Archive for the ‘Cosmetic Procedures’ Category:
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.
You read the horror stories about cosmetic surgery procedures going awry a lot, even though these risks are fairly remote, they nevertheless do exist, and everyone who undergos plastic surgery of any sort, especially the more invasive kinds where you are put under general anesthesia, should be aware that they are somewhat at risk, however remote, of enduring complications up to and even including death unfortunately.
It really is up to the individual though. I know some people who aren’t afraid to go under the knife at all, and others who avoid it like the plague. And well, to go under the knife for something that isn’t even medically necessary, those people would say no way, are you crazy!?
When you hear stories like the one out of Florida recently though, no matter if you’re squeamish or hesitant about plastic surgery and other cosmetic procedures of an invasive nature, you do tend to think twice about even thinking about getting anything done. A 37 year old mother of three children in Florida is now brain dead, and has been for several days, after she underwent liposuction surgery, which is a routine plastic surgery, at a medical spa in Florida.
She was ok all the way up until the very end of the surgery apparently, which incidentally is not described as a full on liposuction with the anesthesia because it isn’t known whether this is one of the less invasive forms, as the spa was not licensed to perform actual liposuction with anesthesia. The doctor’s lawyer did say that his client was unaware the spa was not licensed to perform procedures which require anesthesia, which leads me to believe it was the full kind where you have to go under because it is very invasive, but mum’s the word so far on that.
He also says that all emergency procedures were obeyed and at the right time, trying to exonerate his client from any wrongdoing, since you know there will be a lawsuit when a mother of three is now braindead and will most likely die from this.
Liposuction is a surgery where fat is extracted from the body’s problem areas in fairly large volumes, whereas lesser forms of liposuction, which can only take out smaller amounts of fat, are less invasive and do not require a patient to go under the twilight sleep that is induced from regular anesthesia, rather they are usually given sedatives and local anesthetics to help with any pain and discomfort.
In the craze to have mega groomed, sexy, framing eyebrows, there is a newer trend that I find intriguing and want to know more about, called threading. In fact, I saw a guy at the mall with a stand who was threading a girl’s eybrows just recently, so that’s when I knew this trend was really starting to take off. Here’s what I don’t like about threading that I just read though. I am of the school of thought that you should only pluck one hair at a time, otherwise you may overpluck and undershape.
However, it looks like threading involves removing several hairs at one time. Not a fan of that, personally although this may appeal to some people to get it overwith faster. That being said though, threading the eyebrows may be ideal for men, since men tend to have more out of control, thicker eyebrows than women in general, and also since men don’t require the level of shaping as women do, in my opinion, in fact guys look ridiculous when their brows have been overly groomed.
Eyebrow threading involves taking a double strand of cotton thread, and utilizing it in such a way (by an experience technician), that it removes one clean line of hair at a time, and ideally if it is done right, it does not produce any type of irritation or redness, and it looks very clean and uniform. Obviously, this technique can be great for those that just want a clean shape and who already have a lot of eyebrow to spare, or for cleaning up guy’s eyebrows, but caution should be used since if your technician is inexperienced, they can create uneven lines, or overpluck, and let’s face it you’re screwed if you’re overplucked, you can’t really grow them back until they want to come back on their own.
The good thing about threading is that you get the clean line, there are no chemicals or irritants, because it is all natural, and there should be little to no irritation or pain or redness as long as it’s done right. Drawbacks are that you could end up with a botched job and uneven brows, which in my view may not be worth it, but then again I’ve been plucking my own eyebrows for twenty years now, so I’m used to it and I know what I like.
You’ve undoubtedly heard of a chemical peel before if you’re into skin care. It’s a process that you can get done in a dermatologist’s office, and also now that you can do in your home at a lower concentration most likely, where a solution is applied to the skin’s surface, usually some sort of naturally derived acid like glycolic acid, one of the more popular ones used for this common procedure. The acid removes the top layer of skin cells, usually within a matter of minutes. You can get this done in conjunction with microdermabrasion, but usually only if the solution used if fairly weak.
The micropeel is a bit different of an animal. The micropeel starts off with either a light scraping of the skin’s epidermis to remove that top layer, or an enzyme or acid solution is applied to remove the top layer. Next, a cryogenic process is used where a device lightly freezes the top layer of skin which further helps to completely remove the skin cells. Then it is scraped lightly off. This procedure can greatly help your skin with the signs of aging, sun spots, acne scars and general lack of vibrance, but several treatments are usually needed to see a significant improvement in the appearance of the skin.
I’ve had a peel with a combination microdermabrasion process done, and I really liked the effects of it, although I figured out that I could do this on my own skin in my own home for much less money, as long as I was careful, using my own in home microderm product with a salon home peel. Several brands now offer these types of products for home use, one of the most notable and well reviewed being an Oil of Olay combination that women go gaga for. You can definitely get better results in a spa, but you can get almost identical results in your own home as long as your careful and you get your technique down to a science.
Well, wherever there is money to be made, there are sure to be con-men and con-women who will take advantage of people who may not know any better or who are desperate to get something for a dramatically reduced price or without doctor’s approval, so they can rope people in by appealing to their inner bargain hunter or by simply swindling them into thinking they are a credentialed person. It’s no different when it comes to plastic surgery. It’s not as common here in the US as it is in other countries where illegal cosmetic surgery is out of hand, like Mexico and Brazil, but it’s still something that needs to be dealt with swiftly by authorities because it truly is a life or death situation.
This story is out of the US, New York more specifically, where a woman wanted to get silicone injections into her rear end and thighs (I know, most of us want to slim those down, but some cultures view a shapely figure with lots of curves and a high waist to butt ratio to be very attractive – see cellulite treatments for information on how you may be able to slim down these parts). She began going to a woman a few years back to receive the injections, which would dissipate with time, so she would have to keep going back to keep up the appearance.
Silicone is not legalized to be used for injection into body sites as an enhancement tool, and there are also other thick liquids that are currently being used, illegally, by people who are either licensed or completely unlicensed (it’s illegal either way, but definitely more dangerous when performed by those with no credentials since there is probably a technique used that should not be).
The reason is that it can migrate to other areas of the body, because it is a free floating liquid, and because it should not be used in the body that way, whereas other injectables like restylane and juvederm are ok for that because they have minimum migration risk, and if they do migrate they are generally an inert, unharmful substance to the human body. The woman in New York had gotten these silicone injections for a few years with no incidence, but her last injection proved to be her last.
She contracted an embolism in her lung from the silicone migrating which is actually a fairly rare occurrence, but I’ve read about it happening in foreign countries where this kind of illegal enhancement is very common, which is where the silicone (or some other material) attached itself into the lung, causing complications. The FDA says that if it receives the complaints, it can prosecute those that are using this as a cosmetic surgery filler illegally, but many times these incidents go unreported, either because they aren’t caught, or because the treating doctor did not report it (doctors are not required to report this).
The people who illegally perform these procedures typically get around to patients by word of mouth, and it is particularly popular right now in the Latina and transgender community, where buttock and thigh and breast enhancement is popular but the population segment cannot afford the traditional legal surgeries or procedures to get what they want. Like I had mentioned before, although this silicone treatment is dangerous, the complications are actually fairly rare, and abuse is underreported, so it’s very difficult to catch the offenders unless (unfortunately) someone dies that has received care.
There is another scary story about fraudulent cosmetic sugery being performed, this time out of Florida, where a woman injected two “patients” with a hydrogel that was intended to enahnce the buttocks area. The problem is, the woman who is charged with making the injections got her injectable solution bootlegged, and the two patients suffered severe trauma, one of them total kidney failure, which was directly linked to the injections performed by an unlicensed practitioner.
This isn’t the first case, so everyone please remember when you are looking to get any sort of cosmetic procedure done, even it it’s noninvasive, make sure that you aren’t going bargain basement and also that you aren’t going to people who are not licensed. If your practitioner is licensed, they will have this information prominently displayed in their office, and you can also look them up online to make sure they are certified as they say they are, through the Board of cosmetic surgery.
Boy, when I think about it, this really is the age where anything you could possibly want to do to yourself, beauty and self improvement wise, is pretty much possible. Heck, some of it may be illegal in some parts of the country (I kid, sort of), but it is nonetheless available for the taking if you want it. You want to be taller? There’s a surgery that is offered for that!
You want to lose the fat off only certain parts of the body without dieting? Get liposuction. You want to get rid of cellulite? Provided you have a couple hundred bucks to spare on an ongoing upkeep basis, you can be virtually cellulite free with the array of advanced cellulite reduction treatments on the market today (or you can do them in your own home, which is what I like to do).
Do you want your eyes to be wider and more alert looking? There are eyelid jobs, nose jobs, lip plumping enhancements, cheekbone implants, chin implants, forehead smoother, face lifts, mini facelifts, treatments that help you look younger nonsurgically but that are still somewhat high tech. You get it, the list goes on and on for what you can do to yourself or have done to you for the cost of a couple grand or more, or less, depending on where you get it done.
It’s sometimes scary to think we can alter our appearance to the point where we are almost unrecognizable, but it’s also nice to know we can get tasteful, naturall looking professional work done to ourselves if we want it.
Along those lines is a relatively newer procedure that not many people know about, aside from maybe high paid models and celebrities, where you can actually get eyebrow hair transplanted into your eybrow area to make sparse or previously overplucked eyebrows look as full as the heart desires again.
This was popular when the fad was to overpluck the eybrows to a pencil thin consistency in the mid nineties – believe me, I was a victim of overplucking and unfortunately I still have to pencil in my “eyebrows” in a lot of areas where they are almost noexistent. I’ll keep pencilling though, I don’t foresee any eyebrow transplants in my future. I’ve got bigger fish to fry 
I just read and watched a video about a new nonsurgical technique that plastic surgeons are using that is supposed to spot reduce fatty areas on the body, like love handles and excess fat on the thighs, belly, and other spots that are common for problems to emerge for women and men. The video I watched was featured as a news spot about a woman who had the treatments done to help spot reduce her “muffin top”, which is the sides of the belly the overflow from your pants, creating that dreaded muffin top effect that is now such a buzzword.
It’s really an interesting procedure because it doesn’t look like it would really do much of anything. When they showed the woman getting the lipolaser treatment done to her midsection, she was fully clothed, and a laser that took the shape of windmills on her dress in her abdominal area kind of rotated up and down and back and forth, over her clothes.
It was a red laser light, and it’s supposedly a cool laser technique that is newly being used for spot fat reduction after it was discovered that a laser can not only help melt fat internally (smart lipo), but it can also help the body melt (destroy) fat cells when utilized from the outside, and nonsurgically, and then the body’s own lymphatic system is supposed to rid the body of the destroyed fat cells.
While I admit that such a simple procedure looks intriguing for those that want to spot reduce fat on their body, it is pricey, and it does require about five sessions, which usually run anywhere from 3,000 to 4,000 dollars total. Also, it does not work for everyone, so there is a chance that either it may not work for you or that you may not get the results you want to get. They did studies to see if this had any effect on the cholesterol levels of those who had the treatments, since it does release fat cells from the body, and so far it looks like it may in fact help cholesterol in some way as well, but those results are not yet totally conclusive. At any rate, it had me intrigued!
It’s called lipolaser, and you can read about it online if you just google lipolaser. The company, Meridian, who manufactures this laser has some good information on the web about it.
That’s right, the American obsession with appearance apparently has affected those beyond the grave as well as those here and still very much alive on earth. It’s no secret that Americans are increasingly obsessed with their appearance, obsessing over their facial features, staving off wrinkles and sun damage, pulling this and that up or down, getting their boobs bigger, getting tummy tucks and liposuction. Basicaly, you name it these days, and you can get it done in a surgeon’s office somewhere. Call it the age of vanity, or some may just say the age of perfection.
While I don’t agree with obsessive or excessive plastic surgery or cosmetic procedures, I believe that they do have their place for many in modern society who use them wisely, and don’t get too carried away with changing their features so that they become a shadow of their former selves. After all, one of the greatest things about humanity is that we all have a uniqueness that makes each and every one of of special, and some of that should be honored, since we don’t all want to look like cookie cutter versions of eachother.
Some people are opting to undergo cosmetic procedures so that they can look better in their sendoff to the afterlife, or whatever it is they happen to believe in after we die and pass off of this earth. Most likely the reasons are often that they want to look at their personal best for a wake, or that they simply want to look their best when they pass away, and take comfort in knowing that post mortem they will get the treatment they want.
Do I understand it? No, not really, but as with everything else, it’s a personal choice, and who are we to judge what others deem suitable in their lives? Naturally you can understant how this practice may raise some eyebrows though! No pun intended
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