Start doing this AT HOME Before Considering a Facelift!!

Hi, everyone. I'm Dr. Amir Karam, board-certified facial plastic surgeon. I specialize in facial rejuvenation, which basically means I help people look as young as they feel. And today we're gonna talk about a very, very important topic. Actually, one that comes up a lot. And that is, you're considering a facelift, but what should you be doing right now? Not everyone is ready for a facelift emotionally, financially, anatomically, but there are things that you could be doing right now to not necessarily ward off the need for a facelift, but to enhance your outcome once you have it done. So let's break it down and look into this topic together. Let's talk about aging. How does the face age? So there's three components that happen to the face at the same time. One is skin. It's showing signs of aging. What are those signs? It gets dehydrated. It gets lined and wrinkled. It gets pigmented. It loses collagen. It becomes thin and crepey. It gets pores. It overall gets dull. It loses its luminosity and brightness. That's aging skin in a nutshell. Then what's happening is your face is losing facial fat. Your face is starting to become deflated and hollowed. And as a result, you start to look more tired. The third category, and these are separate categories, have nothing to do with each other. Your face starts to sag. So sagging happens at the corners of the eyebrow. The midface comes down. The jawline comes down. The neck starts to sag. You start to see extra skin on your upper and lower eyelids. Your top lip starts to get longer. These are all what we think of as gravitational changes that are happening to the soft tissues of the face, which fundamentally change the shape of the face into a rectangle, right? So if we're young, we're more of this heart. And as we age, we become more of a rectangle. We get longer and more square. At some point, that sagging and the deflation are going to bother you to the point where you're gonna want to do something about it. That's where surgery comes into play. Now, let me just simply say that there is no other reliable way to directly address sagging and facial shape change than surgery, right? In my practice, I do what's called the vertical restore, which I basically bring the entire soft tissue of the face back up into position. However, surgery doesn't do anything to the skin. And what makes a person look young is young-looking skin and a young-looking facial shape. The two of them brought together, you have a young face. Now, this is where it gets very, very interesting. Historically, surgeons focus on the sagging. Dermatologists focus on the skin. The reality is you gotta bring them together. So for example, in my practice, I look at the face in these three different verticals and I address each of them independently, simultaneously, and comprehensively. That's why when you look at before and afters that we produce, the outcomes look dramatic yet totally natural. This is what you need to start doing now, focusing on the skin. Because you can't control what happens to your facial volume and you can't control what's happening with sagging. But you have 100% control over what's happening to the aging of the skin. And if you think you don't, you're wrong. And if you want evidence for it, just look at people who have lived that lifestyle and they're in their 70s and they literally look like they're in their 30s and 40s because of the fact that they've taken great care of their skin all along. And at some point, they had a facelift, eyelid surgery, fat transfers, or whatever. Surgical procedures that have basically maintained the shape of their face, but they personally have maintained the quality and youthfulness of their skin. So how do you do that? First of all, you need to get onto a skincare lifestyle. You gotta eat clean, you gotta keep your hydration up, you gotta sleep well, and you gotta protect your skin from the sun. And at any age, you start doing those things, that's gonna be a big start. Then the next most important thing you gotta do is you gotta get onto a comprehensive skincare routine. And what's a comprehensive skincare routine? Basically means you gotta be on a retinol, a vitamin C, niacinamide, growth factor, peptide, a lightener, which is non-hydroquinone ideally, you need to be on moisturizers, hydrators. Gets a little bit complicated, you can do them all individually. I, after 12 years of trying to educate my patients, realized that it's very hard to get them to do all these things routinely, so I basically took it upon myself, it was about a five-year endeavor, but took it upon myself to develop the KeramMD Trifecta, which is a cleanser, vitamin C, and an all-in-one, which includes about 15 different active ingredients, most of which, in addition to a lot of other ones that I didn't mention, are all included, so that you can do these simply. Now you can do them separately or do them as part of the trifecta, it doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, it's important that you get all of these components in there so they directly affect each of the aspects of skin aging. For dehydration, you need something that moisturizes the skin, hydrates the skin, that's where hyaluronic acid and lipids come into play. You need to improve collagen synthesis, that's where retinols and vitamin C and growth factor comes into play. You need a decreased pigment, you need a non-hydroquinone lightener, vitamin C and retinol combined, decreased production of melanin. You get my drift? Every one of these components has a specific treatment associated with it. You need that in order to get the most out of your skin and really directly fight all those changes. You do those type of things year after year after year, your skin's only going to get better. Whether or not you do any lasers, whether or not you do any microneedling or this and that, it will still get better. Now, if you include in your overall treatment course, and we just did a video recently on the continuum of skin care and the continuum of these different treatments, I would definitely watch that. If you include some of those aspects, you're gonna boost, you're gonna accelerate the anti-aging effects, but it starts with the daily components, the lifestyle and the daily skincare routine that's gonna have the biggest impact on your skin in the long run. Sun protection cannot be understated, guys. It's the starting point. So I think of it as like what your daily skincare routine starts with is, starts with sunscreen. Well, let's back up a second. So you wash your skin when you wake up, you put on your products, in this case, let's call it the trifecta. You do rinse as your first cleansing step, then you do quench, your vitamin C, then you do illuminate. Then before you leave the house, you put on a broad spectrum sunblock, you reapply at different points throughout the day, every three to four hours to keep that skin nice and protected. Then in the evening you come, you wash everything off, you reapply your active ingredients, and there you have it. Your skin is getting better as time goes on. Then get into the medical spa, dermatology, plastic surgery office, and get some micro-needling done to your face and neck. Anytime you're gonna treat your face, treat your neck, that's another huge pro because if you're not treating your neck, then what'll happen is your face will get younger looking and your neck will start to age much faster. So the skin of the neck is thin, it's actually very, very susceptible to aging changes, the crepiness, et cetera, so make sure you treat your face and neck. And the trifecta, by the way, can be used to treat your neck and your face and your eyelids all in one. So anytime you put product on your face, make sure you're putting it on your neck as long as the ones that you're actually using are safe for the next skin. Then you're gonna, from time to time, do some lasers, et cetera. You're doing all of this from before the time you do a facelift till forever. And what'll happen is when you do get the facelift done or the vertical restore, whichever procedure you end up doing, what'll happen is you'll start with beautiful skin, you'll marry it with beautiful shape, and you'll suddenly look in the mirror and you'll be like, God, that's like my 30-year-old self. That's the self that I'm sure you relate to the most. I think most people think of themselves somewhere in their early to mid-30s, no matter what age we are, whether we're 50, 60, 70, that's the age that we relate to the most. And the goal is to help you get to that point. So remember, skin needs to be your priority regardless of whether you're 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70. Make skin a part of your daily routine because it will make the greatest impact and it's the one thing that you can totally control. I was lucky enough to get this information synthesized and digested to a point where I could actually start making a difference in my patients' lives. Now I want to make a big difference in all of yours. So make sure you save this information, share it with your friends and family. Let's get the word out. Let's help people understand where all this fits in. Skincare is not an alternative for facelifts and facelifts is not an alternative for skincare. They're totally two separate things. It's the moral of the story. Make sure you share this. Make sure you like it. Make sure you subscribe to my channel. If you like this type of information, I've dropped about two to three videos a week with this type of information. Stay tuned for more videos like this. Guys, thanks so much for your attention. Any comments and questions you have, drop them down. I'll do my best to answer them. And until next time, thanks so much, Dr. Amir Karam.