Aging can be like a mask that begins to hide who we really are. While aging does not literally create a mask, there really are factors that contribute to facial aging, layering on an older appearance. The good news is that we can now – without surgery – regenerate each of those layers, and truly not just hold even with aging, but regain the health and vitality of your skin and appearance.
I want to talk about the 4 layers of facial aging, and this week I’m going to start with one that we all have very little control over.
The First Layer: Gravity
Gravity is constantly pulling us down, and it’s the skin’s collagen that does the heavy lifting of keeping us looking youthful. But over time, that collagen begins to diminish – and that means it’s time for a skin treatment to gain back the tightness.
Our best approach today is maybe the newest of treatments: Ultherapy. Ultherapy is noninvasive pixels of focused ultrasound energy targeted to tighten the SMAS layer of collagen called fascia that is below skin and fat but above muscle. This is actually tightened in all face lifting surgery. By using Layered Light for Tightening and Lifting, Ultherapy targeted ultrasound can be combined to enhance your improvement with Thermage, Accent or Laser Lifting as well.
Your best results following Ultherapy will be gained over several months. As to how long improvements last, that is always hard to say, but I can say that many of our patients that we treated just with Thermage alone, let alone Ultherapy, still look better today than their pretreatment photos of 5 to 6 years ago, and that’s just about as good as any surgery can do.
Tune in next week to learn about the next layer of the aging face – volume loss.