AUSTRALIAN ENTREPRENEUR Amanda Pook emerges from her discreet fourth-floor clinic in Glasgow and bids farewell to a client who has travelled from Norway foroneofherleading-edgeskin rejuvenation treatments.

In the waiting room, two ladies from the Western Isles have arrived for their first skin consultations, lured by Pook's growing reputation as a pioneer therapist in the emerging field of medical aesthetics.

After the season of festive indulgence, they are not alone in their search of a little rejuvenation.

"People who come to me don't know what their skin should feel like. After we have treated them, they feel a huge improvement and they go away 100% convinced of its effectiveness," says Pook, who has a colourful background as a wedding and portrait photographer to the Saudi royal family.

Theterm"medicalaesthetics"- which refers to non-surgical and non-invasive cosmetic treatments such as laser and pulsed light treatments as well as micro-dermabrasion - may not mean much to the general public, but it is being hailed as the next big thing in the war on wrinkles.

In a society hooked on makeover shows such as 10 Years Younger and surgical dramas like Nip/Tuck, women and men feel pressure to look youthful.

However, increasingly they are seekingalternativestogoingunderthe knife, says Pook. "In the US, for every one person who has invasive surgery there are 10 who don't want to go down that route but are still seeking treatment.

"Twenty years ago, if Mrs Bloggs, a 50-year-old who was a Californian beach babe in her youth, came through the door wanting to look a decade younger, she didn't have many alternatives to plastic surgery. That was true even 10 years ago but it's not the case now Medical aesthetics delivers highly effective results without pain or invasive treatments," Pook says.

Rapid advances in medical devices which rejuvenate the skin without surgery mean there are now a variety of pain-free options which do not requirerecoverytime.Theseincludelight therapies and laser resurfacing devices.

And it is a big bucks business whose advance has been partly fuelled by the fact that it is cheaper and quicker to gain regulatory approval for new medical devicesthanforproducts.Analysts estimate that the medical aesthetics sector is approaching $20 billion, so Pook, although a small player, is operating in a growing market.

She would like to grow her business, Aesthetic Skin Consultants, beyond its one Glasgow outlet and has considered franchising,butfearsthebusiness could become too big and impersonal. "My greatest challenge is getting highly trained people. I'd rather have a few very well-trained nurses," she adds.

She also shuns the big high street shop front approach, preferring to base her business in an anonymous-looking office building above the throng of Union Street. "People don't feel comfortable inan open environment. Clients like the privacy," she says.

Pook set up her first beauty business a decade ago in Stirling, offering conventional treatments such as waxing and facials. Hungry for a challenge, she became fascinated by the new medical aesthetics devices coming on to the market and decided to refocus her business, becoming an expert in their use.

I was aware that things were changing.Thisendofthe beauty business is so new we haven't even really seen the big growth yet. These kinds of machines have only been around for five to 10 years so this is really the dawning of a new age," she says.

"Peoplearesotiredofspending money on products which don't work," she adds. "The problem is, nobody - doctors included - gives people a real understanding of how skin changes during your life. The people on makeover shows will go back to their 40 fags a day habit and their skin will go back to what it was," she says.

Pook'sphilosophyistoonlydo non-invasive procedures. "The kinds of treatments we carry out work."

Pook points to her latest acquisition, Titan - a new infra-red light treatment designed to lift and tighten the skin. Pook says the machine, which cost £55,000, has taken America by storm and was just introduced into the UK last year.

"I have the only one north of Birmingham. For one of my machines, I'm the only person in the world who is not a doctor who has one," she adds.

In simple terms, the Titan works by heating the dermis, the second layer of the skin, causing the collagen to contract and stimulating long-term collagen rebuilding. It can be used on the face and different parts of the body and Pook says it dramatically reverses the signs of ageing.

Pook originally chose the beauty industry as a change of lifestyle when she moved to Scotland from Saudi Arabiawith her Scottish husband and young children.

It is a big change from her previousglamorous existence photographing the lives of the Saudi royal family.

A determined woman with a forceful presence, Pook says she become a royal photographer by fluke. Having takenaphotography degree, she returned from a trip to the Himalayas and was processing 260 spools of film when a Saudi friend suggested that if she was so obsessed with taking pictures, she should apply to photograph royal weddings. Protocol dictated that only a female photographer could gain access to the female members of wedding parties.

"I went to a big photographic shop andaskediftheyneededafemale photographer. Two days later, I was doing my first wedding. It was really bizarre," she says.

"As a white woman, I was highly identifiable, so once they knew and trusted you it was very, very easy, no real protocols as such."

However, when the royals wanted her, she had to jump. "Once I was busy working in Jeddah when I got a call to do a job in Dhahran I had to do a video portrait of the Prince's six-year-old son at his school's end of year party but I was doing a royal wedding first so I was ordered to go to the royal airport and take the King's Gulfstream G-II jet. When two white women got off the plane, eyes were popping," she says.

Pook enjoyed the work but says that after more than a decade of recording royaleventsshefeltburnt out.She explains: "I wanted to step out of the lifestyle I was in and I felt the quality of life was better here in Scotland."

At 46, she embodies a "get stuck in" Aussie approach to life, an attitude which has seen her flourish in three very different fields - IT, photography and beauty.

Her Glasgow clinic is a far cry from the Saudi palaces she used to frequent, but her high-tech talents are appreciated by image-conscious Scots seeking to turn back the hands of time.