The Secret To Looking 10 Years Younger Without Surgery
Leading plastic surgeon Dr. Mulholland shares his recommendations for non-surgical procedures that will make you look ten years younger...
There's nothing like hitting your 30s, and having a toddler to make you reach for all the anti-wrinkle products you can fit on your bathroom vanity. If you're anything like me, chatter amongst you and your friends switches between the best remedies to get your toddler to sleep through the night, to the best way to keep those wrinkles (probably caused by aforementioned toddler!) at bay.
Botox, Restylyn, fillers - all the buzzwords that fly around in the quest of youth. Who's had it, when to have it and is it safe? These are all the questions sure to follow as you consider taking such measures.
Luckily for us, I had the opportunity to chat exclusively to Dr. Robert Stephen Mulholland, world leading plastic and reconstructive surgeon for this See.Need.Want exclusive.
And if you're watching the television or flicking through your fave celebrity magazine and wondering "how does she look so good?", I'll let you in on a little secret... Dr Mulholland says, 'there isn’t one celebrity that looks good that is currently employed on TV, on stage, on film that isn’t doing something. If they say they’re not they are lying.'
In this interview he shares his recommendations for the best products and non-surgical procedures that will ensure you will always look ten years younger, and also what to consider before going under the knife for surgical enhancements.
Believe me, you will want to ready every word!
What are some top, quick beauty fixes you would recommend to women who want to combat ageing.
I would divide this into women under 40 and women over 40. Quick fix anti-ageing treatments are for women who are young, so sun protection, sun protection, sun protection, followed by a good topical medical regime and some anti-oxidants. As you age into early wrinkles, wrinkle prevention and modulators such as Botox can be used if done judiciously.
As you age volume is lost in the skin so for volume replacement use some well-known brands like Restylane and then energy based devices, for tightening, colour and firming.
When you add all those together you can age through every decade looking ten years younger, always without a scalpel. As you get older things tend to go under the skin to be a little more effective. Under the skin heating techniques like precision TX, and suspension technologies (technologies that help to ‘lift’) and thread lifting are making a resurgence again. I think eventually if you want to look your best you are going to have to throw some skin in the garbage. So processional techniques upper/low lid bleph, judiciously done, face lifts, neck lifts, have a role but generally women who look ten years younger without a scalpel, at any decade, are doing so with a combination of energy based devices, injectables and skin care.
What are your top 3 non-surgical beauty short cuts for improving complexion and making skin appear flawless?
The top four:
1. Medically prescribed skin care
2.Intense pulse light photo rejuvenation, for colour correction of reds and browns,
3. Bulk hitting radio frequency for tightening or for where there is laxity.
4.Fractural devices, fractural CO2 and fractural radio frequency resurfacing for texture.
These big four can have your skin looking as flawless as you’ve ever been able to do. And then secondary technologies are of value if you have difficult, resistant pigment or melasma like Asian women or Latino patients.
Can you tell us what celebrities you think look fantastic and what procedures that they might have had to enhance their appearance?
There are so many that look fantastic. The age of celebrities that look really bad is getting less and less common. There are a lot of good things you can do that aren’t extreme and aren’t surgical.
I would reverse that question that there isn’t one celebrity that looks good that is currently employed on TV, on stage, on film that isn’t doing something. If they say they’re not they are lying. Everybody who looks good is doing something because you don’t age like Michelle Pfeiffer who would be into her 50s or any other ageing actress looking great.
Bad surgery, which was not uncommon in the 80s and the 90s, and you had these caricatures, is really uncommon now. Kenny Rodgers, Al Pacino, Donatella Versace, Priscilla Presley and the excessively overdone treatments and surgeries are poorly done, over augmented, too tightly pulled and are a rarity now.
The more common theme is she really looks good or she’s ageing well…she’s ageing well because she’s spending money on cosmetic treatments, not always surgery, but non-surgical treatments.
What age would you recommend women start thinking about the likes of Botox or fillers, so many young women seem to be having these cosmetic procedures - is there age you deem to young?
The average age of women having their first Botox experience at my practice has gone down ten years in ten years. Meaning when I first started in the early 90s the average woman when she had her first Botox was 40, now she is 30.
Young millennials are no longer putting up with what their mothers did when they started aging. And so, early 30s is a good time to start preventing wrinkles before they start. I think for fillers start in your late 30s/early 40s. With energy based devices, if you’ve got skin imperfections like red/brown discolouration you can start at any age.
What are some considerations to factor in before going ahead with a surgical enhancement like a breast increase/decrease, nose job, tummy tuck, and what can laser do to factor into this treatments.
You want to obviously have realistic expectations, you want to make sure that perhaps child birth and child bearing is out of the way, or you are very young and you have a physical disproportion, a nose that is not made for your facial skeleton or breasts that don’t fit your shoulder, hip, weight, for example. Start at the right age and be realistic. Expectations should be to improve something for yourself not to get off an anti-depressant or solve a material problem.
Lasers figure predominantly in these situations because often I will use laser technologies to make the scar less red, and to blend the scar in. Often you can combine laser techniques with your surgical techniques for example mini tummy tuck or a tummy tuck plus a laser stretch mark treatment after to improve and enhance. Or even if you’ve done a tummy tuck and some lipo and you’ve got some irregularities we can use SculpSure to help to smooth those out. And so the light based devices help improve our surgical results and help seal up the scars to disappear.
