Category Archives: The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
TLC for Skin Below the Chin
Article from The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
If you’re a woman of a certain age, a glance at your exposed chest may show that you need more than a pushup bra. Women in their fifties begin to show wear in exposed areas. According to the June 2011 issue of More magazine, “Your skin below the chin needs TLC.”
Nora Ephron, author of “I Feel Bad About My Neck” is not alone. Necks are frequently left unprotected with moisturizer and sunscreen. But, if you’re starting to look jowly, there’s a surprising and effective treatment for loose skin under the jawline. A plastic surgeon or dermatologist can skillfully inject Botox into the vertical muscles under your jaw, relaxing them so that they loosen their downward pull on the skin. Cost is $250 and up.
You may also have loose neck skin, sadly but aptly referred to as “turkey neck.” Tighten up before Thanksgiving with Thermage, a skin tightening treatment that uses radio-frequency energy to heat the skin’s deepest layers and stimulate collagenproduction. Cost is about $1,200. You can also boost Thermage effects with Fraxel, a resurfacing laser. If your knees are also sagging, the same skin tighteners used on the neck are also used to lift and tighten this hard-to-fix area.
Your chest, which is so evident in today’s scooped out styles, may be striated with lines and discolored with mottling. Mottling can be treated with glycolic peel laced with retinoic acid for about $100 to $200 a session. Pigment-targeting lasers will take care of your brown spots in about 3 sessions at $350 each. A hyaluronic acidfiller, such as Restylane, could even be used to plump up the lines in your chest for about $500 a treatment.
To prevent further damage, slather your chest with sunscreen, especially in the frequently-exposed clavicle area.
Celebrity Plastic Surgery: Lynne Curtin from the Real Housewives
Lynne Curtin from The Real Housewives
Is the Improving Economy Causing a Rise in Cosmetic Surgery?
Article from The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery
While many U.S. citizens are putting off visits to the doctor’s office, there is one sector of medicine that is seeing a surge – plastic surgery. According to medical experts who spoke at the Reuters Health Summit earlier this week, facial aesthetic procedures such as Botox injections are “beyond the peak pre-recession.”
David Pyott, chief executive of Allergan Inc., which makes Botox, remarked that sales of dermal fillers from his company are 20 percent higher than they were before the recession. Cosmetic surgeries hit bottom in 2009, immediately after the housing collapse that caused the large recession.
He added that the increase in demand for Botox could be seen in several different economic brackets, a trend which he believes “correlates with people’s confidence about the future, maybe how much money they have got on their credit card at the time.” Nowadays, visiting a board-certified plastic surgeon for a Botox treatment was similar to spending money on taking the family to a baseball game or small vacation, something that is also indicative of a rebounding economy.
Elective surgeries, such as gastric bypass, are also increasing in number. Weight loss surgery is not something typically prescribed by doctors, so individuals who choose to undergo these procedures likely feel that they have the financial security to do so.
“The bariatrics area is a good one because it shows there are people going back to work full-time, getting insurance, and having the ability to… pay the co-pays that a procedure like that would require,” said Jose Almeida, another representative at the summit. “So that makes us cautiously optimistic about the future.”
The bariatrics trend may in turn lead to more body contouring procedures such as body lifts which aim to reduce the amount of sagging skin that results from a weight loss procedure.
Lower body lifts can help eliminate skin hanging from the stomach and also flatten one’s belly. This will also help lift the thighs and define the buttocks. Typically, this procedure carries a three to four week recovery time, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.
Arm lifts, neck lifts and buttocks lifts are all popular forms of surgery that can help with loose skin after weight loss. According to the article, elective procedures are most popular with the middle class and gaining in popularity with the economic rebound.
