Each of the above changes has its own treatment. Skin texture changes are treated with resurfacing (e.g. peels or lasers), descent and sagginess is treated with lifting (e.g. facelift) , and volume loss is treated with volume restoration (e.g. fillers or fat grafting). I’ll get into each of the truths and misconceptions around each of these in subsequent posts, but for now, there’s two main ideas that I think are important to share:
- The key to good plastic surgery is to recognize that while each of the processes above happen in each of us, they happen to different extents in different people. One person may have aging dominated by skin texture changes, another may have a lot of volume loss. Patients look most natural when the underlying mechanism is first understood and then the correction is applied only to the extent that it is happening in that person. The best way to achieve this is to bring along a picture of your younger self and show the person treating you so they can systematically identify the changes.
How aging manifests may differ person to person. Person 1 aging may be dominated by descent as often is the case in those with lots of weight fluctuation while in Person 2, aging may be dominated by texture changes as seen in those with lots of sun damage.
And 2. Treating problems in one area using a solution from another area rarely looks good. We see this sometimes when patients get care by a practitioner who doesn’t fully understand the dynamics of aging and instead are trying to sell a narrow set of products or services. For example, if a clinic has an expensive laser and needs to sign people up for laser resurfacing… patients may be talked into getting lots of resurfacing treatment and end up looking smooth and waxy but not younger. Or if a Doctor only does facelifts, patients may end up looking tight or pulled but again, not younger. Or lastly – and perhaps most pervasively today – patients that are promised that fillers can meet all their needs without any other treatment can end up looking overfilled and bloated when volume is used as a cure-all.
Treatment for what happens with aging must be directed to the underlying cause.
