| Contemplating Facial Cosmetic Surgery
You among the thousands of Americans who are thinking about facial cosmetic surgery? Have you ndered how you might look after a facelift.
a nose job. an eyelid surgery ? Are you brimming with rgy on the inside but showing your age on the outside? If so, facial cosmetic surgery may be for you. Each year, more and more Americans are choosing to turn back the clock with cosmetic surgery.
Before we discuss the most common procedures, let's take a look at why our facial skin and tissues age. Not only will this help you understand how facial structure changes with age, but also it will give you insights about lifestyle habits that can help you maintain the results of cosmetic surgery procedures.
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It's important that patients realize that plastic surgery is about "improvement" and not "perfection." The benefits should be increased self-esteem and confidence that allows each patient to have more meaningful relationships at home, work, and with themselves.
- Dr. Jon Mendelsohn |
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How Facial Structure Changes
Why does facial skin eventually start to droop? Consider this analogy: If you've ever had a lined coat or jacket cleaned, you may have found that the lining shrank during dry cleaning or laundering, making the outer fabric sag.Think of your facial skin as the outer fabric and your bones and supporting tissues as the lining. As those bones and tissues shrink and your muscles lose volume and tone, the skin slips downward, some-times drooping much as your jacket's outer fabric drapes over the hemline.
Beneath your skin, the SMAS - short for superficial musculoaponeurotic system - also begins to sag and droop. Here come jowls, low brows, and other unwanted folds. The SMAS is the curtain of muscles of facial expression and the surrounding connective tissue. As the SMAS descends, the skin becomes less taut.
Layers of fat, called fat pads, under the eyes and under the skin on our cheeks also keep us looking younger.When gravity pulls at the cheek pads, it can create sagging
skin and hollows under the eyes; it also deepens the nasolabial folds, the g ro oves that run f ro m both sides of the nose to the corners of the mouth.As the cheek pads get longer, they become less rounded, the face appears flatter, and their weight pulls down the corners of the mouth. As muscles sur ro unding the eyes shrink and weaken, they sometimes develop small gaps through which fat protrudes, creating li tt le bumps under the eyes.
In addition to changes in the underlying structures of the face, the skin itself changes. We start seeing broken capillaries, rough patches, discolorations, fine lines, and enlarged pores.
Why Skin Ages
Slowing Metabolism
Over the years your metabolic rate - the pace at which your body absorbs and processes nutrients - gets slower. As a result your system p ro duces less of just about everything, including blood, bone, the skin proteins collagen and elastin, and natural skin oils. Skin-cell growth and replacement also slow down.
As the connective tissues in your body weaken, your skin's support structure is undermined. With less collagen, which acts as a glue to hold tissues together, and elastin, the fibrous protein in elastic tissues, your skin starts to lose its snap, kind of like an elastic waistband after years of wear. When you were younger, your skin bounced back from all types of stresses, but as the calendar pages flew by, so did your skin's resilience.
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