Cosmetic Plastic Surgery Articles

What we nailed down in the previous post: Fine lines, wrinkles, and sagging skin—they’re coming for all of us, sooner or later. It’s just nature’s way. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be held off a while longer, or even reversed. There are lots of ways, both minimally-invasive and surgical, to go about that. These are a few of the most popular.

You’re just beginning to notice your laxity

Thermage and Ultherapy are considered the go-to treatments for mild skin laxity—you’re starting to notice the appearance of fine lines and your skin doesn’t quite bounce back the way it did in your twenties. Thermage employs radiofrequency energy to tighten the skin, while Ultherapy does it using ultrasound to create heat under the surface of the skin.

The downtime for both is relatively minimal, but it’s still more than it is for another, newer method called threading. Here, specially-designed, resorbable sutures are strategically inserted into the skin, lifting the tissue and tightening the skin in the process. The results are immediate. And while they’re temporary (six months to a year, depending on the sutures), the process has been shown to help boost collagen production, which bodes well for the long term.

You’re done blowing your budget on anti-aging creams

If your skin laxity is a little more advanced—your fine lines have evolved to wrinkles and you’re beginning to develop jowls—a facelift will deliver the most dramatic and longest-lasting results. Keep in mind, this is not your mother’s facelift. Today’s version is highly customizable.

But if you’d prefer to avoid surgery, a minimally-invasive, heat-based treatment called FaceTite is your next-best option. A probe administers electrical energy that heats the skin internally, tightening it in the process. ThermiRF and Renuvion act in similar ways, though through slightly different technologies. In each case, the downtime is minimal, and the results will last between two to three years.

Your sagging skin is weighing you down

In the most significant instances of skin laxity—you’ve had a baby recently or lost a lot of weight—surgery is your best course of action. There are minimally-invasive treatments available, but they’ll have a fraction of the effect that a tummy tuck would or a lift (be if of the arms, breasts, or thighs). The same goes for the face. A facelift will lift and tighten sagging skin, get rid of jowls and wrinkles, and restore the youthful face that feels more like you.

In my last post, I explored some different methods for improving a drooping brow. Neuromodulators, like Botox and Jeuveau, are generally quite effective on that front (among lots of others), especially in younger patients. But, as we lose some of the fatty tissue and muscle in our faces to aging, neuromodulators will lose some of their potency. At which point, it may be time to consider a brow lift.

A brow lift can serve other functions, too, including minimizing that furrow between your brows, known as the “elevens,” and shortening the forehead, which creates a subtly rounder, more youthful-looking face.

So, what is a brow lift, exactly? Let’s get into it.

A minimally-invasive technique

First things first: A brow lift is a cosmetic surgical procedure where the skin of the forehead is raised—it’s also referred to as a forehead lift—lifting a drooping brow, smoothing forehead creases and wrinkles, and giving the upper part of the face a younger, fresher look.

It’s sometimes combined with a facelift or upper eyelid surgery, but, depending on your desired results and the severity of your sagging, a brow lift can be plenty effective on its own.

There are several variations of the procedure. Some of are less invasive than others. Most of the brow lifts performed today are endoscopic, which is a minimally-invasive technique where the surgeon makes four to five incisions, each about three-quarters of an inch long, just behind your hairline. Then, they’ll insert a long, thin tube with a tiny camera and a powerful light on the end through one of the incisions. That will guide the surgical instrument that’s inserted through the other incisions to pull and lift the forehead tissue and anchor it in place.

The technique, which has a shorter recovery period than the more invasive methods, is ideal for those with minimal forehead wrinkles and mild to moderate skin laxity.

Long-lasting results

The first thing virtually everyone wants to know about an injectable or a surgical procedure is: Does it work? A brow lift does work, and you’ll be able to see a significant change right after the procedure. And that change will improve even more after a few weeks, when most of the swelling will have subsided.

As for how long those results will last, they vary, because a brow lift does not halt sagging skin. Alas, nothing does. But most can expect their new, smoother foreheads to last for about a decade. And that’s a significant upgrade over neuromodulators, which need to be replenished every several months.

The adage should really go, “There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and skin laxity.”

It’s true; all of us will eventually develop some degree of skin laxity. For some, thanks to a combination of factors, that day may arrive sooner than it will for most. But that shouldn’t imply that there’s nothing you can do about.

Over the next two blog posts, we’ll unpack skin laxity, beginning here with what it is, exactly, what causes it, and how it progresses. In my next post, we’ll get into what you can do about it, from the mildest forms to the most severe. (Spoiler alert: There are lots of treatments, both noninvasive and surgical, to improve skin laxity.)

How you can slow your skin laxity

So, what is skin laxity—beyond one of those terms you’ve heard a bunch in passing? Very simply, it refers to the state of loose skin, which occurs as a result of the depletion of collagen and elastin. Think of collagen as the skin’s building blocks. Soon after we enter our twenties, our collagen production will begin to drop off by 1% each year. (Yup, that soon.)

Elastin is a protein that coils and recoils like a spring within the skin’s elastic fibers. When you pinch, tug, or smush your skin anywhere on your body, the elastin is what snaps it back into place. But right around the time we start losing collagen, we also begin losing elastin.

All of this is part of the natural aging process, but we experience skin laxity a little differently from one person to the next because a number of other factors also play a part, including, most commonly, genetics, sun exposure, diet, lifestyle, stress, significant weight loss, and smoking.

So, how well you’ve taken care of yourself can mean the difference between a few fine lines and a few deep wrinkles, at least early on. At a certain point, there’s no denying the inevitable.

The different types of skin laxity

Skin laxity is diagnosed according to one of three categories: mild, moderate, and severe. With mild, most typically notice subtle changes to the middle of their faces first. Then, as we move from moderate to severe, the skin around our necks will begin to appear a little crepe-y and we’ll start to form jowls.

In the recent past, surgery was essentially the only option for anyone who had entered the moderate and severe phases of skin laxity. Fillers offered an alternative, but the results, at that point, tended to look overdone or disproportionate. Which is why you may be a bit wary about the idea of seeking treatment. There’s no unseeing those images. But today’s treatments are far more precise, both in their application and their outcomes.

Thanks to advances in the methods and improvements in plastic surgeons’ skillsets, it is possible to reverse nature’s course without losing any of your natural beauty in the process.