What is Microcurrent? For decades, microcurrent has been used in different frequencies and waveforms to treat everything from wounds to migraines to chronic pain. Professional athletes and anyone who has had physical therapy have often experienced an electrostim machine, as orthopedists routinely prescribe microcurrent to aid in the repair of ligaments and muscles.

On a muscular level, the microcurrent acts like a personal trainer to tone and shorten muscle fibers. On a dermal level, as Pugliese, the skin physiologist, notes, there is serious anti-aging action going on. Pugliese has spent more than five years analyzing microcurrent's effect on fibroblasts by biopsying skin before and in between microcurrent treatments and has found a statistically significant increase not only in the production of collagen and elastin, the skin's main structural proteins, which degrade with age, but in that of glycosaminoglycans, or "GAGs," the viscous material in which the proteins are embedded. "When you see a nice plump cheek like a baby's and you pinch it and it feels very good and snappy," he says, "that's GAGs." And, according to Perricone, the long-term benefits are more than skin-deep: If you have a microstimulation machine, "you don't have to have perfect genes," Perricone says. "When I first started working with celebrities, I assumed they were genetically gifted and had perfect symmetry." But now he knows that symmetry can be made: "Not only can we use electrostim to increase our muscle mass, but we can also accentuate one side of the face by working it harder than the other to give a more symmetrical appearance."