The Big Interview

By: Ruth Donnelly
Created on 01st December 2010

Dr Mark Palmer has a wealth of experience in the aesthetics industry and is credited as the man who introduced the revolutionary Alizonne Therapy to the UK. Cosmetic Surgery & Aesthetics Guide picks his brains...

You've been working in aesthetics for ten years - how did you get involved in the industry?

I was first introduced to cosmetic medicine by a friend of mine who had a private hair transplant business. He invited me down to see his practice and I was fascinated by it - particularly in terms of the results he was getting for his patients. My background is in general practice, which is great but can be quite frustrating as you don't always have the freedom to give patients exactly what they need.

Through this friend, I joined the British Association of Cosmetic Doctors, went to one of their conferences and started to learn more about all the possibilities within cosmetic medicine. I got to know some of the doctors who were offering cosmetic treatments back then and travelled around the country for about a year, watching them work and learning from them, until I felt confident that I knew enough to start my own practice.

How has the industry changed since you first started out?

The industry has grown phenomenally, with new products, equipment and treatment options hitting the market all the time. But of course, they don't always work and they're not always safe, so it is more and more important to evaluate everything very carefully before introducing it into the practice.

I think both the medical profession and the government have been taken by surprise with the way the industry has grown - from a few doctors having a part time interest in the cosmetic use of Botox ten years ago, to now a huge medical subspecialty.

Because it has grown so quickly, there is still very little regulation. I hope that will change; the BACD has done a lot of good work to get the specialty recognised, which will in turn help to increase consumer awareness that you need to see a properly trained practitioner.

The BACD has now launched an official, university approved postgraduate diploma, so things are moving in the right direction.

You are credited with having introduced Alizonne Therapy to the UK. Where and when did you first come across the programme?

About six years ago, I was at an aesthetics conference in Europe and a Dutch cosmetic physician, Dr Van der Lugt, was there, giving a presentation on a weight loss programme she had developed, Alizonne Therapy.

The presentation was quite brief, but I thought some of the results were incredible, not just in terms of the weight loss, but the cosmetic results - the reshaping and contouring effects were far beyond anything I had seen before.

Dr Van der Lugt has some photographs of her patients unclothed, which she can only use for scientific purposes, but they really show the contouring effects and skin tightening to best effect.

Had you been involved in weight loss programmes before?

Only in general practice and as any GP will tell you, some of the most frustrating patients to treat are those that need help with weight loss. I can't think of a single patient that has lost any significant amount of weight by being referred to the hospital dietetic service, and even surgical treatment is no guarantee of success.

I've got about six or seven patients in my general practice that have had bariatric surgery and some of them have lost quite large amounts of weight but regained it after six months, and others have been quite ill following the surgery, so I didn't really see that as a great option either.

So when I came across Alizonne Therapy it got me thinking that if I could do something that could help these people avoid surgery, be more successful at losing weight and have a better cosmetic outcome from the weight loss, then that would be a very valuable thing to do.

What was the process involved in bringing Alizonne to the UK?

After seeing Dr Van der Lugt's presentation, I got talking to her about the programme and she invited me to her clinic to find out more. I spent quite a few days there, talking to patients and staff and looking over all the records.

One thing I found appealing about it was that it offered a way to combine my cosmetic work with ‘real' medicine - as a GP, when you move into aesthetic medicine, you do tend to miss that side of things.

But with Alizonne, we're not just dealing with the patient's appearance, we're interested in their health more than anything - I've had patients who've presented with diabetes and by the time they've finished the programme they've come off all their medication and are essentially non-diabetic, which is incredibly satisfying.

I spent about eighteen months evaluating the programme, looking at the results and learning more about the treatments and diet plan involved, and when I felt I knew enough about it and was confident that the results were consistent, I decided to introduce it to my practice in Leeds.

What do you think it is that makes Alizonne so effective?

I think the first thing to say is that we are dealing with a highly motivated group of patients. They've heard about the treatment somewhere, they've researched it, they've phoned the clinic, come in for a consultation, and they've paid for it, because it's only available privately.

Funding themselves means they're going to be motivated enough to follow instructions, and that by definition makes the chance of success much greater. But I think in terms of the programme itself, it's the combination of everything involved.

It's a very unique diet, low in carbs and fats, with unique dietary supplements combined with natural foods - so it's not just a synthetic, meal replacement diet, you can continue to live a normal existence while you’re on it.

It’s very carefully medically supervised, by means of regular appointments with the doctor, with blood tests and blood pressure monitoring, so we keep a close eye on their health, and that’s reassuring for the patient, which in turn increases motivation.

And we’re also combining both those things with treatments for body contouring and skin tightening, so they can see an improvement all the time – often when you lose weight there’s a lot of excess skin and you feel you look worse than you did before, which is disheartening, but with Alizonne you don’t have that, which is another motivating factor.

So I think it’s all these things put together that make Alizonne so successful – if you separated one element and used that as a standalone treatment, whether that be the dietary plan or the treatment plan, I don’t think it would work as well in its own right. The most ingenious part is to put all those things together as a combination therapy.

Alizonne is now available in ten clinics across the UK. How did that come about?

I ran the programme in my clinic for about two years before I mentioned it to anyone else, because I wanted to make sure that it was a good service to offer and that the results were good.

Then we treated a man who was so overweight he could hardly walk – he weighed about 200 kilos to start with and as a result of the treatment we halved his body weight over a 12 month period and his cosmetic result was fantastic.

The first person I had spoken to about Alizonne was Dr Connolly, another BACD member who runs a clinic in Glasgow, and I invited him down to meet this patient. He couldn’t believe that somebody could lose that amount of weight and be in such good shape, and so he became very interested in offering the programme in his clinic.

We then started to get a lot of enquiries from patients who were travelling miles for treatment – we had one patient who drove from Bristol to Leeds every week! So that’s when I started talking to other doctors, who were in good locations and had enough space on their premises to offer the treatment, to find out if they would be interested to do so.

How far do you think your reputation has aided the programme’s success?

I suppose it did help in a way – people knew me, and they knew that I only do treatments that are beneficial for patients and produce good results, so they took me seriously when I started talking about it.

But it wouldn’t have got where it is today if Alizonne weren’t such an effective treatment programme.