Cosmetic Surgery, Health and Fitness Information - The Adams Center, Boston, MA

"Liquid Facelifts" Using Sculptra

“Liquid Facelift” is a term that I’ve been hearing in the press lately.

The report I saw was based on Sculptra Aesthetic, a poly-L lactic acid filler that can be used with great results over large areas of the face. However, the term “liquid facelift” can refer to any of the filler products such as Radiesse, Restylane, Juvederm, etc. Most have specific areas of the face for which they work well.

While Sculptra is primarily designed to correct marionette lines, smile lines, and chin wrinkles, it can also be effective in the brow and other areas. Sculptra works especially well for people with thinner faces , or hollowness in the cheek area.

Sculptra requires at least three injection sessions over a few months and can last up to two years. The product works well and it truly is like sculpting. Additionally, it provides a natural, more gradual improvement in your appearance.

In many cases, we use a combination of treatments, such as Sculptra to fill in hollowness and Botox to minimize crow’s feet. We’ve also found that Sculptra may be effective when combined with surgical procedures like a traditional facelift or mini-facelift to give an enhanced result.

What’s All the Buzz About Stem Cell Facelifts?

I read an interesting article in the The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS) newsletter about “Stem Cell Facelifts” that was based in part on a Sept. 13, 2010 L.A. Times article by Chris Woolston.

While the procedure may be all the rage in Hollywood, stem cell facelifts, and other similar procedures have little more than anecdotal evidence to backup their credibility.

In the procedure, stem cells are retrieved through liposuction. Then the stem cells, along with fat cells, are injected into the face. Those performing this procedure claim that the injected stem cells rejuvenate the skin with new collagen and blood vessels.

President-Elect of ASAPS, Jeffery Kenkel, MD sums up the claims of this procedure by saying; “Although stem cells certainly have potential for use in the cosmetic surgery field, some of the claims being made about the procedures that are currently being marketed as ‘stem cell face lifts’ seem far-fetched. We simply don’t know enough about the safety and efficacy of these procedures. One of the major unanswered questions is whether the stem cells actually contribute to any of the positive effects that might be observed, or whether we are simply seeing the effects of injecting fat cells into the face, which can give the face a younger look.”

While stem cells may have use in cosmetic surgery and other applications, not enough is known at this time, and the studies that have been done to date, have been limited in time and scope.

The bottom line is: view articles like this with skepticism. If there are articles that you read, or news reports that you see, and you have questions, feel free to call my offices. My staff and I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

The Adams Center Periorbital Rejuvenation

Wrinkles around the eyes, also known as “laugh lines,” “crow’s feet,” or “periorbital wrinkles” are one of the most common, and early signs of aging.

You don’t need to just accept laugh lines as a foregone conclusion. The Adams Center  has non-surgical treatments  for crow’s feet that include Botox, Total FX laser , Lux 1540, and the newest additions – Skin Anti-Aging Complex nutritional supplement, and OMNILUX new-U. By selectively combining these treatments we enable you to achieve the best result.

Botox and Dysport
Botox and Dysport work by reducing the activity of the muscles that cause laugh lines. Botox is a purified form of the Clostridium botulinum bacterium. It’s a safe, effective, time proven way to diminish the wrinkles around eyes, forehead, lips and neck.

TotalFX
TotalFX is the “gold standard” for overall non-surgical skin rejuvenation. Part of the UltraPulse system, the TotalFX laser includes both the broad area ActiveFX laser, and the DeepFX laser.

Lux1540
The Lux1540 is a non-ablative laser that heats the layers of skin to cause collagen regeneration during the skin's natural healing process to create healthy new tissue, rejuvenate skin, and reduce wrinkles.

Skin Anti-Aging Complex
Skin Anti-Aging Complex is a uniquely formulated dietary supplement that defends your skin against premature aging, from the inside out. AstraREAL® Astaxanthin (an extremely powerful antioxidant), and other vitamins and botanicals provide outstanding nutritional support for skin health to reduce fine lines and wrinkles, while improving the moisture levels, and elasticity of your skin.

OMNILUX new-U
OMNILUX new-U is the only FDA approved hand-held light therapy device that allows you to minimize crow’s feet. The light frequency used in new-U stimulates collagen production, increases blood flow to the cells, helps increase tissue oxygenation, and detoxification procedures.

The staff and I select the right combination for you to achieve the best result in the appearance of the area around the eye.

Are Dark Circles Under your Eyes Making you Look Older

I’m only 40, and my eyes look like my grandmother’s! What can I do?

Non-surgical treatments can be amazing for many areas, but the eyes are one area of the face where results without surgery like blepharoplasty are minimal in more advanced cases for baggy eyelid skin, or dark circles.

Dark Circles Under the Eyes
Dark circles under the eyes can be their own special joy. While many products say they work to correct dark circles, this is only true in limited situations. The causes for dark circles under the eyes are actually quite varied. These include diet, heredity, dehydration, a loss firmness in soft tissue structures, and a decrease in bone mass of the bone under the eye.

Eye Creams
The staff and I are often asked for recommendations on a great eye cream. While a high quality eye cream such as iS Clinical’s Eye Complex, our Firming Eye Cream, or Obagi Elastiderm Eye Cream can be great for correcting puffiness, fine lines and wrinkles, and in some cases, even minimizing dark circles depending on the cause, most are not. I have yet to come across a store bought formula that works well for dark circles under the eyes.

A Treatment the Works
While a blepharoplasty is one of the single best treatments for saggy eyelids, a blepharoplasty alone may not be enough to correct dark circles under the eyes. A total eyelid rejuvenation may be the best way to completely revitalize the areas around your eyes.

This three-step approach blends laser blepharoplasty (eyelid surgery), Arcus Marginalis Release, fat grafting, or Tear Trough Implants (depending on the exact cause of the dark circles), and a TotalFX treatment to totally revitalize the areas around your eyes. I’ll sometimes start patients with Obagi’s Elastiderm Eye cream to help lighten the pigment that accents the dark circle prior to surgery for superior results.

Study Shows Women Are More Prone to Facial Wrinkles

A study by a team of plastic surgeons from the Netherlands, that was published in a recent issue of Aesthetic Surgery Journal suggests that differences in the skin around the mouth (the perioral area) account for more, and deeper skin wrinkling in women than in men.

The study’s goal was to 1) determine whether or not women wrinkle earlier and more severely than men, and 2) to develop better strategies for the treatment of facial wrinkles.

The study found several contributing factors for more perioral wrinkles in women:

• Women have fewer sweat glands and sebaceous glands than men, which influences the natural filling of potential wrinkles
• The skin around a woman’s mouth contains fewer blood vessels than men, which may speed wrinkle development
• Women have tighter muscle to skin attachment around the mouth then men. This may cause more of an inward pull to create deeper wrinkles

Current treatments for perioral wrinkles include the use of ActiveFX and DeepFX lasers, Botox, and injectable wrinkle fillers such as Juvederm, Restylane, Radiesse, and other methods such as Dermabrasion, and chemical peels.

Contact me by e-mail, or by calling me at The Adams Center in my Peabody office at 978-531-0550, or 617-262-2208 in my Boston office for more information on this post, or any other information in my Blog.

Dr. Bill Adams is a greater Boston area board certified plastic surgeon with over 25 years of experience in the field. 

Combination of Facial Treatments for Best Results

Our face is the most visible thing others see on a daily basis. As we age, our face is often the area that looks oldest first. But, what contributes to premature facial aging and what makes us look old? More importantly, can we reverse the process?

Several things can contribute to facial aging. The obvious answer is “age”. While that’s very true, environmental factors, diet, chemicals we use on or around our face, whether or not we moisturize, weather, smoking, and a host of other factors also contribute. So what makes us look old? Wrinkles around our eyes, mouth, forehead, etc. are often cited, but some of the other signs of an aging face include sagging skin, age spots, redness, and more.

The good news is that these things can be treated, and in many cases largely reversed. Patients come to me with the idea that they want a facelift (either a mini-facelift, or a full facelift). But, a facelift only corrects part of the issue. It’s like providing half an answer on a test. We're discovering that a combination of surgical and non-surgical treatments works best for treating all of the changes that happen when we age.

One of the combinations that I’ve found to be the most effective is a facelift combined with a TotalFX treatment. The facelift is the perfect tool to remove more advanced wrinkles, lift sagging skin, redefine the jaw-line, and contour the neck; while the TotalFX laser is great for correcting brown spots, redness and other pigmentation issues, scarring, and further tightening the skin. Additionally, TotalFX will help in the long-term by stimulating collagen development to help further plump the skin for future wrinkle reduction.

By combining these two treatments, we improve a wider range of age related issues.

Contact me by e-mail, or by calling me at The Adams Center in my Peabody office at 978-531-0550, or 617-262-2208 in my Boston office for more information on this post, or any other information in my Blog.

Dr. Bill Adams is a greater Boston area board certified plastic surgeon with over 25 years of experience in the field. 

Can I have multiple procedures done during the same visit?

I’ve received several questions from patients really on whether or not they can have multiple procedures done during the same visit.

The short answer is yes, you can. However, the real limiter is the type of anesthesia selected.

Take liposuction for example. We often do smaller areas of liposuction under a local anesthesia with oral sedation. This method allows us a smaller window of time, so larger procedures aren’t possible. However, we can do larger areas under a general anesthesia. This also allows us to do combinations of surgeries.

A recent patient wanted to have liposuction and breast augmentation done at the same time as part of a “Mommy Makeover.” While we only did those two surgeries for that patient, I’ve had patients choose to have liposuction, breast augmentation with a breast lift, and a blepharoplasty. So there are fewer limitations under general anesthesia.

Having multiple procedures done at the same time is actually a smart choice for most of us. There is usually a shorter overall recovery time, a lower overall cost, and in many cases, we’re finding that combination treatments actually provide better results.

Contact me by e-mail, or by calling me at The Adams Center in my Peabody office at 978-531-0550, or 617-262-2208 in my Boston office for more information on this post, or any other information in my Blog.

Dr. Bill Adams is a greater Boston area board certified plastic surgeon with over 25 years of experience in the field.

Relaxed Expressions as a Botox Alternative

Relaxed Expressions is one of the newest, minimally invasive, non-toxic tools in our ongoing quest to find the most effective methods for treating facial wrinkles, and reversing the signs of aging.

I recently became one of only 30 physicians in the U.S. involved as part of a physician advisory council to help with the development of best practices in the use of Bioform Medical's Relaxed Expressions (also known as REX, GFX, or No-Tox) system. Perhaps the best way to think of REX is as a high-tech alternative to Botox.

Instead of using a low dose of Botulinum Toxin like Botox, Relaxed Expressions targets the muscles that cause frown lines and wrinkles in our foreheads with Radio Frequency (RF) energy. These RF energy waves minimize the muscle’s ability to make you frown, thus removing the wrinkles in the target area.

While Botox is still a great treatment, Relaxed Expressions overcomes two of Botox’s shortcomings; it may last for as long as 18 – 24 months (as opposed to 3 – 6 for Botox), and is completely non-toxic. At the same time, REX shares some of the same strengths as Botox; it’s minimally invasive, takes around 30 minutes, and works immediately. The recovery time varies.

Relaxed Expressions is still undergoing evaluation, and I’m proud to be one of the physicians selected for this process. So far, the outcomes I’ve had using this procedure have been great. The majority of the patients have been impressed; however, temporary bruising and swelling may occur.

While the technology used in Relaxed Expressions is approved for use to treat medical conditions such as cardiac arrhythmia, it is not yet approved for cosmetic use. REX shows great promise in this area, but it still needs to show good, consistent, safe results. I’ll keep you up to date on the progress of this promising new wrinkle treatment option.

Contact me by e-mail, or by calling me at The Adams Center in my Peabody office at 978-531-0550, or 617-262-2208 in my Boston office for more information on this post, or any other information in my Blog.

Dr. Bill Adams is a greater Boston area board certified plastic surgeon with over 25 years of experience in the field.

Do Non-surgical Treatments Really Get Rid of Wrinkles?

Q: How realistic are non-surgical procedures, for example will I notice a definite improvement in my wrinkles?

A: Good question! Not every treatment works well for every patient. We spend time during the consultation to do a thorough analysis to determine which will work best for your situation. When selected properly, patients will see definite improvement.

 

New high-tech procedures such as DeepFX have made a dramatic improvement in the effectiveness of non-surgical anti-aging procedures. Additionally, there have been advances made in wrinkle fillers such as Evolence, and others to make these injectable fillers last much longer than they did even 2 years ago.

Contact me by e-mail, or by calling me at The Adams Center in my Peabody office at 978-531-0550, or 617-262-2208 in my Boston office for more information on this post, or any other information in my Blog.

Dr. Bill Adams is a greater Boston area board certified plastic surgeon with over 25 years of experience in the field.

Our Non-Surgical Beauty Enhancement Seminars were a big Success

Our September 18th and 20th seminars on how to enhance your natural beauty without cosmetic surgery were a huge success, with over 100 of our patients attended our events in our Boston and Peabody offices.

These great events were highlighted by demonstrations from Dr. Adams and out highly trained aesthetician staff throughout the morning, which focused on Botox and injectable fillers, Microdermabrasion, Sclerotherapy and various laser procedures to help reduce wrinkles, brown/age spots, acne, and more.

Representatives from several of our high quality skin care partners, such as Allergan (the makers of Botox and our breast implants), Obagi, Juvederm, Jane Iredale, iS Clinical, Environ, and the exciting new skin care line - Vivite were there with product samples, and to answer questions.

Complimentary skin analysis was also provided using the Mirror Canfield Enhanced Viewing System.

We tentatively have more seminars scheduled for November, so remember to check back here, or check the events page on The Adams Center's site.

Contact me by e-mail, or by calling me at The Adams Center in my Peabody office at 978-531-0550, or 617-262-2208 in my Boston office for more information on this post, or any other information in my Blog.

Dr. Bill Adams is a greater Boston area board certified plastic surgeon with over 25 years of experience in the field.