Skin Care alone won’t do it
It’s an undeniable fact: all the expensive or inexpensive skin-care products in the world, even those that are brilliantly formulated, won’t prevent your skin from “aging” or wrinkling. Hormone loss, genetics, the simple act of growing older, gravity, muscle movement, sun damage, bone loss, and fat loss, all inevitably take their toll on skin. No matter how cautious you’ve been about sun exposure and how regularly you’ve used sunscreen, the realities are that sun damage begins when we are young, even the best sunscreens can’t provide complete protection, and damaging UVA rays come through windows. We can slow the process but these factors add up to what we see on the face as “aging.”
Had you taken all the money you wasted on expensive anti-wrinkle and anti-aging products and started saving from the time you were in grade school you would have the money in the bank to pay for medical procedures that can in the long run truly make you look younger, if that’s your goal. It’s not that state-of-the-art skin care doesn’t play a part—because it does help—but it can only do so much. And it can’t replace the arsenal of rejuvenating procedures a cosmetic surgeon or dermatologist can offer.
The desire to look younger is pervasive, and the accessibility of options that can make a huge difference by erasing years from your face makes the chance to achieve it beyond enticing for many men and women. When these procedures are done well the results are often outstanding. But when they are overdone or the treatment is performed by an unskilled physician, things often go from bad to worse.
Many celebrities provide perfect examples of how bad you can look when cosmetic corrective procedures go awry (or too much is done at once). Lots of celebrities have had their looks altered by cosmetic surgery or have had Botox, dermal injections, or laser resurfacing. But often you can tell at a glance whose physician overdid it because the celebrity’s face is so tight she or he looks constantly surprised or incessantly half-smiling, or distorted in away that appears preternaturally odd. And there are way too many celebrities to list that fit this description. Perhaps in no other arena is one thing clearer: Celebrities are not the best informed about beauty. Those examples aside, the good news is that you don’t need to avoid the benefits of what is available; you just need to avoid the same mistakes.
In short, you need to know the pros and cons about all cosmetic corrective procedures, including plastic surgery. What you don’t know can hurt, and that doesn’t mean just your appearance but also your health and your pocketbook. To help you think about this, I’d like to give an overview of what is available, how to plan what you want to achieve, and what
you can afford, along with a discussion of the risks and/or benefits of different procedures and how the different services work.