Under-eye bags big enough to carry your weekend gear? Crows’ feet, rabbit lines (on the nose), smokers’ lines?

What about muffin-top tummy or basement-level libido and energy? Or maybe tits/moobs going south, saggy bum or wattle (that’s a wobbly double chin)?

If you are bothered by any of these and want to understand more about the best way to banish the problem, high50’s Anti-Ageing Debate could help you. Dr Daniel Sister, an advocate for the scalpel and needles methods, will fight it out with our award-winning beauty journalist Jo Fairley, who favours the potions and lotions route. Interventions of a scientific kind will do battle with proponents of skin-deep solutions.

Dr Daniel Sister is a world-renowned hormone and anti-ageing specialist. He is a needles-not-unguents man who has practised for 40 years at many of the world’s premier clinics (including Dr Sebagh’s).

He has written several acclaimed books, is published in medical journals, has treated thousands of men and women, and regularly appears on TV. Phew!

His research studies and expertise are sought after by the beauty, anti-ageing, nutrition and complementary medical communities.

Science in the salon
Dr Sister works in London at BeautyWorksWest, a beauty clinic with slick, vibrating pedicure thrones and scented treatment rooms, where a client can go in as a sexagenarian and come out as a sex bomb.

When he started out in the Seventies, he worked in a hospital with rheumatic disease sufferers. “Most of them were are old and, in trying to help them, I got into anti-ageing treatments,” he says.

Salon-administered science appeals to the aesthete in him. He uses only methods that are approved in Europe and the States.

He believes in science-based interventions rather than snake oil and designer potions, and in tackling ageing from the inside out. “Everything I use has an evidence base,” he says. “It’s all backed by research and reasonable-size case studies.”

He finds new treatments by attending international conventions and seminars and quizzing other experts about developments in the field.

Hence le docteur (he is from France) has managed to introduce an incroyable seven anti-ageing ‘firsts’ to the UK market, including ‘Dracula’ (aka Platelet-Rich Plasma) therapy.

This treatment has attracted worldwide attention. Not surprising, then, that rather than flogging pots of nice-smelling creams, you’ll always find him talking about things like IPL or Radio Frequency, and Infra Red and Polaris; all designed to give if not quite eternal youth, then something not too far from it.

Needles over knives
He doesn’t do surgery. “I prefer needles to knives,” he says. “But I refer people [for surgery] when required.”

Mostly he thinks surgery is unnecessary. There has been such progress in the development of non-invasive treatments, and most procedures (from reconstruction to fat removal) can now be done non-invasively.

“Fat removal, for example, can now be achieved with ultrasound, laser and radio frequency,” he says.

He’s also a top doc when it comes to balancing hormones, one of the best ways to fight the ageing process. When our hormones are in balance, the body generates new tissue and more energy, and can fight disease. (A reduction in hormone production is the probable cause of the growing incidence of premature ageing.)

Dr Sister’s anti-ageing armoury:
YOUTH: pills to boost hormone production
His beauty and wellness products include YOUTH food supplements, which re-boot the production of the growth hormone in women d’un certain age (and old male bangers, too). If you want to get technical, YOUTH tackles ageing with Arginine, Glutamine and Lysine (amino acids and marine plant extracts, to the uninitiated), which promote skin radiance, sleep and energy levels.

Dracula Therapy: injections of blood, vitamins and amino acids
Dracula Therapy is his most popular full-throttle age-defier and uses the patient’s blood as an injectable treatment. A small blood sample is separated by centrifugation into red blood cells, clear serum and platelets. Vitamins and Amino Acids are then added to create a super-charged serum, which is injected back into the skin.

“There are no disadvantages,” he says. “Nobody can be allergic to his own blood. It’s efficient, proven, and the first step towards using stem cells.”

Dermal fillers: a new nose
He has pioneered non-surgical nose re-sculpting by injecting dermal fillers – gel-like substances that are totally safe – which gives a patient a new nose in ten minutes. He uses Hyaluronic acid – which is biocompatible with human Hyaluronic acid – to create ooh-ah faces and hands.

Injections of carbon dioxide and Botulin Tox
In Carboxy therapy, he injects Carbon Dioxide Gas (CO2) to tackle stretch marks, cellulite and dark eye bags.

It doesn’t stop there. He’s been doing surgery- free breast enhancement treatments for years, with Botulin Tox and injections, including super-charged plasma.

Lipo, light therapy and lasers
He also performs several methods of non-surgical liposuction. One of his fat- busting treatments (MELT) combines radio frequency, magnetic waves, ultrasound and light therapy and another uses a non- invasive laser to melt the F-word from within fat cells.

“Conservative” Brits
For those souls who think creams and serums are efficient, he has this to say: “There’s not one scientific study to show that they work, but many to prove that they don’t. There’s the ‘feel good factor’ – they feel good on your skin, but they don’t penetrate deep enough.”

Contrastingly, he can find no downsides to scientific intervention.

With so much being discovered in anti-ageing treatments, we’re on the brink of a brave, young world. He says: “Only five years ago, ultrasound and radio frequency weren’t even used. Each time we open a door, there are ten more [discoveries] behind,” he says. “There’s a lot to be explored with stem cells.”

The Israelis are pioneers in creating equipment for age-defying treatments. The gold for hormone therapies goes to the Americans. The injectable treatments medal gets scooped by the Europeans.

And the Brits? “They’re very traditional and conservative,” he says. “They don’t embrace the techniques fast.”

Which, paradoxically, is good news for high50 readers. Otherwise, Dr Sister wouldn’t need to thump his tub at the high50 Anti-Ageing Debate this month. And we’d miss out on deciding who’s right.

Jo Fairley, high50’s beauty editor, is putting her elegant neck on the line in defence of topical treatments. We salute Dr Sister for joining her there.

Everyone leaves there having made at least one change in their lives. That’s what I’m told about Kamalaya health spa in Koh Samui, Thailand. Guests rid themselves of multiple pounds (in weight and currency), have a turn of direction in their heart-attack-headed lives, and rejuvenate bodies more burnt out than a forest fire.

The hottest trend in travel is to invest in your body. And Kamalaya, one of the world’s leading destination spas, is the place to do it.

It offers healing hands aplenty and Eastern traditions alongside the best of the West, including state-of-the-art diagnostic procedures. This translates into diverse healing and spiritual approaches: a holistic combo that is targeted at the mind, body and soul.

There is a crack squad of practitioners, encompassing traditional Chinese medicine, naturopathy, homeopathy, Ayurveda and energy healing, as well as registered nurses, an allopathic doctor, Thai therapists and visiting guru types.

Shoulders and chakras
I’m at Kamalaya to release shoulders that have more knots than a yacht covers in a storm, to catch up on several lifetimes of deprived sleep, and perhaps to buff my soul and open my chakras. My companion, my Ritalin-filled 17-year-old nephew Henry, wants to find alternative approaches to his ADHD (or rather, that’s what his mother wants).

The location on its own starts the healing process. The spa is on a hillside of swaying palms and tropical foliage borrowed from a Gaugin painting. It sits beside a crescent-shaped beach and an aquamarine lagoon. It’s a Garden of Eden with plants that probably talk, lotus ponds and ginormous orange butterflies

There is a herbal steam cavern hewn into the rock and a Buddhist monks’ cave. It’s a close to heaven as you can get while still alive.

Who’s here…
Here you’ll find the likes of Annie Lennox, Oliver Stone (who lost more than a stone), stressed-out investment bankers and ladies who don’t lunch. There are singletons who meet at the dining table for singles, and couples on a health kick. And the hard-core detoxers whose treatments include the dreaded colonics.

Then there’s the founders: Karina Stewart, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine who also trained in anthropology and wafts around on a spiritual cloud dispensing healing energy; and her husband John, a yogi who devoted 16 years to spiritual studies in a Himalayan community.

…and what they’re doing
The spa offers 70 treatments and programmes, from weight loss to yoga. The latest is the sleep programme, using naturopathy and Chinese therapies to take people to the land of zizz on a buckwheat pillow.

Days are also sugar-free-jam-packed with activities, from aqua aerobics to mediation and Qi Gong. Recalling a meditation session at Kamalaya, Fergie, the Duchess of York, wrote in her memoir: “We sat cross-legged on mats around the fire, with everyone chanting Om.” Bring on the incense, bruv.

The food is organic and fresh, combining ancient Asian healing traditions and the latest Western nutritional research, and including diets derived from Ayurveda and naturopathy. The precept is that when the diet is wrong, medicine is of no use; and when the diet is correct, there’s no need for medicine.

The chef works from the belief that we are much more than what we eat – but that what we eat helps us to be more than what we are. It’s to this end that the mini-bar contains roasted pumpkin kernels and aloe vera juice.

My programme starts with a body bio-impedance analysis (which measures body composition electronically and rudely informs me on a printout that I’m a little overweight) and after which I have a delicious meal. Black cod and banana blossom salad, where have you been all my life?

I also have a wellness consultation with a naturopath, magic-handed massages (including Chei Nei Tsing, a Taoist tummy massage), and nutritional advice. I spend a particularly interesting hour with Smitha Jayakumar, a one-time Buddhist nun who lived in a monastery for ten years and is now a spiritual life coach.

All the treatments work on an energetic, emotional and spiritual level. But does it do the trick?

Well, yes and no. I am shadowing Henry (in the interests of journalism and at the instruction of his mother) and writing articles. So I don’t really experience the essential switching-off element of the programme.

But by the end there’s definitely a spiritual spring in my step and a luminescent quality to my face. Not to mention a trimmer body, achieved partly by so often climbing the hill to the dining area and treatment rooms.

Some people say they leave Kamalaya with reignited spirits and hearts, and with more than Band-Aid to deal with their wounds. We leave feeling healthy, happy and relaxed. (So that’s more than one change in our lives, then.)

Most spas claim to make you feel well; Kamalaya actually delivers. It does what it says on the tin. And more.