal layer, where most other product brands will fit, it actually goes to the dermal layer, which is much deeper and more profound in its effect. It also has a time-release technology in it, where if you’re using the product one day, it actually has 24 hours of hydration that occurs from it so it has a time-release in it as well so that if you’re not using it everyday, you still do get the benefit over 24 hours of time. So a little product goes a really long way and its functions that it’s able to increase are amazing.
Treatment Room
Have you seen the results of this product in action?
We have clientele that come in that have had surgeries and have switched some of the things that they were using before and started using this because the visible results are so profound. And they continue on because it really does an amazing job. Personally, I’ve never done Botox but I have a crease on my forehead and I started to use an MBR product and I actually reduced my wrinkle and my staff was asking me if I had Botox myself. It really does work very well and that’s just from a cream on my face. There are a lot of really amazing products in the line.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
All images are courtesy of The Peninsula Hotels
