For the price of a car payment, you can pay to have an extremely low dosage of electricity flown through the top layer of your skin, by a professional, to add the visual equivalent of 24 hours of sleep to your face. It’s called a microcurrent facial and it’s shocking how your face will look when you’re done.

Quick backstory: People who work out look better, right? And this has little to do with how you fill out a speedo—regular, vigorous exercise promotes good circulation, which means oxygen and other good things can get to your cells faster, and bad stuff can be filtered out quicker. Additionally, exercise supports muscle development and definition, which lifts the skin. That’s why the bodies of athletes tend to look better for longer. Think briefly of the jacked old guy at your local gym facility, how his skin is lifted where others’ sags. Now stop thinking about it, pervert. Exercise is the fountain of youth.

But can you do exercise for your face?

Of course you can't—nobody can. Nothing is more boring than four sets of 10 reps of eyebrow raises. And that's where microcurrent comes in—a popular new treatment in which tiny (but, trust me, potent) electrical currents are conducted through the skin on your face, causing your muscles to expand and contract at the rate of a hummingbird’s heartbeat. After furiously working out your face for 30 minutes, you’re left with noticeably more taut, more lifted skin. Wrinkles are straight-up gone. It is magical.

It is also extremely uncomfortable.

The place to get your face lightly electrocuted in New York is Paul Labrecque—a constellation of spas across Manhattan that boast the Rolls Royce of microcurrent machines: The Biologique Recherche Remodeling Facial. If it sounds a little like torture, it’s because it is. Imagine a vacuum nozzle pulling violently on each of your beard hairs. Imagine a thousand stinging shocks running repeatedly down your collarbone. Imagine a tiny man in a white helmet running around your mouth, turning each tooth’s sensitivity setting from zero to 100, and then pounding on them one at a time with a tiny mallet. This is a small sampling of the experiences you will experience during microcurrent. Nobody said this was going to be easy.

But, I swear to you, the results are there. And they’re good. Imagine walking in with a heavy forehead and leaving with a lifted brow, ready and willing to express surprise and delight at a moment’s notice. Imagine dark undereye circles being less of a thing. This is real, guys! This is the Frankenstein facial.

The Biologique treatment is the best for a reason—their proprietary machine employs three electric currents (the first for circulation-boosting, the second for muscle toning, and the third for reasons that are unclear to me), plus a high-frequency wave to make your skin more receptive to moisturizers and serums and the like. Other spas practice microcurrent (the treatment’s become so popular that handhelds have come out in the last few years at much lower frequencies) but many lack the instant results you get with something really heavy duty. I’m sorry to tell you that it’s going to hurt. But when you’re done, you’re going to look incredible.

Related Stories for GQSkincare