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I am 54 and have lost a lot of weight through illness resulting in a sagging lower face,
lip lines and deep wrinkles around eyes. All cosmetic clinics say I need a lower facelift
but would putting on weight help?
Thank you for your question!
You're 54 years old and you stated in your question that you've gone through some recent
illness, you have lost a lot of weight and you had lots of consultation where it was
advised to you that you need a facelift and your question is should you gain weight in
order to add volume in your face.
Well this is certainly that I discussed many years ago in my book "The Fine Art of Looking
Younger" and the essence of facial aging if you will is basically combination of volume
loss and sagging. And as a specialist having offices in Manhattan and Long Island, this
type of question comes up a lot. And a lot of people regarding the history of the illness
exercise very much and lose a lot of weight and unfortunately, after your mid to late
30s, the first place to lose weight is actually your face and it just seems proportionally
you lose a lot more fat in your face than other part in your body. That's why a lot
of our patients are very fit people who have liposculpture and will do the liposculpture
to help them get rid if problem areas in their bodies.
Now something to understand about your question is that you gone through significant physical
and I'm sure emotional stress and unfortunately this are the this that tend to accelerate
a lot of the aging changes now I would advise against gaining weight to fill your face.
In a country where there is a high rate of obesity it is certainly in medical consequence
is that being overweight is never to someone's advantage and unfortunately the reverse is
true for the patient to exercise if you try to add weight to your face then you will be
unfortunately sacrificing the appearance of your body if you where to do that.
So I think that before you pursue surgical procedures it is very important to try to
help with restore some of the foundation of your physical well being in terms of your
health you can do down the road of getting fillers and other things but before doing
that find the right group of professionals whether it's a trainer, whether it is a fitness
instructor whether its going to a gym, exercise or health diet and I also advocate supplements
such as omega 3, fatty acids, antioxidants this is something that outside of typical
medical discussion. But in terms of lifestyle it is my observation and personally believe
and also do in my own personal life the same things I tell my patients Is that if you live
a healthier lifestyle then the quality of your skin and facial appearance will improve.
In terms of addressing the areas the you feel will benefit by you gaining weight well there
is a constellation of fillers such as Radiesse, Sculptra, hyaluronic acid such as restylane,
the use of Botox to lax some of the muscles. So if you're not quite ready for facelift
and you want to basically fill out the areas then by all means consider the non-invasive
or should I say less invasive option any time you enter the skin with a needle it is evasive.
Consider doing that but in conjunction with that the adopting of a healthy lifestyle and
doing things that are good for your heart and your lungs check with your doctors, check
your vitamin D levels. All of these things become much more important as we all get older.
To summarize, foundational improvement through lifestyle combined with volumetric filling
with injectable and then the context to all that, re-evaluate. In addition, a lot of times,
our patients feel real wonderful from just straightforward skin care. In our practice,
we have a medical spa and we'll do something called Hydrafacial. Hydrafacial is this wonderful
technology using this water technology to work like the crystals do in microdermabrasion.
Getting glow to your skin will help people feel wonderful about their appearance. So
it's a combination of things that are usually that can make a difference in addition to
any type of lifting. I'm not negating any benefit of a lifting procedure but if you
want to push off that lifting procedure for a while you can try all these things. If ultimately
you feel that you want to improve your jawline and improve the neck skin, then a lift will
be appropriate. So I'm happy to hear that you've gotten over your illness and this is
the time to hopefully make some changes that will help keep you healthy and then move forward
with these modalities. I hope that was helpful and thank you for your question!