FALL 2016

From HerScene Magazine

Their names are in the contact lists of those friends who keep looking better every year. Here, three different types of medical experts talk about what it’s like to guide other women through the anti-aging maze.

DR. JULENE SAMUELS, COSMETIC SURGEON

What are the biggest misconceptions patients have about anti-aging treatments?
Most patients undervalue starting early with an anti-aging program and think they need to wait until the signs of the aging process are more significant. However, there are many age-appropriate noninvasive steps a woman can take that make a great difference if practiced regularly, even starting in her twenties and thirties. Doing small but meaningful things daily can help women avoid premature aging and can definitely help women put off the age at which they may require more aggressive intervention.

What’s the smallest step that can make the biggest difference in how youthful you look?
A healthy lifestyle including a proper diet, exercise, rest, hydration; daily prescription skin care and avoidance of as many harmful environmental influences as possible– like unprotected sun exposure and smoking.

What is the best reaction you’ve ever had to a treatment you’ve provided?
A patient who came to me after extreme weight loss to deal with too much loose skin on her face, breasts, tummy, thighs and arms. Slowly, and in steps of combination procedures, we did the various face and body lifts to correct all of the skin laxity that had resulted from the weight loss of 180 pounds. The patient cried at the end of three major combination surgeries and told me that even though she knew she had drastically improved her health with the weight loss, that, for a long time, she had become sorry she had lost the weight due to the residual excess skin. It wasn’t until after the last surgery that she actually stopped seeing herself as a permanently overweight woman.

We keep a lot of Kleenex in the office for these occasions, and go through it so fast that, one time, after a trip to Sam’s Club, my own husband asked me why we seem to go through so much Kleenex in a plastic surgery office!

Which treatments are you most excited about?
I am a surgeon, and while I love the surgical results I can achieve for women, I fully understand the limitations of surgery, as well as the fact that not all women desire surgical intervention.

I am most excited about new nonsurgical methods of tightening skin, especially in the lower face and neck. For so long, the neck has been the “missing piece of the puzzle.” Women hate their aging necks and surgery used to be the only option to really tighten the neck in a meaningful way, since lasers cannot be used as aggressively on the neck as on the face. For skin tightening of the face and neck (and also nonfacial areas), the single greatest new tool is microneedling with audiofrequency. Some of our before and after’s almost look like a facelift or neck lift or neck liposuction was done.

Are there any anti-aging cosmetic mistakes that you commonly see?
I am appalled at how often even simple treatments – usually fillers – are overdone. Cosmetic “enhancements” should enhance the positive while de-emphasizing the negative, and restore anatomic elements and tissues to a more youthful, balanced, proportional and naturally beautiful state.