By Sandra Tyler
11 Nov, 2015
Face Lift, facial rejuvenation, Laser, skin care
Chemical Peel, Erbium Laser, face lift recovery, facelift, Facial Rejuvination, IPL Laser, Laser, laser treatment, Recovery
Looking Your Best Afterwards; Post-Surgical Makeup Techniques
You may be a little concerned about what you’ll look like while you’re still healing. Bruising, swelling, pigment abnormalities and visible incisions are common after many plastic surgery procedures. The following steps can help camouflage many of these telltale signs of surgical recovery.
- You should wait a few days, or possibly, as in the case laser resurfacing, two weeks or more. Of course, applying make-up to actual incision lines is always prohibited until stitches are removed and the wound has entirely closed.
- After you have your doctor’s permission, you’ll need to learn what type of make-up and application technique is best for you. The two basic cosmetic camouflage techniques are concealing, which hides bruises or scars and neutralizes red or yellow tinted skin, and contouring, which helps hide swelling while enhancing your best features.
- Concealing those marks and color inconsistencies can be done with two products: foundation and concealer. For your foundation, choose a thicker, heavier product for those areas that are discolored, and perhaps another, lighter foundation for other areas of the face. (It’s often difficult to find a color that looks good on the entire face anyway.)
- The best concealers are pigment-rich products that are thick and dry to the touch. (Good choices are MAC Studio Conceal and Correct Concealer Duo and Laura Mercier Secret Camouflage both available at Macy’s they are terrific too!) These are a little more difficult to apply than concealers that are waxy or creamy, but they have the advantage of staying put – and that’s what you need most from a concealer.
- To get the best color match, the two-toned concealer set is best, one concealer that closely matches your skin tone and a second concealer that has a slightly more yellow tone. The yellow tint will help to cancel out any red or blue tones you want to minimize. But don’t go overboard! Really yellow or green shades will just look like yellow or green marks on your skin!
- Under all makeup, use a light moisturizer that contains an appropriate level sunscreen. Sunscreen is essential, especially, after procedures like a chemical peel or laser resurfacing, which uncover new layers of skin. Apply the screen first, foundation second, and concealer third.
- Apply small amounts of make-up at a time, you can always add more. Adding more make-up is much easier than rubbing off excess, especially if the area is still sensitive to touch.
- Contouring, the second camouflage technique uses different shades of make-up to create illusions of highlights and shadows. Manipulating these illusions can enhance certain features while disguising swelling. You’ll need three or four different shades of foundation. Stick, powder or cream foundations work best. Simply apply lighter colors wherever you want an area to stand out, and darker shades where you want the area to seem to recede. If your shades are too light or too dark, blend one or more colors with your fingers before applying.
- The key to successful contouring is blending. If you apply too much dark make-up, it is very difficult to blend it fully so that it looks like a natural shadow instead of a smudge of make-up.
- To enhance your cheekbones you want to put the darker make-up in the hollow of the cheek (Suck in your lips, making a “fish face” to see where the hollow is compared to the cheekbone). Then add a lighter color the actual cheekbone.
- To make a swollen nose appear narrower use a small brush to draw a thin line of the dark make-up down both sides of the nose, starting at the eye socket. Then, using make-up sponge, blend the color down the sides of your nose. Be sure to fully blend, there should be no lines of make-up showing. You may add a narrow, lighter shade down the center if you want.
- For swollen eyes, use contouring make-up to give them the appearance of greater depth. Apply shadow on your eyelid from just above the iris straight out; do not follow the downward curve of the eyebrow bone. Just underneath the arch of the eyebrow apply a lighter shade of make-up. And don’t forget to blend.
If you’re still anxious about how you look after surgery, practice your concealing and camouflage techniques.
More
By Sandra Tyler
19 Apr, 2015
Botox, Breast Augmentation, Butt Augmentation, Comfort Anesthesia, Cosmetic Getaways, Ear Surgery, Esthetician, extractions, Face Lift, facial, facial rejuvenation, facials, Featured Procedures, Fillers, hair removal, Juevederm, Labiaplasty, Laser, liposuction, Male Surgery, Misc, News & Blogs, Rhinoplasty, skin care, spa, Special Offers, Tummy Tuck
breast augmentation, facelift, lifestyle lift, lifstyle, liposuction, mommy makeover, tummy tuck
The 2014 plastic-surgery statistics will be released later today by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS). Thanks to an advance peek, I can report that butts are getting bigger, while breasts are getting smaller.
Buttock augmentations are up 86 percent over 2013. Michael C. Edwards, a plastic surgeon and the president of the ASAPS notes that most women don’t want giant backsides, they just want more shapely ones. The other big news is breast revisions, which are up 30.4 percent. Many attribute that rise to aging implants in need of replacement, along with many women’s desire to switch from saline to silicone-gel-filled implants, which may not have been available when they originally had surgery. What’s more, insiders say most of these women are exchanging their old implants for smaller replacements.
The other news in the numbers is a five percent drop in overall procedures: 10,663,607 in 2014, down from 11,419,610 in 2013. The decrease was mostly in minimally-invasive procedures like Botox and fillers. No explanation for this was offered by the ASAPS, but could it be what I call injection fatigue? Many women I’ve spoken to don’t want to return again and again for refills. Surgical procedures fell only 1.5 percent from 1,883,048 to 1,764,956, a drop that the number crunchers say is not statistically significant.
Fat—and getting rid of it—is still a high priority. In recent years the top surgical procedures for women have flipped back and forth between breast implants and liposuction. In 2014, liposuction held the number one spot, followed by breast augmentation (down 8.5 percent), tummy tuck, blepharoplasty (or eye lift), and in fifth place, the breast lift. Facelifts are in eighth place.
Liposuction may still be king (or is it queen?) in the surgical department, but non-surgical fat reduction with devices such as CoolSculpting and VASERshape rose a whopping 42.7 percent, from 94,922 in 2013 to 135,448 in 2014. That number could rise even more this year if ATX-101, an injection for fat reduction under the chin, gets FDA clearance, which it’s expected to receive.
More
By Sandra Tyler
27 Mar, 2015
Botox, Breast Augmentation, Butt Augmentation, Comfort Anesthesia, Face Lift, facial rejuvenation, Male Surgery, Rhinoplasty, Tummy Tuck
breast augmentation, face lift affordable surgery, liposuction, melbourne plastic surgery self-esteem
There are a lot of myths surrounding plastic surgery and various procedures. As myths tend to be, none of them are true. If you’re considering plastic surgery but you are holding back due to something that you’ve heard, take a look at this list of popular plastic surgery myths.
Plastic surgery doesn’t help with self-esteem: While changing the way that you look can’t change who you are on the inside, nearly 88% of plastic surgery patients felt better about themselves post-surgery — that’s a pretty decent amount!
Most procedures are not affordable, and only celebrities can afford plastic surgery. While this might have been true many years ago, it is no longer the case. Thanks to new technology and practices, plastic surgery procedures are far more affordable than they were before. Some doctors will also work with patients when it comes to things like payment plans, so that’s worth looking into as well. You’ll never know how much the procedure you want will cost until you book a consultation!
Breast implants are dangerous: For some reason, this rumor still flies, though it’s not the case at all. Breast implants are not linked to cancer in any way, and the materials used for implants are constantly monitored for possible problems. The FDA has signed off on breast implants because they are, in fact, safe.
It’s too much of a risk: Any kind of surgery comes with risks, but plastic surgery risks can be minimized if you find the right surgeon. Surgeons that have experience performing the procedure that you have in mind perform the same surgery every day, and that means that these surgeons are far less likely to make mistakes. Risks that come with surgery often have very little to do with the actual procedure, and any risks associated with the procedure will be clearly outline prior to the day of surgery.
Only women have plastic surgery. This can seem true, since most of the time we read about female celebrities getting plastic surgery. The truth is that men have many different procedures during regularly as well. Maybe men just don’t talk about it as much?
You can’t breastfeed if you have implants. Many women have no problem breastfeeding after breast augmentation. Once again, this is very much a myth, and if there are any issues that could arise, your doctor will discuss these with you before surgery.
Really Putting Rumors to Rest
It can be easy to believe rumors that are spread all too frequently, but rumors also tend to breed fear. Often, people that want to explore plastic surgery options will not book a consultation appointment for fear that some of the rumors heard are true. However, the best way to find out if there’s any truth to your fears is to visit with a surgeon, ask questions, get answers, and really find out the truth behind those concerns. You can also take a look around our blog for additional information about various plastic surgery procedures.
More
In early March, Dr. David Santos faced an unwelcome setback at the Seattle office of plastic-surgery chain Lifestyle Lift: an eviction notice.
The letter meant his office, where he worked full time and which was paid for by Lifestyle Lift, had to quickly shut its doors. Days earlier, Lifestyle Lift’s founder, Dr. David Kent, had notified the company’s nearly 400 employees that they were out of a job and that the company would cease operations. Lifestyle Lift pioneered the mass marketing of face-lifts through its nationwide chain of around 50 surgery centers. But as The Wall Street Journal examined this week, the 14-year-old company faltered under the weight of rapid growth and an expensive advertising campaign.
To ensure the ongoing care of his patients, Dr. Santos is now working out of the office of a local surgeon, where he can follow through on already-scheduled Lifestyle Lift surgeries. “They’ll be out in the cold if I don’t,” Dr. Santos, a former medical director at the chain, said recently. “I’m trying to take care of them. I’m trying to get back on my feet.”
Dr. Santos and dozens of Lifestyle Lift’s former doctors are banding together to help make sure patients know where to go for follow-up care or with questions about planned operations. Lifestyle Lift’s signature face-lift typically cost between $6,500 and $9,000, payable upfront or through zero-interest, 18-month payment plans. Unlike most face-lifts, its procedures were done using only local anesthesia.
An attorney for Dr. Kent said Thursday that “we are working on plans at the local as well as national level” to accommodate patients, including those in line for refunds.
Separately, “the doctors have gone to great lengths to protect their patients here, to make sure they can reach us, and to safeguard the charts,” Lifestyle Lift’s former chief medical officer, Dr. Jason Swerdloff of Tampa, Fla., said. (Patients can find doctors’ contact information at this website.)
Dr. Swerdloff, like Dr. Santos, said he plans to honor payments already made by patients, which were paid to the company and not to the individual doctors. A little more than half of Lifestyle Lift’s 77 doctors worked part time as independent contractors, with the rest working full-time at the chain.
Lifestyle Lift had grown to command a major share of the face-lift market. At its peak in 2013, it brought in $186 million in revenue and performed 18% of all face-lifts done by board-certified physicians in the U.S., according to data prepared last fall by a former outside financial adviser to the chain.
Lifestyle Lift’s TV ads, some featuring its onetime spokeswoman Debby Boone, managed “to engender interest in individuals, mostly women, who otherwise were not the typical candidates for a face-lift,” said Dr. Dennis Hurwitz, a plastic surgeon who co-branded his Pittsburgh private practice with the Lifestyle Lift name. “It was the egalitarian face-lift.”
More
Dr. Frank Filiberto is offering a revolutionary approach to facial rejuvenation. By eliminating the dangers of general anesthesia, substantially reducing the cost, and shortening long recovery times, Mini Lift is a better and safer alternative to traditional procedures. With nearly 3500 procedures to date, this extraordinary Head, Neck and Facial Plastic Surgeon has mastered this revolutionary procedure.
Our priority is our patients’ safety and happiness. We are proud of our no complication rate and our excellent customer care. But don’t take our word for it. Our patients are extremely satisfied with their Mini Lift experience and we know you will be, too!
More
By Sandra Tyler
16 Mar, 2015
Botox, Breast Augmentation, Butt Augmentation, Comfort Anesthesia, Ear Surgery, Face Lift, liposuction, Rhinoplasty
Cosmetic Surgery, liposuction, plastic surgery, rhinoplasy
When it comes to social media, we’re huge advocates of using it to the best of your abilities. It opens up communication, allows us to share photos and ideas with our friends, and in general, gives everyone a voice. Today, however, we found out social media is doing another influential thing: contributing to the plastic surgery craze (it’s okay if you need to re-read that last sentence, we get it).
According to the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, reports on their annual findings on surgery found that the world of social media is strongly linked to the increase in plastic surgery, mainly because Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like are making those who frequently use the sites more critical of themselves. Below are some of the statistics from the study that have us a little concerned:
- Because of social media photo sharing, 31% of surgeons have seen an increase in requests for plastic surgery because patients have a more critical eye on themselves.
- 73% of procedures (up from 62% the previous year) were cosmetic versus reconstructive in nature.
- Studies show that people are more drawn towards images in specific proportions, like facial features, making them more aesthetically pleasing.
So what does this all mean? When people look at pictures of themselves on social media, they’re looking at much more than just themselves. They’re also comparing themselves to the people that they follow, whether they be friends, models, celebrities, etc. and users are being much more critical of themselves because of the comparisons they’re making. This, in turn, is contributing to a rise in plastic surgery requests. Call us crazy, but we’re pretty sure that one or two bad Instagram photos aren’t worth thousands of dollars in surgery to look like someone else.
More
As we pointed out earlier today, South Korea has been pumping out the crazy (amazing) beauty trends lately—but this is one that may be just plain insane. A clinic there, AONE, is now offering a surgery called the “smile lipt,” which lifts the patient’s lips into a permanent smile. “Mouth corners lift up very naturally after surgery, and although mouth corners stay upturned on an impassive face, they lift up even more distinctively during a smile,” said Kwon Taek Keun, a surgeon and the clinic’s founder. The procedure “corrects” any sagging or asymmetric mouth corners. Basically, it’s a cure for “bitch face.”
Maybe this sounds great to some people (the Joker? Miss America contestants?) but to me, it’s straight out of a dark, dystopian future where everyone is relentlessly chipper. I apparently suffer from bitch face myself—I’m frequently asked if I’m angry or upset when I’m nothing of the kind. And as much as I hate people asking why I’m annoyed when I’m merely sleepy or concentrating on what I want to eat for dinner, I think it would be much worse to look perpetually happy thanks to a creepy permanent smile plastered on my face. Having the same expression whether I’m at Disney or a wake? I’ll pass, thank you.
More
Gravity won big at the Oscars, but the American public parted with more than $12 billion last year trying to defy it. According to figures to be released today by the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), spending on plastic surgery and other cosmetic procedures has increased by nearly $1.5 billion. Slightly less popular than the previous year—but still the number-one operation among women—was breast augmentation, with 313,000 surgeries. Liposuction came in second (312,000 procedures) among women, followed by tummy tucks (151,000), breast lifts (137,000), and eye lifts (133,000).
It was also a good year for face-lifts. Although that particular surgery has not been in the top five for years, in 2013 the number of procedures jumped from 107,000 to 117,000—the highest number ever recorded—and that in spite of the ready availability of filler injections that can refresh the face without incisions. As for women’s nonsurgical interventions, no surprises there: Botox and similar injections topped the list with a whopping 3.4 million procedures, up from 2.9 million in 2012. Hyaluronic acid fillers were number two, up 32 percent; and photo rejuvenation, also called intense pulsed light, was up 34 percent.
More
Have you had a consult with Lifestyle Lift recently?
After helping Lifestyle Lift open in Orlando Florida several years ago and training some of their doctors, I am regretful to say that they have had the unfortunate and unexpected closing of the company. If you are still considering reducing the signs of aging through a mini facelift, please give us a call here at Artful Awakenings Cosmetic Surgery Center in historic downtown Melbourne. We would be happy to match or even reduce the previous price you were given. Don’t wait to call and schedule your free consultation today! 321-676-3101
More
There is no one age that is considered ideal for a Facelift Surgery. Patients can be in their late 30s or upper 70s and still be a good candidate for surgery, as long as they are in good health. Overall, the results of a facelift or facial rejuvenation surgery done in your 40’s or 50s will be more natural than in your late 60s or 70s.
Facial aging changes start to become noticeable in the late 30’s for most people. As these changes progress through the 40’s and 50’s deep facial lines caused by skin folds and loss of facial volume from fat loss create permanent skin changes that are difficult to correct with a facelift alone. Taking action early, in your 40’s or 50’s by having a Facelift or Volume enhancement by Fillers or Fat will help prevent these permanent changes. The most important factor is not really your age but whether or not you have facial aging changes which can be corrected with a Facelift.
More