Excerpts From "Beverly Hills Beauty Secrets"

Introduction
Forget Wall Street - Our Insider
Trading Secrets Come Straight
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The boomers are aging - and don't want to look it. Women are looking to nonsurgical procedures - and loving it.

Men are using beauty products - and not afraid to admit it.

We are a nation obsessed with appearance - and the statistics prove it.

According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), Americans spent approximately $12.4 billion on cosmetic procedures in 2007. This means that more doctors than ever before are performing more procedures on more people, creating and inherent confusion about not only which procedures are the most appropriate but also which doctor is the most qualified to perform them.

It doesn't help to clarify matters that in the past decade, techniques to enhance the appearance of the face have grown exponentially. New products mean new brand names, and new brand names mean new buzzwords, which cause even more confusion. (Can you say "Radiesse, Restylane, and Thermage, with a side of Artefill for good measure"?)

Many of the latest techniques in cosmetic advancement involve nonsurgical procedures. In fact, recent statistics reveal a widening gap in the surgical versus nonsurgical conundrum: of the nearly 11.5 million surgical and nonsurgical procedures performed in the United States in 2007, surgical procedures accounted for only 19 percent of the total procedures, and nonsurgical procedures made up the other 81 percent.

The top five nonsurgical cosmetic procedures in 2005 were as follows:

1. Botox injections
2. Laser hair removal
3. Hyaluronic acids (Hylaform, Restylane)
4. Microdermabrasion
5. Chemical peels

Simultaneously, the demand for facial rejuvenation and beauty preservation has increased at an unprecedented rate because of increasing societal acceptance of cosmetic procedures. Popular magazines continue to tout the "youth is power" message through glossy photographs of young, unblemished, wrinkle-free models. Television has also had a huge impact: Extreme Makeover and Dr. 90210 and their countless spin-offs made cosmetic surgery fodder for :reality TV" shows, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy turned beauty products for men into a fad that became a trend that continues as a habit today.

As a result, a significant amount of confusion has surfaced about the cornucopia of procedures, physician board certification, cost, and the validity of "lunchtime makeovers." The trends are actually as surprising to physicians as they have been to patients. For decades surgery was performed in a medical center and nonsurgical procedures were performed at clinics, but recent statistics reveal newly emerging trends: of all the cosmetic procedures performed in 2005, 48.3 percent were performed in office-based facilities, 27.9 percent were performed in freestanding ambulatory surgical centers, and 23.8 percent were performed in hospitals.

The Best Source for Your Information

Traditionally, plastic surgeons and dermatologists were the experts who clarified the appropriate intervention to address an individual's concerns. Today, however, the Internet as well as the print media and television have become important sources of information for people who are seeking the appropriate procedure and available intervention.

Advertisements by physicians and the makers of cosmetic products and procedures are abundant. Numerous books have also been published about beauty and health, but most of the advice in these books is limited by the experience and specialty of the physicians. Despite the significant amount of available information, people seem to be more confused than ever, and most do not think that they have an unbiased source for information on facial enhancement and preservation.

That's about to change with the publication of this book. To our knowledge, this is the first book written by both a facial plastic surgeon and a dermatologist with expertise allows for a broad-based - and unbiased - approach to facial rejuvenation.

A mixture of excitement and concern has energized us to write this book. With the proper application of the technological and surgical approaches that are now available, many elements of facial aging can be addressed today in ways that were not imaginable even just five years ago. Nevertheless, with this advancing tide of technology and surgery comes some muddying of the waters.

The promises provided by these advances can be nullified by their inappropriate application in unqualified hands. This can range from doctors who are far removed from their specialties, with background as slight as a weekend course certificate, to nonphysicians who are employed in a business model in which medical professionalism has been suffocated by the drive to profit.

For individuals who seek to enhance and preserve their facial appearance, our goal in writing this book is to give "insider trading" tips of which most cosmetic health care providers are aware. These include the following:

• Providing the guidelines for understanding the aging changes that are specific to the face so that individuals can be educated about alternative treatments
• Clarifying the available surgical and nonsurgical treatments
• Providing the all-important criteria for choosing the physician specialist who would understand the appropriate procedure

Together, we have more than four decades of experience in facial plastic surgery and dermatology, all of which is poured into this book. Through a combination of sound advice, quantifiable research, unvarnished truth, and actual case studies from our two practices, we want to enable the reader to choose a life-enhancing result with money well spent - and hope and trust well placed. That is our sincere wish.