Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[music] Hello, I’m Dr. Neal Schultz
[pause]
and welcome to DermTV.
We’ve all heard the saying choose your body or choose your face, but is it
true? Well, certainly in the first half of your life up to your mid or late
forties it’s probably not true and as this related to weight loss up until
that age the collagen and the elastic tissue in your facial skin are
sufficiently intact to create and lend a firmness to your skin. So if you
are losing weight and making your body look better the firmness in your
skin from the collagen and elastic tissue probably resists sagging and
wrinkling from the weight loss but by the time you get into your fifties
it’s a different story because different things are happening. First of
all, at that point in your life there’s a normal loss of fat from the skin
in your face just as part of the normal aging process. Second, you’ve been
around long enough and had enough sun exposure so that some of your
collagen and some of your elastic tissue just isn’t there or it’s not
working as well. If you compound into that, purposeful weight loss you just
don’t have enough firmness in your facial skin from the degraded collagen
and elastic tissue and you don’t have enough volume in your facial skin
from the concomitant loss of fat just from the aging process to really
resist sagging and wrinkling. So at that point in your life, in fact, you
may have to make a choice and choose between your body and your face.
However, with a little help from a plastic surgeon or a cosmetic
dermatologist you may be able to choose both. It’s sort of a little bit
like having your cake and eating it. Oh, I guess that wasn’t a good
metaphor when we’re talking about weight loss, sorry!