Linda Evangelista in 2015 | CREDIT: GILBERT CARRASQUILLO/FILMMAGIC
Once being one of the most photographed people in the world, supermodel Linda Evangelista has been living in seclusion for almost five years now. But she has broken her silence and started to tell her story.
The fashion icon, now 56, opened up about the emotional and physical pain that has cast a shadow on her life in recent years, after she claims CoolSculpting — a popular, FDA-cleared “fat-freezing” procedure that’s been promoted as a noninvasive alternative to liposuction — left her “permanently deformed” and “brutally disfigured.” Evangelista filed a lawsuit in September suing CoolSculpting’s parent company, Zeltiq Aesthetics Inc., for $50 million in damages, alleging that she’s been unable to work since undergoing seven sessions of CoolSculpting in a dermatologist’s office from August 2015 to February 2016.
“I loved being up on the catwalk. Now I dread running into someone I know,” as she told PEOPLE this week as they covered the breaking story. “I can’t live like this anymore, in hiding and shame. I just couldn’t live in this pain any longer. I’m willing to finally speak.”
Within three months after Evangelista’s treatments, she started noticing bulges at her chin, thighs and bra area. The same areas she’d wanted to shrink were suddenly growing. And hardening. Then they turned numb.
“I tried to fix it myself, thinking I was doing something wrong,” says Evangelista, and she began dieting and exercising more. “I got to where I wasn’t eating at all. I thought I was losing my mind.”
Finally, in June 2016 she went to her doctor. “I dropped my robe for him,” she recalls. “I was bawling, and I said, ‘I haven’t eaten, I’m starving. What am I doing wrong?’ ” When he diagnosed her with Paradoxical adipose hyperplasia (PAH), she says, “I was like, ‘What the hell is that?’ And he told me no amount of dieting, and no amount of exercise was ever going to fix it.”
The side effects of CoolSculpting on supermodel Linda Evangelista
PAH is a rare side effect that affects less than 1 percent of CoolSculpting patients, where the freezing process causes the affected fatty tissue to thicken and expand. “A patient should never ever leave a feel-good treatment fearful of the outcome.” says Dr. Mauro Romita, a New York City based plastic surgeon on 5th Avenue (he has never treated Evangelista). “We see many issues around treatments that claim to be quick or fast fixes, even with their long-term studies. Every procedure has an assumed level of risk, but when you add in treatment components that require multiple rounds on the same area, this could exacerbate the risk factors tremendously. PAH, in many instances will not go away and will need to be excised from the body. When patients ask me about CoolSculpting, I have always recommended the effectively proven and safe alternative technique of Microcannula Liposuction. This option has zero to minimal downtime, allowing patients to return to work the following day, takes under an hour to complete and can more effectively pinpoint those areas like the flanks, inner/outer thighs, arms, abdomen and back. By permanently removing the fat, we can precisely sculpt those areas and the desired outcome is met. For the same price of the 2-5 treatments that is required for CoolSculpting, you can do the precise microcannula technique once and ensure you will look and feel great.”
FDA-cleared in 2010, CoolSculpting uses a process known as cryolipolysis. Based on the way frostbite affects humans, the procedure works by placing a roll of fat between two paddles, which cool the fat to a below-freezing temperature. Studies show that the treatment — which is popular because of its accessibility at medical spas and minimal recovery time — can reduce targeted fat deposits up to 20 percent.
Evangelista alleges that when her doctor contacted CoolSculpting about her PAH, the company told him they wanted to “make it right” and offered to pay for liposuction with a surgeon of the company’s choosing — a specialist she says they claimed to have used before — to correct the PAH damage. (Zeltiq declined to comment on Evangelista’s specific allegations, citing the pending litigation.) In her suit, Evangelista says that “on the eve” of her liposuction, she was informed that Zeltiq would cover the procedure only if she signed a confidentiality agreement. She refused and had the first of two full-body liposuction surgeries — which she says she paid for — in June 2016. Following the surgery, Evangelista says, she had to wear compression garments, girdles and a chin strap for eight weeks. Otherwise, “the PAH may come back.” Which, she says, it did, even after a second liposuction in July 2017.
In a statement to PEOPLE, a representative for CoolSculpting says the procedure “has been well studied with more than 100 scientific publications and more than 11 million treatments performed worldwide” and added that known rare side effects like PAH “continue to be well-documented in the CoolSculpting .
