The Aging Female Face and How to Reverse the Process

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One you understand the aging process of the face, you can take steps along the way to help reverse the process.

Aging of the face is inevitable due to sun damage, environmental toxins, gravity, and loss of youthful hormones.  Just like a disease, to understand how to reverse this process, you must understand each stage of the aging process of the face, and again like a disease, we can then focus on each change that occurs as we march toward old age and treat each one.  Let’s start with the first change that occurs in the aging process around age 40.

Skin tone and texture becomes lax and skin is thinner and drier, which makes the facial skin sag around the eyes and jaw, very slightly and skin loses youthful glow and “dewiness”.  This is primarily secondary to a loss of testosterone that begins after 40.

Treatment is first to replace lost testosterone, and estradiol if early menopause has occurred.

Testosterone increases the decreasing collagen and connective tissue that previously had held the face tight to the muscles and fat beneath. Testosterone also increases the production of oil from the skins sebaceous glands and then maintaining moisture is accomplished by using moisturizer twice a day to seal the new oil and moisture to keep it from evaporating.

As time goes by other methods for improving the tone of skin become necessary:

Hydrafacials literally inject saline and serums into the skin to force-feed necessary moisture and building blocks of collagen into the skin.

Stimulation of collagen production is often necessary by using specific lasers –the fractional laser called PIXEL laser as well as red light treatment that helps the body create collagen, and the _____ pen that using trauma to the collagen layer to stimulate new growth to tighten and support the skin of the face.

Deep grooves and wrinkles between the eyes and around the mouth and eyes

The next change in the face that appears  involves creases from frequent facial expressions, like frowning, grimacing smiling that occur from how we hold our face or whether we smile a lot or frown a lot, then the muscles for those expressions become very strong and make furrows in the face from the muscles of the face. These grooves between the eyes and around the eyes are the first things that young people take care of with BOTOX or Dysport or other cousins of these chemicals.  These substances are called Neurotoxins and work by paralyzing the tiny muscles that make these expressions.  Injecting these muscle safely takes great care and experience and should not be provided by anyone other than a nurse (RN) or doctor.

Injecting a neurotoxin relaxes the muscles that cause the grooves and over time the grooves become less obvious and shallower.  The only drawback for this treatment is that it must be repeated every 3 months to prevent recurrence of the grooves.

 

Loss Of Facial Fat

The next change is the loss of fat tissue of the face and neck that causes the skin that once was held tight, to  sag and droop causing deep circles under the eyes, drooping skin over the eyelids, jowls, and a wattle under the chin. The pictures I show you are not as severe as reality, but you can see that these changes make this model look older.

The only non-surgical answers to this problem is called filler, that refills the fat of the face with collagen or collagen like viscous fluid that literally refills the cheeks, forehead, chin, jaw line and area in the tear troughs.  These are often injected in stages however the reversal of the fat loss with fillers is immediate and dramatic.  When we refill someone’s face at Biobalance it is like going back in time to see the person who used to inhabit the beautiful face we look at now.

The second non-surgical method is  called Threading, however it is not to be confused with the very non-hygienic method of removing hair with a thread.  It is a sterile procedure where a skilled nurse, doctor or nurse practitioner inserts a suture with barbs on it under the skin and feeds it under the skin to the area that requires elevation,  The esthetic artist sets the hook and pulls up supporting the skin and bringing it back to the position it was in years earlier.

A combination of the two procedures is the gold standard of non-surgical face lift.

Sagging eyebrows, eyelids and thinning lips are the last changes we will talk about today.

Sagging eyebrows and eyelids have a variety of treatments.  Sagging eyebrows can be treated with BOTOX, or with threads that lift the forehead to lift the eyebrows, or the new Plasma Pen

Which inject collagen and the patient’s serum into the subdermis and resurfaces the skin of the area it is used on, as well as working against gravity to hold the eyebrows up and the sagging skin of the eyelids is tightened and elevated.  It is quite amazing to see the outcome of this new treatment!

Thinning lips are a major telltale sign of age.  Lip filler is the standard treatment for thinning lips and can be filled by a professional without an issue but remember to tell the operator exactly how full you want your lips!  Bring a picture of yourself when you were 30-35.  That way they have a guideline for how full your lips were when you were young.

OK now it is your turn to put your cheaters on and flip on the magnifying mirror and take a good look at your face.  Do you have sagging skin around your jowls or under your chin?  Has your face flattened out?  Have your cheeks disappeared?  How are your lips?  Thinning?

Is there skin hanging over your eyelids?  Most women I know say they want to look like …and they put their fingers near their temples and pull up their facial skin so it is tight and back where it used to be….that isn’t going to happen without a face lift or the use of these amazing new techniques that can bring you back to youth and a familiar face in the mirror.

 

This Health cast was written and presented by Dr. Kathy Maupin, M.D., Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Expert and Author, with Brett Newcomb, MA., LPC., Family Counselor, Presenter and Author. www.BioBalanceHealth.com

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