Non-Surgical Facial Procedures

I often have people ask me about non-surgical ways to stay looking youthful, because a lot of people think, "Oh, if I want to stay youthful, I have to run out and get a facelift or a neck lift." That's not really true. As we age, there are a lot of things that you can do to remain looking young, and some of these things you want to start at a younger age, and some you want to do as a little bit older age. Some of the first things you want to do is, one, I think it's great to have good skin care. Most importantly, that means avoiding intense sun exposure as much as possible. If you want to go the extra step and have a good cleansing and moisturizing protocol, I think that's fantastic. We have people starting these things even in our teens. As you get a little bit older, the next thing to consider would be Botox. Believe it or not, we have a lot of people in their 20s starting to use Botox. Why? Because in your 20s, the repetitive facial motions of your glabella area, forehead, and lateral eyes will start to make wrinkles that become more and more visible. If you start using Botox at a younger age, you can completely prevent those lines from ever forming and have a face that looks very young, into your 30s, 40s and even 50s. As you get a little bit older, then you start to think about other non-surgical treatments that really give you a lot of youthful appearance to your face and neck. I like things like the HALO laser system, which really does good in tightening the skin and resurfacing. Also, we do a lot of Morpheus8, which is a microneedling and radio frequency energy treatment, to also tighten the face and resurface it. Then you can move on to things like fillers. Fillers are great to restore volume in the upper mid-face, which is something that we very commonly lose as we age. It can also soften the lines of the nasolabial folds and the Marionette lines. There's a lot of things out there that don't involve surgery, which have years and years of good research to show that they give good results. Of course, like everything, it's a rabbit hole. You can end up spending a lot of money chasing that youthful look, but for some people, that's important to them. For some people, that's what they want to spend their money on. It doesn't mean that you have to go out and have surgery necessarily. I think it's important to find a plastic surgeon that can talk to you about non-surgical options as well, to stay youthful, because there are a lot of them out there. The best one for you depends on your age, but just know that staying youthful doesn't always mean going under the knife.