Ice massage and wood rolling to contour body - Insider - INSIDER

[massage]

• BB Sculpt is a treatment that uses ice and wood therapy to help tone, sculpt, and firm your body.
• Spa technicians use different wood rollers and an iced red clay to break down fat and push them towards the lymph nodes.
• The treatment is offered at Bronzed Bunny in Costa Mesa, California for $220.
• Insider's Caroline Aghajanian tried the treatment on her stomach and thighs for a discounted media rate.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Caroline Aghajanian: We're in Costa Mesa, California, and I am visiting Bronzed Bunny to try the BB Sculpt treatment. It's this ice and wood therapy treatment that's supposed to help tone and firm your body. I am very old-school when it comes to toning and firming. I think that a regular diet, regular exercise is the best way to see results, but that's easier said than done, and I'm not too great at doing that, so here we are, trying BB Sculpt. So, let's see how effective it is at toning my body, or at least making me feel like it's toned.

Raychell Summers: So, the BB Sculpt treatment is a great way to break up cellulite, compacted fat, and we also do a ice detox. We do a set of five different wood tools that help break up compacted fat. We do a lymphatic drainage, and then we do an ice detox, which helps shrink the fat cells and then eliminate them through the body. So, we focus on two different areas of your choice. So, if you, you know, wanna work on your thighs, if you'd like to work on your stomach, arms, we do a butt lift add-on, which people love. It definitely boosts the booty. We don't want to offer this treatment as a fat-loss, inch-loss-type treatment. It is for fat loss, but it's actually a targeted treatment, and so instead of promising weight loss or a total body change, this is more for somebody who's looking to accentuate their curves.

Caroline: I've always had big thighs. Like, I've just been born with them, and I've just always had a little tum-tum.
Raychell: OK.
Caroline: But, yeah, nothing like, like, I don't hate them, but I just wanna see how much we can tone them up.
Raychell: Get that, yeah.

Caroline: The two areas I decided to focus on were my stomach and my thighs. One session costs about $220, but we received a discounted media rate so that I could experience this treatment and tell you all what I think.

Caroline: Ooh, my tummy's growling. Wow. I always think about food on these treatments.
Raychell: So, this is some massage oil. So, basically, this is just gonna add some slip to the wood tools so when we put the wood on, it doesn't drag on your skin.
Caroline: Yeah. Oh, wow. It's already firm.
Raychell: This is gonna be our first tool. [laughing] Does it tickle, or?
Caroline: It, like... I'm just so not used to a rolling thing.
Raychell: A rolling pin on your stomach?
Caroline: [laughing] It actually does kind of feel a little uncomfortable.
Raychell: This one's amazing for breaking up extra fat, so, this one, we really take our time. We drain with it. We do a few different motions. It actually feels really good on the back of the thighs. A little tender in some areas, but this one is great for fat blasting.
Caroline: I'm gonna try to relax. [laughing]
Raychell: Yes, just relax. It shouldn't hurt.
Caroline: Ooh.
Raychell: I can go lighter if it hurts.
Caroline: No, no. It's OK.
Raychell: Good?
Caroline: Yeah, just put the pressure on.
Raychell: OK.
Caroline: Oh! What does that do?
Raychell: So, this is draining.
Caroline: OK. I do like the draining part. Raychell: The draining feels good.
Caroline: Yeah, it does feel good.

Raychell: This tool here is going to be great for breaking up cellulite, so this one really gets in any type of dimply skin, helps break up compaction. So that one's amazing for cellulite.
Caroline: Oh!
Raychell: And then this tool also is great for breaking up compaction and moving to the lymphatics, so each one of these little guys here help drain the lymphatic. So it moves everything down. [groaning] [laughing]
Caroline: Look at it go. [laughing]

Raychell: And then next we have cupping. So, this is great for actually suctioning any type of fat and then popping it into the area that we're trying to drain it to.

Caroline: Once we rolled my stomach area, I flipped over so we could finish the sides. Thankfully, that area didn't hurt as much.

Caroline: That feels good! The sides are so much better! Oh, that feels really good. That's like a massage. [groaning] That doesn't feel too great! [laughing]
Raychell: OK?
Caroline: Yeah, this is the spiky roller, isn't it?
Raychell: The claw.
Caroline: I hate the claw.

Caroline: Then we did the same thing on the back of the thighs.

Raychell: What we want to try to do is get it into the lymph nodes, because then when you sweat, pee, any type of secretion through your body, that's where anything that we've gotten rid of excretes from. So pushing it into those areas helps it drain through the system.

Caroline: After 20 long minutes of wood rolling, it was time for the ice portion of the treatment.

Raychell: All right, you ready?
Caroline: Oh, my God, no, no, no.
Raychell: I know. [Caroline squealing]
Raychell: It's freezing, but just handle it. I promise you'll love the results.
Caroline: [laughing] It's so cold.

Caroline: On Bronzed Bunny's website, it says this iced red clay has infused herbs like green tea and lavender to help rejuvenate the body.

Raychell: The ice part of the treatment lasts about 20 minutes. It just depends on how quickly your body breaks up the ice, or your body heat is fighting against the ice. Basically, we're gonna do a few pushes on the skin, rub it across, help it really absorb into your pores, because that's how you get the detox part of it, 'cause it's seeping into the pores.

Caroline: I feel like I'm getting a ab workout just 'cause I'm clenching so much. My skin's basically numb now. Raychell: That's when you know you're good.
Caroline: Yeah. Oh, but not that.

Caroline: This is what my body looked like immediately after the ice melted. But Raychell mentioned that I will see the best results in three days. So, in three days, I am going to take my after shots and see what my body looks like then. But in the meantime, we are gonna meet with Seth. He is a fitness trainer here in Los Angeles, and he is gonna tell us a little bit about what he knows of the treatment and how we should be approaching this treatment.

Seth Gottesdiener: The major takeaway that people should know when going into this is nothing is gonna replace diet and exercise. Temporarily, this could be kind of fun, but your body's just gonna go back. It's essentially like pushing the fat into a mold, freezing it, and then being like, "OK, go and have fun." And then it's gonna, probably within a couple hours, I would say, go back to normal. All you're doing is displacing the fat, or displacing the fascia. I think if the massage was done for longer, it could probably help in lymphatic drainage, and I think it could be beneficial to loosening up maybe scar tissue, or just tight tissue. I think that using ice would be more of a cosmetic approach, because what ice does is vasoconstrict your blood vessels, which means to make smaller and to tighten up. This would be almost equivalent of getting a consistent massage, so it would be good for perhaps relaxation or maybe some form of detoxification. But what will consistently change your body is doing, like, cardio, strength training, and an 80% good diet.

Caroline: Trying BB Sculpt was interesting. I went in knowing that the ice section was going to be a little bit painful, but I was not expecting the wood rolling to be so firm. Like, maybe I just have a very low pain tolerance, but I thought I was gonna get a deep massage and loosen up the muscles, but I was pretty stiff most of the time. I also felt cramps around my body, especially around my stomach and my back area, the rest of the day. So that wasn't the greatest. Did I see toning results? In the immediate after pictures, yes, I do see that my body looks toned, and I did kind of feel toned, but as days went on, I don't think the results really lasted too well on my body. This treatment definitely isn't meant to replace your regular exercise routine but could be something you can try in addition to it. While it could work for some people who could tolerate it and do it more often, my body just didn't really receive it too well. Uh, yeah, it just really hurt.