Archive for the ‘Cosmetic Procedures’ Category:
Don’t get too excited if you’re looking for noninvasive fat removal techniques here in the US, as this new zeltiq device for noninvasive fat removal on isolated parts of the body, called the Zeltiq device, has not yet been approved for such a thing here in the US yet.
This device is unique, as it doesn’t use radio waves, lasers, heat or any other sort of fat melting technique to get rid of fat cells, or allow your body to excrete them on their own like the other laser assisted fat removal techniques we discussed in our last post, but rather it uses cryogenics.
Yep, it uses the principle of freezing to kill fat cells, and then allow your body to get rid of these destroyed fat cells on it’s own. It’s a device that is held against the skin for a long time, allowing it to adequately freeze the fat cells, which can be a rather tedious process, and over a period of months of treatment, your body should dispel these fat cells from the body.
It can be a very long process, but the good thing is that it is completely noninvasive. No cutting, probing, tearing, or incisions. Zeltiq goes by the name of cool sculpting as well. I’m not sure if it is under review with the FDA for fat removal and sculpting use, but it sure will catch on if it works because a lot of people don’t like the idea of being cut to reduce fat with the traditional heat and suction techniques we have today.
What’s interesting is if you go to the Zeltiq site, it won’t even take you to a US page, it pops up a message that the procedure is not yet approved for fat removal in the US, but it is approved for dermatological procedures that involve cooling the skin and the layers below it.
The interesting part of this cool sculpting procedure is that it appears you only have to get one treatment that can last up to three hours (probably depending on what you’re getting treated), and then over the course of four months or so, your body actually eliminates the crystallized fat cells over this period of time.
I’m not sure why it takes this long, but it does. The results pictures on the website are pretty good, but they don’t look as dramatic as laser lipolysis. The cost as far as I can find is about $800-1,000 per body part treated. I could not tell whether this is a good procedure for any areas of the body other than abdomen, back fat, or bra jiggle fat, as those were consistently the only examples I could find. It looked like, per the before and after pictures, it might work a little bit to reduce the appearance of cellulite potentially.
When it comes to plastic surgery, which is a billions and billions of dollar industry, you know there is a lot of motivation for them to keep thinking of newer, better procedures with less down time and more natural, attractive results.
Well, this latest one is pretty interesting because it uses stems cells from fat to make various parts of your body filled out (wrinkles, hollows in the cheeks, etc. as we age, and even breast augmentation).
If you’re a stranger to the news, then you may not know that stem cells in general have stirred quite a controversy in the medical community. They are very controversial in science right now because of stem cell therapies that are derived from fetuses.
Obviously, there is a moral dilemma there, and a debate on where a life begins and ends. However, fat stem cells are different, because they can be derived from a non-controversial subject.
Cosmetic surgery performed with stem cells has not been approved by the FDA, but it has been used successfully for years in other countries, which is typical for the stringent approval process of the US for all things medical and cosmetic.
Some of the supposed benefits of stem cell fat implantation versus non stem cell fat transplants used to fill out wrinkles and correct other cosmetic imperfections is the amount of time it lasts. It can last up to fifteen years in the body instead of disappearing or migrating more quickly to other areas of the body.
Many plastic surgeons say there is really no results differences between the two though, and tend to hesitate to back it because of it’s fairly exorbitant price compared to ordinary surgeries performed with fat cells.
It appears to be about double the price of regular fat transplants. Gosh, just saying that sounds hilarious. The fact that we transplant fat (a generally loathed thing) from area of the body to another is downright ludicrous if you think about it!
Well, I guess I’m glad that I haven’t had Botox yet. I just read that a study concluded that those who receive Botox injections, which typically take a few weeks to totally paralyze the muscles underlying your facial tissue (jeez, that doesn’t even sound right!), may actually develop more severe wrinkles elsewhere. Why? Because your face will emote, dammit, if it wants to, that’s why!
You are still bound to have emotional expressions, and since some of your muscles are essentially paralyzed from moving, your face overcompensates, and your facial muscles that normally wouldn’t move that much at all while making certain expressions, start to move allover the place, and voila, you have newly formed wrinkles in other places where you may not have gotten them otherwise.
Botox is probably the most popular outpatient, nonsurgical method of anti aging for the skin today in dermatological practice. It’s wildly popular in Hollywood, where most women get the injections in their aging hot spots, like their crows feet area and their forehead area, where emotive wrinkles tend to really show up thanks to smiling, laughing, and all that other awesome stuff we do when we are having fun.
Squinting is also a big culprit, helping to add to those unfortunate crows feet. But being expressionless surely isn’t the answer, and it looks like Botox may not be the awesome cure all that we thought it was. You may want to think twice about Botox anyways honestly. What do we really know about the long term effects of injecting this poison into our bodies repeatedly – SEVERAL TIMES A YEAR?!
Nothing really, and I’m sure that the cosmetic companies that are making billions off of this would be slow to tell us if it did. There are tons of excellent nonsurgical anti aging creams out there that really help you to keep your youthful good looks longer, and there are even some devices and tools you can use including the very effective method of facial exercises, and of course peels and in home microderm that can all help you maintain that young, awesome skin for longer.
Although as of yet no one is calling the tightening restrictions around the fat dissolving injections like Lipodissolve a “Ban” yet, it sounds like the actions being taken by the FDA are certainly trying to eliminate the practice across the United States now. Lipodissolve and other similar products are supposed to be a nonsurgical alternative to things like Smartlipo and liposuction. There has been an ongoing controversy for years around the fat injections that are supposed to break up fat cells so that your body naturally expels them.
The trend began ( I believe) in France with a process called messotherapy, and translated here in the US to spawns of similar products that claimed to comfortably, with minimal side effects, help remove localized body fat from problem areas on men and women. There were really no claims about reducing cellulite, but the idea was probably that the product could help with this problem as well since reducing body fat helps reduce the appearance of cellulite by it’s very nature.
The Lipodissolve ingredients are what’s under scrutiny, and the FDA is not necessarily saying they are dangerous, but is saying that they have not been deemed to be tested as “safe” under the FDA guidelines. Bear in mind that some of the other dangerous products that have been deemed safe by the FDA later turned out to be major health threatening ingredients, and that their guidelines for deeming something safe are criticized as being somewhat flimsy.
The FDA is also concerned that the claims made by the makers of Lipodissolve and their marketing arms of spas and med spas around the US, are false or misleading and have not been proven to be true. They feel that the marketing must be tweaked to be a little bit more truthful and not guide patients into thinking they are going to get unrealistic results. They say there is not adequate evidence that the shots actually remove fat deposits as claimed.
They have actually sent threatening letters to several spas that market and provide Lipodissolve and asked that they suspend use of the products and treatments until further review. Sounds like a ban coming on to me…..I’ll let you know when I hear more on this.
Oh, and some of the side effects that caused concerns were “holes” being left in the skin, uneven, lumpy texture, swelling and pain, and discolorations on the skin that seemed to be permanent.
New Procedure for Smooth Belly?
There are quite a few women, and men too, who are really not happy with one particular area on their body. The belly fat is the number one complaint on the body between women and men, and the reason that typical tummy tuck surgery is still one of the number one requested cosmetic surgeries today. Tummy tucks though, are actually quite invasive procedures.
They not only suck the fat out from underneath the skin, but they also take some of the skin off as well because often times people who request tummy tucks have excess body fat and therefore have stretched, excessive skin that needs to be removed as well. After all, we weren’t born that way, that stomach had to have gotten stretched out over the course of our lives due to genes, poor eating and exercise habits, or child birth.
A cosmetic surgeon named Dr. Schulman has now come up with a new procedure that is made to help patients who request to have a flatter stomach, and yet are not so severe that they need a full on tummy tuck. This new procedure is something he has coined the “smooth tummy tuck”. It allows him to do agressive liposuction, and also remove any hanging skin in one operation, whereas other operations may take several to get the right, smooth and natural look, which means, yep, you have to go under more than once and why would you want to do that more than you have to?
The difference is that there is no muscle repair involved because the muscles were not invaded, fat was just sucked out, so your recovery time is a lot less, and your scarring is more minimal, making for an overall more desirable procedure as well as a more desirable overall effect. It may even reduce the look of cellulite since it sucks out excess fat, and therefore would also of course minimize the straining of the fat against the skin.
The new technique takes about two hours, and recovery takes about five days total. The patients see and feel an immediate result which is what leaves them so very happy. Hey, if I had problems in that area, I might think about it! Maybe some day, when I get tired of my saddle bags, this type of procedure is something I’d treat myself to 
One of the stars of “The Hills”, the hit reality show with other reality stars – if that’s what you can call them – Spencer Pratt, her irritating husband, Lauren Conrad and Audrina Patridge, has really gone overboard on getting plastic surgery procedures to meet what she thinks is the beauty ideal that is forced on women in the Hollywood entertainment industry.
Do I smell the next Joan Rivers on the front? She’d better be careful, or she may end up looking like some alien version of herself like other plastic surgery addicts in the business such as the “Cat Lady” who literally looks like a cat now and other victims of bad plastic surgery or simply overdoing it, Priscilla Presley, whose formerly gorgeous face has been marred by a botched filler job, and Joan Van Arc, whose waxen, frozen appearance leaves one feeling sorry for her rather than astounded by her newfound youthful look.
I feel really bad for women, or men, who go overboard in this area, because it almost seems like they really don’t like themselves and are trying to alter their very existence into something that is completely different than what they were born with. The results are often devastating and can have serious mental health implications. Heidi Montag seems to be headed down this path, and I don’t know if she’s considered this, but excessive nipping and tucking never lead anyone to a successful career, but likability and perseverence have.
At least Ms. Montag, or shall I say Pratt, is willing to talk about her obsession with the knife and has admitted to it, and her before and after pictures aren’t horrendous, but I can’t help but wonder when she will morph into something that is totally unnatural looking, since you know that’s what happens to women who are addicted to procedures. I’ve never seen any of them stop doing it, and eventually, they just start to look bad. Hopefully she doesn’t go down that path, but from what it sounds like, she isn’t planning on stopping these procedures any time soon.
Heidi’s story is one of caution to those of us that start to pick on every little thing about our appearance. You have to, at a certain point, embrace your features. Sure, there are a few things we all want to change about our appearance, but going under the knife to correct it all will leave you not only bankrupt, but with a void you can never seem to fill, and unhappiness.
A former Miss Argentina has died after going under the knife for gluteal (that’s the scientific term for butt or rear end in case you didn’t know) surgery to enhance the appearance of her butt and make it look more lifted and round. The 38 year old mother of two died in surgery after she threw a blood clot to her lungs and experienced acute respiratory failure. Efforts to save the woman were not successful, and she passed away at the scene of the surgery reportedly.
Incidents like this during surgeries are uncommon, but there is definitely a risk any time you put yourself under the knife, so it’s wise to consider this when you are considering plastic surgery of any kind. Argentina is actually one of the countries that has a very high rate of plastic surgery. People actually engage in medical tourism to go get plastic surgery there because the cost is lower and yet the standard of care and the quality of the work is still pretty high.
After looking at pictures of this woman on the news sites, I’m not quite sure why she was going in for any surgery at all. She was gorgeous. It’s too bad that the pressures are so great that she felt she needed this unnecessary procedure. I’m not anti plastic surgery at all either, I advocate it. However, I think that some of these procedures are really going overboard.
In a move that’s bound to limit cosmetic surgery even more than it already has been by the current economic problems we face, congress is now considering a new way to help pay for their so called “health overhaul”, which by the way I’m very leery of, in case you can’t already tell by the tone of my writing. They are proposing a possible part of an answer to the shortcomings of how to pay for the multiple new programs for helping get a lot of uninsured Americans health coverage, by taxing cosmetic surgeries and possibly other cosmetic or nonessential procedures that are totally elective.
I’m sure that plastic surgeons aren’t thrilled about this idea, nor are a certain set of actresses, models and other high end socialite types who are addicted to plastic surgery and other cosmetic procedures, but they are seriously thinking of taxing this, which is kind of the equivalent of a “luxury item”, so that they can help to bridge the gap that currently exists and pay for their health care reform ideas.
What really bothers me about them squeezing yet more tax out of people who tend to make more money than average, is that they are not instead looking at the billions of wasted dollars that are spent every year in government spending, but they are looking to further squeeze the nation’s higher paid people, who already pay the majority of the taxes in the US, and who already pay for the shortcomings of multiple other programs.
I just don’t like the idea that if you make more, or if you happen to be able to afford certain items because you’ve worker your butt off for them, you are punished by the government by paying even more than your fair share of taxes. It’s another way that the government really squeezes every nickel out of the higher income brackets, and I suppose I’d just like to see them find more creative ways to pay for their ideas than this.
Not that I plan on doing a whole lot in the plastic surgery department, but to me this just speaks to the problem that America tends to reward mediocrity too much. I’m all for being charitable, and I believe in doing my part to help the less fortunate, but there has to be a line drawn, and I think this extra tax is just another sneaky way of eeking more money out of Americans.
Ah, you gotta love the British. They seem to come up with new methods to surgically alter their appearance, and nonsurgically, faster than us beauty and looks conscious Americans. Just take a look at any British tabloid or even a regular news site, and you will see that their obsession with celebrity and appearance rivals only us here in America, so it’s no wonder that we’re all long lost cousins. They’re especially concerned, like we are, with anti aging and wrinkle prevention and treatment.
The latest news of Britain is something called a ten minute facelift. It’s basically a nonsurgical, cheaper way to look like you’ve had a facelift without the surgery and the thousands of dollars, although it will still cost you per session, with one session costing about 450 pounds, which is close to 800 or 900 dollars now in US currency. That could get quite pricey, so let’s talk about what it aims to do.
The treatment starts with a blueberry scrub and a chemical peel. This enhances the results of the more intense therapy later on, but is not necessary for the treatment to work. Then comes the mesotherapy, which to my understanding is small shots, under the skin, of vitamins and other beneficial ingredients, in this case they should help to enhance collagen production and tone up the skin from underneath, otherwise I don’t see the point of them for this sort of treatment.
Mesotherapy, if you recall, is actually a controversial treatment that is administered by some practitioners to help break up fat cells and flush them from the body by injecting natural ingredients underneath the skin which essentially explode and destroy fat cells, in this case though, the ingredients injected are supposed to enhance the plumpness of the face.
The ingredients that are administered under the skin for the ten minute face lift are elastin, hyaluronic acid, which is a natural biodegradable acid that helps plump the skin up, and a variety of other vitamins beneficial to the skin. Now, comes the painful part. A local anesthetic is administered to the whole facial area. Then shots of special fillers are given throughout the face that help plump and fill the entire face for a younger and more lifted look. The effect can be especially helpful for “jowls” that women hate that come with aging for a lot of men and women, it lifts them up and helps to tighten them for a period of time.
Then, the practitioner, who is only one French practitioner at the moment who came up with the treatment, takes his hands and manually smooths out the injections so that they are all distributed evenly under the skin, and this part is supposed to be painful as well. The before and after pictures are amazing though, if you want to google “ten minute facelift” and see for yourself. It is temporary, but it last for several months and call forestall more serious measures.
I have to admit, the sound of this newer treatment is quite intriguing. I get a newsletter from a skin care center in my area, and one of their newer offerings is called a collagen microdermabrasion treatment, which from the description presumably offers a microdermabrasion extreme exfoliating treatment, along with some sort of collagen enhancing treatment. Collagen enhancement can come from a variety of things, most notably some sort of deep heating of the tissue, to something akin to electrical currents or even lasers to get down in the deep layers and help stimulate collagen production.
As you well know by now, collagen is the building block that creates smooth, supple skin, and because we lose a lot of collagen as we age and it does not replenish like it used to, we are faced with worn looking, deflated skin which of course results in wrinkles and fine lines being visible. It’s your basic wear and tear of aging, and it’s all due to the loss of collagen which is a domino effect of several elements in our lives such as environmental toxins and pollutants, photo damage from the sun’s damaging photo UV rays, and a variety of other degradations of the structure of this precious compound.
The collagen microderm treatment is supposed to be exclusive to this one skin care treatment facility called the Skin Center in the Ohio and PA area, and what it does is combines the affects of microdermabrasion, which is a somewhat serious exfoliation of the skin’s outermost cells which reveals fresh cells that are more vibrant and bright looking, and also helps to rejuvenate collagen, and a collagen inducing treatment that is really different from anything I’ve read about before.
The collagen treatment is unique, as it massages a hyaluronic acid serum into the patient’s skin and then places a custom cut “collagen sheet” over the patient’s face, which is supposed to bind to the skin’s fibroblasts and help the skin to form it’s own natural collagen on it’s own. It is ideal for mature skin, and is supposed to be value priced as it is not an invasive procedure. Patients are said to have very little downtime, and it is ideal for getting before a major event since the complications are minimal and the downtime is minimal as well. ‘
If you’re interested, and you live in the Ohio or Pennsylvania area where the Skin Care Centers are located, you should give them a call, they seem to be reasonably priced and offer a wide array of the latest in skincare technology from what I’ve seen.
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