Awards & Accolades

There's a whole corner of the internet teaching teenage boys and young men to chase a chiselled jaw — some of it harmless, some of it genuinely dangerous, and quite a lot of it built on the advice of two dentists who've since been struck off.

Here's what actually works, what's nonsense, and the thing underneath it all that I think we need to talk about.

Most of my work — and most of this blog — has, historically, spoken to women. But there's a trend I can't really ignore any longer, because it's aimed squarely at boys, some of them very young, and because bits of it are landing people in trouble. It's called looksmaxxing, and if you have a teenage son, or you are a young man, or you've simply fallen down a certain kind of TikTok rabbit hole, you'll already know the vocabulary: mewing, mouth-taping, bonesmashing, "canthal tilt," "hunter eyes."

The easy move is to mock this latest trend, but mockery is exactly the wrong response. Let me explain what it all is, sort the sensible from the silly from the genuinely harmful — and then talk about the part that actually matters.

In the space of about three years, the culture has swung from body positivity to something that looks a lot like the old thin ideal in new clothing. A big part of that story is a class of genuinely brilliant medicines — GLP-1s — being actively absorbed into an old, harmful set of beauty rules. As a doctor, I recognise how, for the right patient, this subset of medications can vastly improve their health. But when prescribed inappropriately, they can be something much more sinister.

A growing corner of the internet has decided that sunscreen — not the sun — is the real villain. As a doctor who spends a fair amount of her week looking at sun-damaged skin, I'd like to take that idea apart.

Here's what the actual science says about chemical filters, "hormone disruption," coral reefs, benzene and the rest — and the one thing the skeptics are genuinely, annoyingly, a little bit right about.

A new kind of wrinkle-relaxing injection has just been approved across Europe — one that works within hours and wears off in weeks. Here’s what it is, how it differs from traditional anti-wrinkle treatments, and what it could mean for anyone who’s ever felt curious but cautious about injectables.

Picture this scene: You are sitting in a treatment room. Someone you like and trust is about to inject a prescription-only medicine into your face. The vial appears, the needle is drawn up, and at no point does anyone mention the person whose signature made that treatment legal — the prescriber.

In a great many cases, you will never meet them. In some, they will never have laid eyes on you at all.

In 1933, a shocking exhibit toured America, displaying products that had blinded women, caused permanent hair loss, and even killed unsuspecting consumers. The "American Chamber of Horrors," as it came to be known, featured genuinely toxic cosmetic products, that contrast sharply with how remarkably safe modern products actually are.

Yet somehow, in our era cosmetic safety and regulation, we've developed an irrational fear of "chemicals" and "toxins" in beauty products. The irony is striking: we've never been safer from cosmetic harm, yet we've never been more frightened of our makeup bags.

Let's explore how the real horrors of unregulated cosmetics led to the robust safety framework we have today - and why most modern "clean beauty" fears fundamentally misunderstand how cosmetic regulation actually works.

I have had the immense pleasure of being interviewed by Clare Johnston, a wonderful journalist who founded the Honest Channel and writes on her website the Honest Voice. In a conversation we had, she asked me a question that deserves to be carefully considered: "Are you capitalising on the insecurities of ageing men and women and potentially even heightening their anxieties?"

It's a fair question. A valid question. And honestly, an important one that every aesthetic clinician should be asking themselves regularly.

Let's tackle this head-on.

Ozempic face - the facial volume loss, skin laxity, and temple hollowing increasingly seen in patients on GLP-1 medications such as semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro) - is now one of the most common presentations in UK aesthetic clinics.

This article explains what Ozempic face actually is, the emerging science behind it, the January 2026 international consensus on layered treatment with biostimulators, energy-based devices, and structural HA filler, and the NICE prescribing thresholds and red flags every UK patient should know before any aesthetic clinic prescribes a GLP-1.

Peptide injections are everywhere — from BPC-157 and GHK-Cu to Melanotan II and epitalon — promoted online for skin, hair, recovery, and "longevity." With the FDA reportedly poised to reverse 2023 restrictions on fourteen peptides, demand is set to grow even further. But the gray-market peptide trade operates almost entirely outside medical regulation, and the evidence base for most of these compounds is far weaker than the marketing suggests.

Let’s break down what peptides actually are, where the real risks lie, and how to evaluate any peptide therapy you are offered.