SAN MARCOS, Calif. (KGTV) - It's a new treatment being called "the fountain of youth."
"I am very excited," Dr. Javier Ruiz-Esparza said. "For the first time, we are able to stop aging."
For the past 12 years, Ruiz-Esparza has been conducting clinical trials of his new treatment called the Thermal Dermal Compaction (TDC) program.
It maintains youth by freezing a person's face in time. The treatment requires no freezing, however. In fact, it requires heat. It's an hour-long treatment where Ruiz-Esparza runs a tool on the surface of the face that tool radiates infrared light and radio frequency.
He said it doesn't take much, either -- the standard treatment is one hour, once a year.
"It doesn't hurt at all," said patient Edelweiss Garcia. "You lie down on the bed and he rolls this stick that feels warm, a little hot. He rolls it like 15 minutes on each side of the face and that's it; there's no pain. You can go back to work. You don't even get red."
Garcia first started getting the treatments in 2007. She's turning 50 this year, but her before and after pictures from 2017 show little to no change to her face since she started the treatments.
Ruiz-Esparza said he's tried the treatment on hundreds of patients in Mexico City with positive results. He plans to unveil the treatment in the U.S. this March at his San Marcos clinic.
He claims the treatments do more than stop a face from showing signs of aging. Back-to-back treatments can cause the appearance of reverse aging, according to the doctor. Once it gets to the desired appearance, Ruiz-Esparza said he can then help patients maintain that look year after year.
Ruiz-Esparza said skin, like every other part of your body, grows over time. As you get older, you grow more skin and the extra skin eventually creates that sagging appearance people are self-conscious about.
"There is excess that forms folds and that is what makes us look old," he said.
He said filtered infrared light and radio frequency at the right level to the skin causes it to compact and tighten.
"The net effect is that the face becomes slightly trimmer, slimmer," he said.
The treatment costs anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000.
