Do Slenderizing Body Wraps Really Work?
Suddenly Slender is hugely popular at Grail Springs. When I was there in November 2007, every guest signed up for the CAD$235 treatment, which lasts two hours. Here's what it involves: You're wrapped snugly from top to toe in sopping wet mineral-soaked bandages. For about 45 minutes, you move around ("to increase circulation"), as the attendant periodically douses you with more mineral water. I'm a fashion nightmare as I shimmy to and fro in my ersatz bandage dress. And I feel constricted but not uncomfortable. When my therapist completes 19 before-and-after measurements (neck, jaw line, abdomen, ankle, you name it), I watch carefully. No, she is not pulling the tape extra taut, and, yes, she is recording the real number. I am astonished to find I'm down more than 12 inches altogether. I know it isn't dehydration, as I didn't sweat during the treatment, and I was offered water to drink.
"It's compression, darling," Pamela Peeke, M.D., medical director of the Discovery Channel, tells me. "It forces interstitial fluids into veins and you pee them out. Think about support stockings for varicose veins." What about the minerals, I ask. "They make your skin feel good, but they don't enter your circulation. Dermatological benefits only." All you're doing, she concludes, is redistributing fluids.
The wraps have never been scientifically tested, but Morton claims the secret isn't simply compression: "If that were so, every woman who wears a girdle would have slim hips."
I measure my waist the morning after my wrap, and I've maintained a one-inch loss. I'm an empirical-evidence advocate through and through, so I continue to take a skeptical view of long-term slenderizing. But if I had a wedding to go to tomorrow, in a dress that was looking unflatteringly tight, this wrap might do the trick.
November 6, 2008
