Shedding light on fountain of youth

MAYBE people who say money can't buy happiness never got what they paid for? You'd be unhappy too, if you spent hundreds or even thousands on beauty products and regimes promising to return your ageing skin to its 20-something collagen-enriched self, only to be reminded once again that this is how the beauty industry makes its money - by selling hope in a jar with minimal results.

But what if someone came up to you and said that they could not only give you youthful skin but skin that continues to get younger with regular treatments? Do you dismiss him as just another snake oil salesman, or would you be vain enough to at least hear him out?

In this case, the person in question - Patrick Bitter - does make a rather convincing case. For one, the California-based dermatologist made his name as the founder of the IPL (intense pulsed light) photo-facial which uses the light-based therapy to remove scars and rejuvenate the skin. The popular method was first introduced in Singapore in 2000 but of late, Dr Bitter has progressed beyond IPL to a newer technology called BroadBand Light, for which he was recently in town for.