The Dangers of At-Home Beauty Treatments & Video-Only Learning

Today we have an episode breakdown from our podcast episode with Lola Campbell from Eclipse Beauty Academy. We discuss the dangers of at-home beauty treatments and video-only learning within Aesthetics.

Key Points of the episode:

If you’d rather read along, the interview starts below!

Introduce yourself and what you get up to at eclipse

Lola: Yeah, so my name is Lola Campbell. I’m one of the co-owners here at Elipse School of Beauty. Currently in the fourth year of our business. So we have four locations currently over the country; So we’ve got Hartford in Shire, Brentwood in Essex, Bexley Heath, a Southeast London borderline. And then Ashford and Kent.

So I help run the day-to-day of the business and sort of do most of the boring behind-the-scenes things. There are a few courses that I do still teach, but I’m more concentrated on quality assurance now, so I make sure that the courses are up to scratch and that we are keeping up with relevant industry information.

Dawn: Sounds brilliant. So I guess I’d love to know a bit more about your background.

Were you an aesthetician yourself?

Lola: So I originally did my beauty therapy training in East London College. I started in 2005, believe or not, which is 18 years ago. I started in Beauty. I also did little bits of makeup and nails.

I then actually moved on to more of the aesthetic side, so, but more laser hair removal, tattoo removal, skin peel, microneedling, and then went on to injectables after that. So it’s probably been the last eight years of my career that have been more technical and injectable techniques.

Dawn: Wow, that’s very amazing. So you’ve got like a wealth of knowledge really that you can bring to the table, especially helping run the company as well.

Lola: Yeah, so I actually did my teaching degree in 2010. So I’ve been on the teaching side for a while now. Before that I did work all over the country. A lot of my career was actually stationed in Selfridges in Central London, but I’ve also worked in Australia and also Germany.

So I’ve done, um, quite a few different things. Got a lot of bows to my arrow. But I definitely prefer the teaching side and sharing my knowledge with everyone.

Dawn: Wow, that sounds amazing. So, getting onto what we’re here for, really. We had a look at a range of topics, and we decided to look at the danger of doing at-home beauty treatments and video learning.

So, you know, learning just straight off the internet, which for some professional industries can be actually pretty useful but it may not be the best in terms of Beauty and Aesthetics.

what wouldn’t you recommend people try at home, that you should see a professional for?

Lola: So, I mean, there are a lot. Aesthetic treatments that you can do adapted for home use. For example, microneedling. You know you can use a no 0.25, um, needle depth just to help to penetrate your serums into the skin at home. However, if you are looking for more invasive treatment and really want to get those better clinical results, then you really do need to see a professional.

It’s not just, you know, knowing how to and not to do it; it’s also having that clinical environment. It’s having the full setup. As well as the appropriate waste disposal, sharps disposal, and really actually going to see a professional who knows exactly what they’re doing from start to finish.

And that goes from the consultation. To before, during, and after the treatment, and the follow-up as well. You know, if you are doing, for example, you know, a 1.5 or two-millimetre depth for your microneedling, something goes wrong, who do you turn to and ask if that’s okay? Or also, what can I do to make this better?

And sometimes just not knowing if something that’s happened, you know, if you’ve got a lot of bleeding, if that’s normal or not, can make you really panic. I think it is a useful tool to be able to help maintain your clinical treatments at home. But you definitely can’t be doing it on the same level that you, that you can get from clinical treatment, from a professional.

Dawn: No, definitely. And I think as well; it’s like there could be so many things. It’s like, you know, trying to paint your own nails. I know it’s not the best analogy, but you know, you may not be getting going at the right angle or you can’t see things through from a literally different point of view. I mean, I personally always paint my nails and then I see that I’ve missed on the far-out corners.

Because you can’t see. So, no, exactly. And also, you know, to get the best results possible. You know, you go to someone who has, um, based their career on that and has, has gone and, you know, paid the money for the courses and has the experience and has the correct setup and everything in place so that they, that you can receive the best treatment possible.

Lola: I definitely think that there is a place for at-home treatments, but like I said, on a separate level to a professional setting.

What can be the risk of doing just video learning for treatment without any practical training?

Lola: So video learning is one of my pet peeves. If it’s online and only online, there is definitely nowhere near as much quality that you can get for actually going in somewhere and doing it face-to-face. Most insurance companies won’t insure you doing the treatment unless you’ve had that face-to-face training, for injectables, for example.

There is a place for at-home learning, and it can be used as a great tool, especially follow-ups and, you know, advanced techniques or different techniques, but the foundation of any treatment needs to be face-to-face in a reputable training company so that you can keep yourself and your clients safe.

I think with training, for example, a lot of people think that you can just watch a demo video and be able to do it, and actually, most people would be able to replicate something that you can just see on a video. But, showing someone treatment and teaching someone how to carry out a full course of treatments is completely different.

Lola: So what we teach here at Eclipse is from the very start to finish, like I was saying before about the full consultation, who can have it, who can’t have it, Why can’t they have it? When can they have it? How are you gonna do this treatment? Can the client afford it? What results are they gonna get?

What results do they want? Are the results they want actually achievable? And how are you going to achieve those results? Um, the aftercare, the follow-up, you know, everything. Around that treatment is so much more doing the actual treatment itself is really just the tip of the iceberg. And you know, I could probably show my seven-year-old daughter how to do a lot of treatments, but that doesn’t mean she can really do it, and she’s got any of the knowledge behind it and around it to actually carry out that treatment safely.

When you are performing treatments, and you are not a hundred percent sure on what you’re doing, you are putting people’s health at risk, especially with bloodborne viruses and cleanliness, hygiene, health and safety disposal. Having that tool of having the videos at home to revise from is fantastic, but the actual core foundation o of the knowledge needs to come from face to face.

Dawn: No, I definitely agree, and I think you were saying as well, you know, even if it’s just like to revise against or to refresh your memory or just to kind of have a look at things even before you kind of go in for another practical day or something, it sounds a better combination than just learning just straight off a video and then just hoping for the best.

Lola: Yeah. And also your training when you go into an academy, you’re only gonna retain so much information from, from any course that you go on. So we have an online learning system here, here at Eclipse, so that after you’ve completed your course, you’ve got the online course free for life just always to refer back to, because it’s gonna be impossible always to remember everything.

And a lot of the time, the questions that you have about treatment might not come to you on the day. It’s actually when you start practising, and then you’ve got those videos to then refer back to and just to confirm that you are doing the right thing. If you learn, you know, three or four treatments in the space of a few months, and then you’re performing those treatments, you’re never gonna remember everything you are supposed to.

So having that port of call and going back and rewatching the videos is just a fantastic way of keeping up your learning. I think a lot of the time, people do panic that they have to learn everything on that one day and take that stress away from the students. You know, that’s why we have the online learning system, and we also have like support groups, WhatsApp support groups, and Facebook support groups because helping each other and sharing experiences is, again, such a good way to learn to move forward.

Because if there’s something that I learn in treatment, then I want to share that with everyone so that they, if that happens to them, that they know what to do. .

Dawn: That sounds amazing. It’s really great that you just wanna have that community of helping out each other as well. Because I know some people, they train up in a certain profession, and they’re kind of left on their own, and it’s like, yeah, good luck, see you later. And then you’re struggling to find people in your industry and discuss, “have you ever dealt with this?” You know, it’s a bit hard to deal with and having that community straight from the beginning, it’s great.

Lola: Yeah, I definitely think it’s so much easier, you know, if I know the answer to a question and you ask me, it’s easy for me just to answer. But if you don’t know the answer to a question, where do you even begin to find out that answer?

And if you’ve got a community of people helping each other, you are all gonna be better and stronger together. So there’s no reason why you shouldn’t, and you can’t, you know, help and support each other. There’s this industry is fast growing, and every day there are more and more clients, which means we need more and more therapists, which means we need more and more courses. So there is definitely always gonna be a place for everyone in the industry.

What would be the risk of doing at-home treatments or DIYing them without proper training?

Lola: Yeah, so I think the main complications from people doing things themselves at home is using the wrong equipment and using equipment that might not necessarily be sterile, which can lead to further complications such as post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation, which is dark marks on the skin that can also lead to scarring.

This could also lead to things like infection. Poor aftercare. If aftercare isn’t followed, then you are at risk of infection. And it’s all the small things. You know, when you watch a treatment online, can you really see what they’re doing? Does it look different online?

So we’ll just take an example, say Dermaplaning, for example. You can buy a Dermaplaning blade anywhere; you can get one for 50p on eBay if you wanted to. But actually, when you go on the course, you are taught where to buy the sterile blades from how to use them and at what angle.

So it’s even different when you are doing it, you know, to yourself in the mirror. But if you’re just trying to do it off a video, you can’t tell exactly which angles you’re supposed to be using. And also, it’s not that video is not gonna be tailored to you. So you’re, if you are in a classroom of people and you’ve got a tutor there, and there’s a specific thing or question that you want to ask, they can come over and help you.

When you’re at home if you do something wrong, you’ve got no port of call. You’ve got no one to ask at all. And actually, just something as you know, as simple as dermaplaning, for example, to change the angle when you come around the jawline.

If you are just watching a video and you don’t know exactly what they’re doing, and you don’t see that happen, you could really cut all your skin along your jawline. Then you’ve got the complication of bleeding, and do you have the right equipment actually to deal with that bleeding? And then what happens to the swabs that you’ve then got blood on, and are you gonna cross-contaminate that with someone else? And then where is that blade going? You know, are you gonna put that in your kitchen bin where your kids put their rubbish in?

It just goes on and on, really. Another big thing about online learning is that there are so many different techniques for every treatment that we do, especially internationally. You do start to get confused about what is right and what is wrong, and then you start to think, okay, well, this person did it like this on that video, but that person did it like that on that video.

So is this right? Is that right? And then you do question yourself. So if you are learning a specific technique from a trainer, that is your basic foundation, you’d get taught how to do it safely, correctly. And with the appropriate hygiene standards, you can then go online and maybe watch some different techniques because you’ve got that knowledge of that treatment.

If you do the whole treatment from scratch online and you just watch YouTube videos, you’ve got nothing to base that knowledge on. So actually, you just get more and more confused, and you’ll probably end up going to do a course in the end anyway because you just dunno what you’re doing.

Dawn: No, I completely agree.

Lola: And I think as well with anything there is added risk, whether if, you know, you are trying something small, like, I don’t know, shaving your eyebrows for the first time, or if it’s a bit more complex like Dermaplaning, you know, microneedling pass a certain length as well. So it’s really great as well to hear from a professional.

Dawn: The recommendation is, you know, I’m not into beauty and stuff, I’m a marketing person, so to learn all this actually, it’s very useful and hopefully useful for everyone else that listens in that may not be an actual, beautician themselves, you know?

To get to a point where, yeah, definitely just go to the salon or to a beautician that knows what they’re doing. Because they’re paid to know everything and they’ve trained extensively and everything else. So it’s been really great to, to have all this knowledge right here in this episode.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

Lola: I would just encourage everyone to do their research before they do any At home treatments or online learning or any courses that they want to do. I’ve been in this industry for a very long time. One of my main reasons for ever starting an academy is because my mom actually got quite badly burnt when she had a treatment done; it was actually because the lady doing it wasn’t trained properly.

So she got a really bad galvanic burn on her nose. And I didn’t want anyone else to be hurt. So I was like, right, we need to make sure that these people are trained properly. So I just think that this industry is so reputable if you are going to the right places and you are doing your treatments correctly.

And if you actually invest your time and your money in decent training, you will be a fantastic therapist because a lot of these treatments they’re not too difficult for you to do if you are training in the right way and if you have the correct post-course support.

Dawn: Yeah, no, that’s absolutely brilliant. That’s a good way to round off. Well, thank you very much for coming on today to speak to us.

Lola: Thank you for having me.