Look, no jowls but beware bleeding under the skin: Is gua sha really better than Botox?

Happy Talk: The latest Instagrammable trend, an at-home massage technique, has some surprising results

Gua sha: a massage technique that claims it’s better than Botox (iStock)

To paraphrase the late great Nora Ephron, lately I’ve been feeling bad about my neck. And my jawline. And the deep horizontal grooves on my forehead, which I blame on having spent my twenties and thirties on a never-ending series of terrible dates that required me to hold a both-eyebrows-raised “that’s really interesting” facial expression for several hours at a time. I’m paying for it now. So much so that recently, my old friend Anna, a dermatologist, suggested a little light Botox. She wasn’t joking. She offered me “mates rates”. I wondered for a moment if we could even be mates anymore. Aren’t your best girlfriends just supposed to tell you that you look wonderful even when you’ve got eye bags right down to your jowls?

I told Anna I’d think about it but the truth is I’ve always been frightened of Botox and even the thought of having it administered by someone I’ve known and loved for almost 30 years didn’t allay my fears. I just know I would be the person who ends up with a face like a Barbie that’s been left too close to the fire. It doesn’t help that I have another friend who did have a terrible Botox experience that resulted in a weirdly arched eyebrow that was definitely more Spock than Scarlett in Gone With The Wind.

So when I read an online feature touting gua sha facial massage as the new, non-invasive, side-effect-free alternative to Botox, I knew I had to try it. The article was accompanied by before and after photographs of the author highlighting a (very slightly) tightened jawline, (incredibly subtly) lifted brows and neck wrinkles magically melted away (in the right light). I was sold.

Gua sha is nothing new. Also known as kerokan, scraping or coining, it’s a common practice in traditional Chinese medicine. It’s called scraping because practitioners use various implements to literally scrape a patient’s skin to the point of causing bruising in the belief that it has health benefits. The word “sha” refers to petichae, the little red or purple dots that indicate bleeding under the skin.

Photographs found online of the aftermath of a traditional gua sha massage are quite shocking, looking more like crime scene pictures than the lovely “look no jowls” shots that the beauty bloggers post. In fact, a review in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology lists some of the side effects of gua sha as dermatitis, burns and hematuria, which is the presence of blood in urine. There have even been incidences in which damage caused by gua sha has required skin grafts.

Having learned all that, suddenly Botox was looking like the sensible option but facial gua sha as adapted for the Instagram age is, thank goodness, a somewhat gentler pursuit more suited to a spa than a dungeon. It’s all about gentle strokes in the pursuit of increasing circulation and banishing puffiness.

Naturally, as is the case with any wellness fad, facial gua sha requires new stuff. Expensive stuff. With a fistful of vouchers left over from Christmas, I hot-footed it to Space NK, where I eschewed the usual scented candle I always buy when faced with a bewildering array of cosmetics and picked up a gua sha massage tool by Odacité, an LA based brand with a French accent. To go with the massage tool, Odacité offers a rainbow of essential oils, comprising only natural and organic ingredients, free from synthetic chemicals and never tested on animals. Their price does however suggest they may contain unicorn’s tears.

The green aventurine “crystal contour” tool (£40) I chose was an elegant thing, like a flattened Barbara Hepworth sculpture in the shape of a friendly ghost. The blurb on the box explained that it was hand carved, would help to reduce the look of wrinkles and fine lines, diminish the appearance of dark circles and remove particles of dirt and oil from the skin.

My three-minute routine had stretched to 20. I also had some enormous new spots on my chin, the like of which I haven’t seen since I was doing my GCSEs

In addition to all those wonderful qualities, the packaging further claimed that “the whimsical energy of this shimmering crystal is especially conducive to the power of prosperity and good luck. Use the energy of aventurine to bring more abundance and opportunities into your life”. That sounded great. By the time I’d splurged on one of the teeny bottles of oil (£38) to use with the crystal contour whatsit, my bank account was badly in need of some more abundance ASAP.

If you don’t like green, Odacité also offers a rose quartz tool, which promises to “open up your heart chakra to every kind of love that you need” and one in dark blue sodalite, which Odacité claims “re-establishes peace and tranquillity, releasing fears and tensions”. That’s an awful lot of promises for three bits of flat stone. I decided I would be happy if at the end of this expensive adventure I just looked slightly less tired.

The aventurine crystal contour tool came with an instruction leaflet but it was all a bit vague so I watched a few videos online, searching until I found the shortest gua sha routine possible. I duly poured three drops of oil into my hands and patted it into my face like a beauty pro. Then I started smoothing the stone along my jawline and across my cheeks. I ran the narrow end along my eyebrows and wiggled it across my dating wrinkles as though I was trying to erase them. Which, let’s face it, I was. I finished with a few sweeping movements down the neck to shift some lymph. The result? All that scraping and smoothing left me a bit pink but no more than the average face mask does. My wrinkles were definitely not erased but… was I imagining it or did I look just a tiny bit lifted?

I resolved to keep going. Three days later, running the double-pronged end of the tool down the tendons on the back of my neck, I went into a sort of trance. Turns out that stroking the back of your own neck is almost as good as having someone else do it with the added advantage that you won’t have to do any quid pro quo foot rubs.

After a week I was gua sha-ing every bit of my body that I could reach. My three-minute routine had stretched to 20. I also had some enormous new spots on my chin, the like of which I haven’t seen since I was doing my GCSEs. The beauty bloggers assured me that this is to be expected since gua sha brings toxins to the surface as part of its cleansing effect. Nothing to do with the oil that turned my pillows yellow when I did my gua sha before bed. While I could see the logic behind the bloggers’ reasoning, I laid off gua sha-ing my face until the spots cleared up and used the oil on my shins instead. They looked great. It also did wonders for my elbows.

So facial gua sha, Instagram-style. I don’t know if it works on wrinkles – hell, it almost certainly doesn’t – but I like it. There is something deeply relaxing about smoothing the crystal contour across your face. The oils smell great. It feels as though it’s doing you good. It’s less risky than Botox. There’s no danger you’ll have to cancel a date because one of your eyebrows is stuck on quizzical. It’s cheaper too.

But you don’t even have to spend as much as I did to get the same effect. I found one video which reminded viewers that gua sha is also sometimes known as spooning and can be performed using a Chinese soup spoon. Just go gently with it, eh?