IPL is the first medical cosmetic treatment I ever had. It did wonders for my complexion, toning down my pink cheeks, shrinking my broken capillaries and erasing my sun damage.
I remember doing a clinic with dermatologist Dr. Rosenthal when I was an intern. He pointed out to the patient all of the telangiectasias (broken capillaries) that I had on my cheeks.
How glad I am that I don’t have those any more.
Before IPL treatment
BEFORE
This isn’t me but it gives you a good idea of the kind of results you can get with an IPL photofacial.
After IPL treatment
AFTER
See how much brighter her skin looks? The sun damage on her upper lip was creating such a shadow that it almost looked like a mustache. After the treatment, her skin looks clear and radiant.
This article is reprinted from Advanced Rejuvenation’s newsletter of January 21, 2009. If you would like to subscribe, click here.
It has immediate effects (within 5 minutes) of relaxing the small facial muscles that cause wrinkles and filling the wrinkles with hyaluronic acid filling spheres.
Hyaluronic acid is a sugar that we make in our bodies whose function is to hold moisture where we want it. It is the major component of a number of injectable dermal fillers like Restylane, Juvederm and Teosyal. In TNS Line Refine, it comes as lotion that you apply to your skin.
These photos show the before image and 5 minutes after the first application of TNS Line Refine to a 50 year old woman.
Before applying TNS Line Refine
5 minutes after applying TNS Line Refine
As you use this product every day over time, you get some very nice long-term effects. TNS Line Refine contains CoEnzyme Q10 which helps to prevent free radical damage. It also contains certain peptides that help to stimulate the body’s repair mechanisms at the cellular level and promote collagen, elastin and new skin cell formation.
We have been very impressed with the product ourselves. And we’ve had good feedback from everyone who bought it.
This is a set of Before and After photos for Sculptra from UK website.
I went to school with girls who look like this woman so I think that is why I find her photos so striking. I have seen many women age the same way as her: in some ways, her face still looked youthful but the way she was losing volume was sucking all of the life out of her face.
In her after photo, her face is so soft and gently rounded that, in one way, she has subtracted 20 years from her appearance, and yet she still has the confident look of a mature woman. She certainly doesn’t look “done”.
I found this article in the Coventry Telegraph online. It may or may not be the same person but her story and her experience with Sculptra are really illuminating.
“I’m really pleased with it. I makes me feel better about myself because I know I look better.
“I think it has affected other areas of my life too. I’ve got more confidence and probably wear more colourful, fashionable clothes now.”
And she understands it might be viewed as an expensive remedy.
“It is expensive, but it does last a long time. When you think about how much you might spend on these miracle anti-wrinkle creams which don’t work you may as well pay extra for something which actually makes a difference.
“Every time a new cream came out I’d buy it so I had a bathroom full of these potions which were useless, now I just use a basic moisturiser.
This woman had 3 sets of Sculptra injections in 2005 and a top-up in December 2007. This photo was taken in November 2008.
You can expect to do maintenance of one set of Sculptra injections (1 – 2 vials) approximately every year after the initial series.
This article is reprinted from our newsletter of January 2, 2009. To subscribe to our newsletter, please clickhere.
The last US presidential election focused a lot of attention on what the various political women had done to improve their appearance. I heard rumors that Hillary had had some work done but I hadn’t seen any images that were close enough that I could really see a difference.
(Source of Before Image here; After picture was taken at the Glamour Magazine Women of the Year 2008 event.)
I did some searching and came up with these images. The one on the left dates from December 2007. I was shocked at how crepey her skin was. And look at the loss of volume in her cheeks! Her forehead is furrowed and her eyelids are very crepey.
The photo on the right was taken in November 2008. The volume is miraculously restored to her face. This can be achieved with Sculptra or fat grafting. It would depend on how much downtime Hillary could afford — Sculptra would be more gradual but has minimal downtime.
This effect could also be achieved with dermal fillers but it would take a lot of syringes to get these results. However, the results are instantaneous so Hillary might have gone for it.
The texture of her skin is much improved but still lined. This suggests to me that she has undergone fractional laser resurfacing, which would be a Pixel treatment here.
I also suspect she has had her upper lids lifted (blepharoplasty).
I can’t tell whether or not she had some filler in her lips, given the difference in facial expression. If she did, it was done with a very light and subtle hand.
To me, this is the epitome of looking great without looking “done.” Hillary Clinton is such a vibrant woman. Her “after” appearance reflects the inner woman.
Ask anyone what a facelift is and they can probably tell you.
But what about a nonsurgical or volumizing facelifts, a Liquid Facelift, a FavorLift, a Voluma Facelift or a Facelift in a Bottle?
What exactly are those? Are they all the same?
In the past, plastic surgeons treated the effects of aging with a facelift. But by removing so called “excess skin”, they left many with the telltale swept back or stretched face. Your face looked tighter but not necessarily younger.
These days doctors look at the effects of aging as made up of three parts:
Surface weathering and mottling due to environment and lifestyle
Sagging and bagging of aging skin
Loss of volume caused by loss of fat padding and decreased collagen production
All of the nonsurgical facelift treatments focus on restoring volume. They use various compounds like Sculptra, Juvederm, Restylane and Artecoll. The trouble is many people don’t understand the difference between the different products and use the terms interchangeably.
Sculptra or poly-L-lactic acid. It stimulates the body to produce collagen, giving you, in time, a fuller and more youthful appearance. Sculptra takes 2 to 6 treatments over a period of months for best effect. It lasts 2 to 3 years. It is excellent for restoring volume all over the face including the temples. This restoration puts the eyes and nose back into proportion with the rest of the face. This is often known as a Liquid Facelift or Facelift in a Bottle.
Teosyal, Juvederm and Restylane are hyaluronic acid gels. These are fillers often used to fill in deep wrinkles, which does improve appearance. In volumizing facelifts, the product is placed under the skin close to the bone where fat loss has occurred. This lifts the skins, smoothing it out and restores a more youthful appearance. The effects are immediate and recovery time minimal.
While hyaluronic acid occurs naturally in the body, Juvederm is a more purified form of hyaluronic acid than Restylane and consequently less likely to cause a reaction upon injection. These deep injection treatments go by such names as Voluma Facelift, Tri Site Bolus or as we call it, Instant Cheek Restoration. The effects last much longer than when used to fill expression lines or wrinkles up to several years.
Key issues to consider are the doctor’s technique and artistic eye. The practitioner must understand the 3d modelling of the face in general AND how to correct what ails YOU. Too much revolumizing in the wrong place can make you look “done”, if not downright strange. Improper placement can give the appearance of beads under the surface or make you look a bit cat-like.
Another issue that is rarely talked about is the gauge of the needle used for injections. Restylane SubQ (used in the Voluma facelift) is injected with a 16 gauge needle. Juvederm and Sculptra are injected with a much finer needle, a 26 or 27 gauge. A 16 gauge needle is big enough to leave a little scar. Using a finer needle also allows product to be placed in smaller doses in spots.
Here is the only video I could find on YouTube that shows Restylane SubQ being injected in the cheeks. It’s from South America and the quality is not great but it gives you an idea of what I am talking about.
This video shows a cheek augmentation procedure with Juvederm. Note the fine 27 gauge needle.
Many of the names you read about are used by doctors to personalize the treatment they offer their patients and train other doctors to practise. Don’t worry too much about a specific name. Do your homework and find out exactly what product the doctor is using and how they are injecting it.
Even up here in Canada, we are feeling the excitement in the days leading up to the inauguration of President-Elect Barack Obama.
I know several people, Canadians, who are in Washington for the inauguration.
This is such a historical event, such a beacon of hope for Americans and for the rest of the world, that I have only ever thought about it in social and political terms, never thinking that it related to my medical cosmetic practice.
Washington, D.C.-area cosmetic dermatologists, and skin experts in other major cities, say despite the sagging economy, requests for quickie cosmetic fixes, such as Botox and microdermabrasion, have picked up during the last few weeks as people pretty-up for inaugural fetes.
What is so interesting about this article is that the effects are being seen in so many different states and that both men and women are having treatments.
Leslie Baumann, director of the Cosmetic Medicine and Research Institute at the University of Miami, in Miami, Fla., says, “We were swamped this week. Some were going to the inauguration in D.C. But I saw many going to inauguration parties in Miami.” Many are men in their 50s and 60s, Baumann says.
I can’t say that the inauguration has brought more clients in the door here in Burlington but I have noticed that many people seem more happy and optimistic as the big day approaches.
Best Wishes to the United States of America! Best Wishes to President Barack Obama!
This blogpost is reprinted from our newsletter of November 5, 2008. If you would like to subscribe to our newsletter, please contact us at info@RestoringNaturalBeauty.com.
This is really cutting edge: Plastic surgeon Vincent Giampapa, MD, FACS has developed a new treatment to make your face look youthful called The Stem Cell Facelift.
It’s still in the experimental stages but looks really promising.
Stem cells are immature cells that can be directed to mature into a desired type of cell by giving the patient the right sort of growth factors.
We use stem cells in medicine after aggressive cancer treatments. The cancer treatment destroys the bone marrow so the patient may not be able to produce blood cells. Without white blood cells, the patient can’t fight off even the mildest infection. A stem cell transplant restores the patient’s ability to make blood cells in the bone marrow.
Imagine getting new fat and skin cells growing in your face. You could potentially erase years from your appearance.
We can expect to hear more about this treatment in the future.
This reporter went to a clinic in England that didn’t have a doctor or nurse. She had an IPL treatment to get rid of brown sun damage. The red marks are burns.
What happened to her is this: her treatment was done at too high a setting for her skin tone. She mentions that she was tanned when she went for the treatment. The tan means she has more melanin in her skin, which means that her skin will absorb more energy from the pulses of light — that’s why it hurt so much and why she got burned.
She would also have been at increased risk of burns if the spa she went to had older equipment — places like this sometimes buy used medical spa equipment that is several years old. Newer IPL technology controls the pulse of energy delivered in each shot of light so that even darker skin tones are very unlikely to be burned.
Lesson #1: Make sure your treatments are done by properly trained people.
The reporter (as the patient) was reporting severe enough pain that she was asking the operator to pause frequently. The operator should have recognized that the treatment was much more painful than normal and turned down the energy level. The operator also should have recognized that the patient was tanned and so would need lower energy levels.
Lesson #2: Don’t persist with a treatment that is much more painful than you expected it to be.
The treatment was very painful. The reporter knew to expect the sensation of an elastic band snapping, which is how we all describe it, but this was much worse. She thought she would “tough it out” to get the results she wanted. Severe pain with a pulsed light treatment is a warning sign that the skin is absorbing a lot of energy. And that means burns could occur.
The good news for this woman was that she saw a dermatologist the next day and got treatment that healed her burns without scarring.
She went on to have IPL treatments in the dermatologist’s clinic that didn’t hurt and achieved a beautiful complexion.
Please make sure you are dealing with experienced, well-trained people when you seek out medical cosmetic treatments. If things don’t feel right, go somewhere else.
(This blogpost is reprinted from our newsletter of December 5, 2008. To subscribe to the newsletter, contact us at info@RestoringNaturalBeauty.com.)
In my first post about my thin hair, I discussed the simple styling changes that Amy suggested and the difference they made to the appearance of my hair.
Since then I have made the plunge and had the Great Lengths 100% natural human hair extensions put in my hair.
Here are the pics:
Thin hair before
Thin hair after extensions
I had one bundle of hair put in, mostly across the top and sides of my head. The color was a perfect match to mine.
Here’s what I really like about the hair of the extensions: it’s naturally wavy. My own hair has a little bit of a wave to it but doesn’t cooperate with styling very well. If I want to style my own hair to have volume, I have to put a ton of products in it and it feels stiff.
With the hair extensions, I blow-dry my hair with a round brush, the way I always have done, and I get amazing shape and volume. I have never had this much hair in my life!
The new hair looks entirely natural. Amy did tiny little bonds — I think 1/4 of normal size? — so they don’t show at all.
I saw Amy do extensions on a man who came in with a brush cut and walked out with a full head of hair, maybe 10 – 15 cm in length. It was a very challenging job and took all day. When it was done, he looked absolutely great and very natural.
Amy is certainly very talented with the Great Lengths extensions. I wouldn’t trust my hair to anyone else.
The old understanding of facial aging was that the skin and muscles of face become stretched and lax so the treatment of choice was to tighten them up. The ideal way to tighten the skin and muscles was to cut out the excess and pull the remainder tighter, in other words, to do a facelift.
We have a much better understanding of facial aging now. We know that the support structures of the face, the bone, muscle and deep fat layers, are shrinking as we age. If you pull the skin tighter over a shrinking framework, you get a smaller and more gaunt-looking face. I always get a picture in my mind of Helen Gurley Brown, the iconic editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, whose face got smaller as she aged.
This article from the Style blog of The Plain Dealer does a really good job of explaining how restoring volume to face does a much better job of making look younger but still look like yourself.
“You don’t want to change your looks,” says Dr. Anthony Griffin, director of the Beverly Hills Cosmetic Surgery Institute. “And actresses and celebrities really don’t want to do that, though some inadvertently have.
“Face-lifts make the face tighter, and when you pull on the skin, it gets flatter. You don’t look like yourself anymore. Some actresses we’ve seen pictures of have had disastrous results.” …
“Face-lifts change the whole ratio and proportions of the facial features, which is why some actresses are hardly recognizable,” Griffin says, who predicts that in 10 or 15 years, face-lifts will be passe and rarely done.
Using dermal fillers, like Teosyal and Juvederm, and volumizers, like Sculptra, creates a very natural look. My clients tell me they look in the mirror and remember when they used to look like this.
Here is an example of how Sculptra builds up volume around the mouth:
These photos show how restoring volume in the midface (the cheeks below the eyes and above the base of the nose) really restores a younger appearance to the face:
You can look like a more youthful version of yourself without resorting to the knife. Each treatment has advantages and disadvantages but they are both a lot less risky than having surgery.
Neither Teosyal nor Sculptra is permanent but a facelift isn’t permanent either. You generally need to have another facelift about every 10 years.
I’m really excited about the natural results I can achieve with Teosyal and Sculptra, and the longevity of these products. The injection techniques that I use can last for several years.
Please go to 10yyb.com for the 2009 10 Years Younger in Burlington program.
The final results
You can see the full-length before and after pictures of Catherine by clicking here.
10 Years Younger in Burlington
2008: One applicant will be chosen to receive services over the course of a 1-month period from the folks listed in the left hand column.
The 1-month program is designed to transform the lucky recipient in appearance, attitude and fitness so she will truly feel 10 Years Younger.
This is a set of Before and After photos for Sculptra from 
I found this article in the 
I heard rumors that Hillary had had some work done but I hadn’t seen any images that were close enough that I could really see a difference. 
