Part II
The Facelift Alternatives: Tightening Devices and Volume Restoration
How much laxity and volume loss you have on a varying scale – mild to moderate; moderate to severe – can help your doctor determine whether or not you need a facelift. But it’s vital that you know, beforehand, so that you come to your doctor as prepared as you can possibly be.
Chapters 7 and 8 are designed to help you discover what non-surgical procedures are right for you and, if necessary, what non-surgical procedures might be complementary to various surgical procedures your physician might recommend. That’s right; gone are the days of one-procedure-fits-all – for everybody.
Today most doctors customize a diagnosis based not just on the degree of laxity and volume loss but that patient’s specific personality, pain and recovery threshold and a variety of other factors. But to perfectly tailor your procedure, or combination of procedures, you and your doctor need to work together as two equal parts of your own personal doctor-patient team.
That is why it is so important for you to be educated before you speak with your physician; being intimidated by all those degrees and pedigrees on the whole behind his or her head is no way to feel like you’re on equal footing with your doctor. However, that is exactly where you need to be; eye to eye, not sitting at his or her feet and lapping up those pearls of wisdom.
You want to discuss your options, openly and honestly; without fear that you are asking “dumb” questions and with the knowledge that your physician is interested in the unique and personal you. A generic diagnosis won’t do here; it has to be personal and unique to you and your specific needs if you are to get the results you desire.
A lot of what we do with our patients is actually “undoing” what the popular media and decades of hearing “facelift” have already done to them. Many people think that a facelift is the ultimate in plastic surgery or the gold standard of surgical procedures; others think that all the creams and lotions and skincare is something you do until the inevitable aging process makes a facelift equally inevitable.
Not true; as we always say in our offices the best procedure is the one you avoid by taking care of your skin in the first place. Just as importantly, through a complement of various surgical and non-surgical procedures, you can avoid the severity and invasiveness of a facelift altogether.
Then again, perhaps the years have been unkind to you and that, combined with genetics has increased the need for a facelift; so be it. Chapter 8 will cover all that – and then some. But for our purposes in this chapter we are gearing the information toward people with early laxity and volume loss that a typical facelift isn’t going to deal with.
After all, a facelift too soon is only going to make matters worse in later years just as waiting too long is going to make the need for a facelift later just that much more imperative. The key is to know what to do and when; we’re here to help you do just that.
The two issues we’ll be talking about in this chapter are:
To be Continued...
http://www.bhbeautysecrets.com
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Facelift Alternatives: Tightening Devices & Volume Restoration
The Facelift Alternatives: Tightening Devices and Volume Restoration
“I don’t plan to grow old gracefully. I plan to have face-lifts until my ears meet.”
~ Rita Rudner
Before Botox®, before Restalyne® and Thermage® and all the other lotions, potions, lasers, products and procedures we’ve catalogued throughout this book, the default term for any surgical cosmetic procedure for the last few decades was pretty much this: facelift. “Tight was right” and less wasn’t even an issue; more was better and, quite often, not quite good enough.
“When are you getting a facelift?”
“Did you see Maryanne’s new facelift?”
“The plastic surgeon said I needed a facelift.”
“Do you think I need a facelift?”
“How soon before I can get another facelift?”
Questions like these and so many more were popular fare at water coolers, gyms and PTA luncheons throughout the land and, without any other clear options, facelifts became the end-all and be-all of plastic surgery.
How times have changed. Today there are so many other non-surgical options and so much patient- and doctor-driven education to inform the various surgical procedures that now exist that most of us realize there are many steps on the way to a facelift; that having a facelift is not the inevitable costly, surgical and intensive procedure we all must “face” one day down the road. This chapter is designed to help you discover what those alternatives are and, more importantly, where you fit on the “do I need a facelift?” scale. In other words, we will teach you a new scale to use that doesn’t necessarily involve how old you are or what you think you need.
WARNING: Age is NOT the determining factor in whether or not you need a facelift. In our practices we’ve both learned that age is not necessarily an indicator along the “who does and who doesn’t need a facelift” spectrum. Both of us know dozens of individuals in their fifties who don’t need a facelift – and just as many in their forties who do.
Where do you fall on this scale? To determine the answer we must consider the two mitigating factors that we will be discussing in this chapter:
1.) Laxity: As we have discussed, laxity is our term for “looseness and sagginess,” otherwise known as drooping.
2.) Volume loss: As your skin ages it loses volume and becomes more brittle and less supple, creating a more severe look to the face.
To be Continued...
http://www.bhbeautysecrets.com
bhbeautysecrets@gmail.com
http://www.twitter.com/bhbeautysecrets
“I don’t plan to grow old gracefully. I plan to have face-lifts until my ears meet.”
~ Rita Rudner
Before Botox®, before Restalyne® and Thermage® and all the other lotions, potions, lasers, products and procedures we’ve catalogued throughout this book, the default term for any surgical cosmetic procedure for the last few decades was pretty much this: facelift. “Tight was right” and less wasn’t even an issue; more was better and, quite often, not quite good enough.
“When are you getting a facelift?”
“Did you see Maryanne’s new facelift?”
“The plastic surgeon said I needed a facelift.”
“Do you think I need a facelift?”
“How soon before I can get another facelift?”
Questions like these and so many more were popular fare at water coolers, gyms and PTA luncheons throughout the land and, without any other clear options, facelifts became the end-all and be-all of plastic surgery.
How times have changed. Today there are so many other non-surgical options and so much patient- and doctor-driven education to inform the various surgical procedures that now exist that most of us realize there are many steps on the way to a facelift; that having a facelift is not the inevitable costly, surgical and intensive procedure we all must “face” one day down the road. This chapter is designed to help you discover what those alternatives are and, more importantly, where you fit on the “do I need a facelift?” scale. In other words, we will teach you a new scale to use that doesn’t necessarily involve how old you are or what you think you need.
WARNING: Age is NOT the determining factor in whether or not you need a facelift. In our practices we’ve both learned that age is not necessarily an indicator along the “who does and who doesn’t need a facelift” spectrum. Both of us know dozens of individuals in their fifties who don’t need a facelift – and just as many in their forties who do.
Where do you fall on this scale? To determine the answer we must consider the two mitigating factors that we will be discussing in this chapter:
1.) Laxity: As we have discussed, laxity is our term for “looseness and sagginess,” otherwise known as drooping.
2.) Volume loss: As your skin ages it loses volume and becomes more brittle and less supple, creating a more severe look to the face.
To be Continued...
http://www.bhbeautysecrets.com
bhbeautysecrets@gmail.com
http://www.twitter.com/bhbeautysecrets
Friday, August 7, 2009
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