Strictly Come Dancing is back, and we can’t help but notice that Shirley Ballas is looking very much the belle of the ballroom. With her taut jawline and skin smoother than Johannes’ satin trousers, the show’s head judge is looking incredible at 64, and for good reason.
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Shirley has revealed she’s undergone an intensive course of high-tech skin treatments, and says it’s been so effective she’s shelved her plans to have a facelift. “When I went into my 60s I was very much considering having a face lift,” she says. “When I looked in the mirror, I saw dull, lifeless, sagging skin, I had a lot of pigmentation with sun spots and I had little spider veins on my nose.”
She adds: “The whole thing about my face made me feel anxious especially because I’m in the public eye more and more these days. Just like anybody, I just want to look the best that I can at my age, but the problem is that when you reach your mid 60s and older, it gets so much harder to keep your skin looking in great shape, and I was keen to find a non-surgical way to revitalise my skin.”
For the past year, Shirley has been seeing leading aesthetic practitioner Dr Johanna Ward for monthly sessions of NeoGen nitrogen plasma, a non-invasive procedure that uses super-heated nitrogen gas to stimulate skin rejuvenation.
Shirley undergoes treatment with Dr Ward
Dr Ward explains: “NeoGen effectively tricks your skin into boosting levels of collagen and elastin, two of the main structural proteins that stop our skin from sagging and gives us that plump, youthful look.”
“NeoGen treatments create relatively pain-free trauma within the dermis which triggers your body to repair itself. We have provided six monthly low-energy NeoGen treatments for Shirley this year to continue to boost her collagen levels, and will now do quarterly top-up sessions.”
Shirley is especially impressed with the results on her jawline
Shirley is delighted by the results, saying: “I have to say that I think these treatments have shaved 30 years off me. It has made me feel so confident and comfortable in my own skin. I feel like I’ve got a new lease of life.”
She’s famous for her critical judging eye, but sees little to fault with her unretouched before and after photos: “Even I’m quite shocked, and I’m hard to please. I would say the biggest improvement for me is the tightening on the jawline and the reduction of the loose skin on the neck and jowls, but also the general skin quality is improved. The treatments have got rid of all of the sunspots, red marks and spider veins that I had on my cheeks and nose. Before I had the treatments my face was looking grey and tired but now my whole face glows. It’s just remarkable to see the difference in such a short space of time.”
Shirley before and after six sessions of NeoGen
Describing herself as someone who has “quite a low tolerance for pain”, Shirley always opts to have numbing cream applied ahead of each treatment at Dr Ward’s London clinic. “After that it totally bearable for me and it’s no more than a 2 or 3 out of ten for pain,” she says.
“I choose to have my treatments on a low energy setting that means that I have almost zero downtime, so my skin might be a little bit red the next day but I can still put my makeup on and I can still go about my work. With lower energy treatments you won’t see changes overnight but over the course of six months I could see a huge difference.”
Shirley also uses Tenplus electrolyte sachets to increase skin hydration before and after NeoGen as well as G Herbal SKIN supplements, Centella Asiatica and turmeric, to help boost results from the treatment.
So far this year, Shirley had six low energy NeoGen Plasma treatments, which costs £3,850 for the course. “I intend to keep up having the NeoGen treatments for the next year. The results are completely off the chart and phenomenal so 100% I’m going to keep them up. I’m actually quite terrified at the thought of stopping having them.”
Dr Johanna Ward runs clinics in London and Kent, find full details about her NeoGen treatments here