Gift Idea for the Stressed Out Person

Does he grind his teeth? Look angry or anxious all the time?

The treatment that relaxes these facial expressions can also reduce the emotion behind them. Imagine giving the gift of relief from stress, depression or irritability.

The theory is that when we no longer look angry or stressed, people respond to us more positively and we feel better. The observations of one of my clients supports this idea. Martha told me that after she had Botox, strangers found her more approachable, and would, for instance, ask her for directions or strike up a conversation.

I think there is also a component of internal feedback. When you no longer have the aching jaws from tooth-grinding or an aching forehead from frowning, you feel more relaxed.

But whatever the exact mechanism for the effect, improved mood has been observed in a number of different studies and settings.

"The Botox patients scored much lower on measures of depression, anxiety and irritability," explains Michael Lewis, a psychology professor at the University of Cardiff and lead author of the study. "Crucially, there was no significant difference in how much their treatment made them feel attractive from those who had other treatments, suggesting that [the mood boost] wasn't just down to a boost in self-confidence."

Reduction of teeth-grinding (bruxism) is particularly beneficial.

"And it's not just relief from jaw pain, tension and headaches, that our patients experience. Some are also noticing a dramatic change in the appearance of their lower face. The square, severe look softened into a more normal and aesthetically pleasing jaw line.

"Some patients have also reported a marked reduction in their general stress level as their grinding gradually comes to a halt. Breaking the habit of Bruxism allows patients to relax and enjoy life."

Maybe you can buy happiness after all.

Dr. Frankenstein 2009

Bizarre but true: plastic surgeon married a woman he didn't love and didn't find attractive but thought had "potential." He performed 8 operations and injected 1000's of dollars worth of botox and fillers to transform her into his ideal woman.

"Only AFTER £18,000 of cosmetic surgery did Reza, 48, fall in love with her."

Here are Before and After shots of her from topix.com. These images show how subjective our perception of beauty is because I don't find her transformation very attractive. And yet she was "created" to her husband's specifications. I'd like to see her face a little softer and prettier with less emphasis on the fake lips.

Her body is extremely toned and fit-looking but the massive breast implants make each breast bigger than her head. The doctor obviously has a comic book aesthetic.

And of course, the whole idea of their relationship seems pathological. Imagine marrying someone who didn't love you and wasn't attracted to you? Actually, I can't imagine it. And he says he loves her now that he has transformed her?!? I'm sorry but that isn't love; that's pride in creation.



Comic book girl superhero image from Comic Vine. Right hand image from http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,26298019-5013016,00.html.


The original story appeared in British tabloid The Sun.

Returning to beauty and confidence

This is a very personal story for me. It's about my sister Nicola who is 5 years older than me. We both agreed that we would share her story in order to help others.

A few years ago, her life seemed to be on a downward spiral. She'd reached the point where she felt she had lost her looks -- makeup didn't seem to be working any more -- her face was perpetually sad, even when she was trying to smile -- and she was overweight and suffering a lot in her health.

This Before picture was taken in October 2007 after she had started having a few treatments here (she didn't allow herself to be photographed before that) but you can still see the bleakness she was feeling. She didn't make much effort with her appearance because she thought it was futile.

From a cosmetic perspective, I see volume loss in the lips, and sagging of existing volume so her eyelids are heavy and her cheeks are most prominent down at the level of her mouth. You may not see it well in this picture but she has a very uneven skin tone with dark pigment around her eyes and mouth and on her neck.

In the past 2 years, Nicola has undergone a few treatments -- generally when we needed someone to practice on as various staff were trained. She might get something done every 4 months or so -- I don't want you to think that she was getting botox and pixel laser treatments every week or even every month.

Now take a look at Nicola today. You'll immediately notice that her hair style is more flattering and that she has lost weight. I would argue that she made more effort with her hair and she had success with losing weight because she was feeling better about herself.

If we look in detail at her face, you can see a huge improvement in her eyelids. See how crepey the lids were in the Before shot? Her left eyelid was touching her eyelashes. Today she has contoured lids with lots of lid show. We tightened the skin of her lids by doing some Pixel laser and lifted the brows with Botox.

Look at her cheeks. See how the fullness has been lifted from where it was, down at the level of her mouth, up to the apples of her cheeks? The whole shape of her face is changed with an overall appearance of uplift, improving the jowls and jawline. Nicola had a SoftLift in August with Juvederm placed in her cheeks and in the marionette lines extending down from the corners of her mouth.

Of course, Nicola mouth looks bigger. Part of her SoftLift included augmenting her lips with Juvederm. Nicola and I both have thin upper lips that tend to disappear when we smile so we both like the way the lips augmentation prevents that.

The other thing we noticed is that the scar on Nicola's nose across the bridge has improved. This wasn't something that we actively treated. Nicola always looked on the scar as a symbol of surviving a near-fatal accident so she never asked to have it erased. However you can see how much it has smoothed out in the course of using medical grade skincare from Vivier and having Pixel laser treatments.

Another point to make about these 2 photos: Nicola was trying to make the same facial expression in both -- her pleasant expression. In the bad old days, every line in her face was downturned -- brows, outer corners of eyes, corners of mouth -- so her pleasant expression looked angry and sad. Now that those downturned lines are gone, she looks alert and positive even without a smile on her face.

These pictures show that you can get your face back without surgery, without having a surgical facelift. Nicola had a combination of non-surgical treatments including excellent skincare products, Pixel laser, IPL photofacial, injection lipolysis, Juvederm and Botox.

It took time for Nicola to achieve this level of improvement. However when you have gotten to the point that you think that the rest of your life is a downward spiral, how wonderful to see yourself improving month by month, instead of declining.

And this brings me to my final point: looking better makes you feel better about yourself. When you start seeing some improvement in yourself, you're more energized to do other things that will make positive changes in your life.

The path back to feeling positive and confident will be different for different people. If you're having trouble finding your path, start with your appearance.

Now is the time to erase signs of sun damage

Now that cooler temperatures have arrived and the sun has slipped behind clouds, our tans are fading. Our winter skin is showing all of the after-effects of the sun-brightened skin that we enjoyed in the summer.

When you look in the mirror, you're probably not seeing a smooth bright even-toned complexion.

You're probably seeing brown spots -- sun spots -- known by the medical term solar lentigos. Sun spots foreshadow worse damage to come in the future. And they contribute to aging your appearance now.

You may be seeing redness, ranging from a diffuse flush to patches of broken capillaries.

The surface texture of your skin is likely to be roughened. My skin used to be so rough from sun damage that I gave up on wearing makeup because it looked mealy on my skin. I needed foundation to even out my blotchy skintone but I couldn't get it to go on properly.

And of course, we can thank the sun for many of the wrinkles and lines on our face -- both from squinting against the sun and also from damage to the collagen and elastin in our skin leading to the network of fine lines that we see as we age.

When someone comes to see me about sun damage, my recommendations depend on the individual's age, goals and budget, as well as the company that the sun damage is keeping.

So the basic treatment that addresses specifically the brown sun spots is the Intense Pulsed Light treatment (IPL), also known as the photofacial. By strict definitions, this is not a laser although many people refer to it as such.

In the upcoming series of articles, I will address sun damage and the factors that influence my recommendations for treatment. Depending on the situation, I might recommend skincare alone, chemical peels, or fractionated laser or any combination of these treatments, with or without IPL.

There's method in my madness and I'm trying to tailor the treatment to best suit the individual.

Fix droopy eyelids without surgery

We often think of droopy lids as simply a cosmetic problem, but for sufferers they are more.


Not only do they have to put up with constant inquiries about their sleeping habits and apparent lack of energy, the lids actually press on the eyelids making the eyes themselves tired.

Nicola, our Director of Business Development is a case in point.

When she started working here in November her eyes were quite hooded (before picture, upper right). Since then she has had several pixel treatments and each time she is more and more thrilled with the lift she has regained (after picture, below).

"Instead of falling down like a curtain, my lids are following the contour of my brow bone. I look brighter, can apply my make up easier and best of all I don't suffer from the constant pressing on my eye balls that made it hard to work at the computer."

If you've been thinking about doing something with your lids, now is the perfect time to try out a Pixel treatment as part of our Summer Tasting Menu.

With little downtime and far less risk and cost than surgery it might be just the solution to your hooded lids.

This article is reprinted from our newsletter of July 2, 2009. Subscribe to our newsletter by clicking on the big pink button in the upper right hand corner.

Latest trends in bikini grooming from Europe

A lot of my bikini hair removal clients are still asking for a brazilian, meaning everything off.

That's why I was interested to read on this Irish blog that more and more European women are choosing a well-groomed triangle rather than baring all.

The latest stats for Harley Medical’s Dublin clinic reveal that eight out of ten gals getting laser hair removal for their bikini line now prefer a little more coverage - a classic V-shape, to be precise. And why is it called the Sicilian? Well, that’d be to do with the fact that its shaped like the home of the Mafia, fact fans.

I saw the same trend on La Mom, the blog of an American woman in Paris.

Both articles are pretty cute and the comments are hilarious.

It will be interesting to see if North American women continue to prefer the brazilian or make the switch to the "classic T."

Older job seekers: Make your age a non-issue

If you're jobless and aged over 55 years, you're probably having a difficult time being considered for a new job, let alone actually getting it.

The US Department of Labor's statistics published in June show that unemployment rates for those over 55 are the highest they've been since 1948, 7%. And older workers remain jobless for far longer than younger workers.

...unemployed workers 55 or older were jobless an average of nearly 30 weeks, compared with about 21 weeks for those under 55. That gap has widened during the recession: In 2006, it averaged only six weeks.

The prejudices that younger supervisors have against older employees include the fear that the worker is more likely to injure himself on the job, for instance by falling, more likely to require more sicktime and less likely to have new ideas or be up on new technology.

Many job-seekers are adjusting their resumes to exclude dates, and sometimes cutting out certain experience or qualifications that indicates age or over-qualification.

Another strategy is to erase some of the signs of aging in the face so the interviewer will accept you as 10 or 20 years younger than your actual age.

In our recent 10 Years Younger in Burlington program, we performed a variety of treatments to reduce signs of aging all on the same day on the winner and 4 runners-up.

Each treatment requires some healing time before you see the final results so doing all of the treatments on the same day meant that everything had healed 1 week later. All of the ladies who underwent the treatments felt that it was very tolerable to have light and laser treatments as well as Botox and Juvederm injections on the same day.

You can see the results for each one by clicking on their links: Margaret, Celeste, Kathy M, Kathy P and Christine.

For all the male job seekers out there, don't be put off that these stories are all about women. I have written about how celebrities are getting laser and filler treatments to stay looking young here and here, and I have also shown how restoring the cheeks can take 10 - 20 years off a man's face here.

The approach to the male face has to be quite different from the female face to avoid feminizing the features. My techniques for men are all directed at keeping you looking masculine, handsome and ageless.

I strongly urge you to come and see me at Advanced Rejuvenation so we can talk about your specific issues and the best treatments to make you look younger and more vital. Call 905-340-0401 for an appointment.

Joan Rivers, can we talk?

I've been meaning to write about Joan Rivers for a long while now but, frankly, I had trouble finding a good quality photo of her before she had any plastic surgery done.

Joan is an excellent model for showing how our ideas about cosmetic medicine and surgery have changed over the years.

In the photo on the left above, Joan is in her early 50s and already had a facelift. Joan's now 76, so this was taken around 25 years ago, before Botox and hyaluronic acid fillers were available though collagen injections were available then. In a classic facelift, lax facial muscles were cut and shortened to tighten them up and excess skin was cut out and the remainder pulled tighter over the framework of the face.

With a classic facelift, you get the very high brows and the tight skin of the lower face. Her hairline appears well behind the ears and her eyes pull into a bit of a slant. It looks like the framework of her facial bones has the skin stretched taut over it.

This photo (right) shows Joan before the facelift. You can see that her brows were lower and drooping at the outer ends. Her lower face was fuller with the fullest part of her cheek was down near the level of her upper lip.

So, comparing these photos of Joan Rivers in her 40s and 50s, we can see that in earlier years, the thinking in plastic surgery circles about reversing signs of aging was all about tightening.

The more recent photo of Joan (top right) shows that our new ideas about looking younger are all about volumizing.

As we age, everything shrinks -- the bones and muscles of the face. The skin loses collagen and elastin and becomes thinner and more lax. The fat pads in the face shrink and move downwards -- that's why Joan's cheeks were fullest at the level of her upper lip in the earliest photo.

In the most recent photo of Joan, her cheeks are fuller than they were after the facelift. This is probably from injections of dermal fillers like Juvederm or Teosyal. The cheeks can also be volumized with Sculptra.

Her jaw is wider. They have built up the jaw either with surgical implants or filler or Sculptra.

Her nose looks smaller. I suspect that this is because the tissues around the nose have been revolumized rather than another nose job.

As we age, our noses appear to get bigger because the tissues around them are receding. When I do a Sculptra treatment, I make sure to restore the tissues around the nose so the nose goes back into proportion. I explain this idea in more depth with photos here.

She has dermal fillers like Juvederm or Teosyal in her lips to keep them looking soft and full, and in the lines from nose to mouth and mouth to jawline building up the tissues in this area and making them look more youthful.

In a lot of ways, Joan Rivers looks softer and more youthful now than she did 25 years ago. Sadly, she will always have the stretched-taut appearance of her brows and eyes from the earlier plastic surgery.

The stars who are hitting their 40s now are avoiding the characteristic facelift appearance by keeping the skin tight with fractionated laser treatments like our Pixel and maintaining the volume in their face with injectables.

In this day and age, you really don't need a facelift to look younger and better.

This article is reprinted from our newsletter of March 23, 2009. To subscribe, click on the big pink button in the upper right-hand corner.

Hot News: EWG 2009 Report on Sunscreens

Is your sunscreen working for you? Are you and your family truly protected from harmful UVA and UVB rays? Are any of the components of your sunscreen potentially harmful?

Now you can get the answers to these questions and more from a not-for-profit expert team called the Environmental Working Group (EWG). Their annual report on sunscreens was published online yesterday.

You can read it for yourself by clicking here.

Last year's report was harshly critical of many of the most popular brands of sunscreen, like Banana Boat, Neutrogena and Coppertone. The report stated that only 29% of sunscreens had UVA protection. The sunscreen industry is listening and this year 71% of products include UVA protection.

EWG ranks products according to effectiveness and safety.

Some sunscreen chemicals break down very quickly when exposed to the sun's rays so a compound that seems stable in the laboratory may be useless in the real world.

Certain compounds and/or delivery systems may be harmful. For instance, zinc oxide is an excellent and safe broad spectrum protectant in a cream or lotion form but could be harmful if inhaled so should not be used as a spray.

Wanna know what's on EWG's Top 10 List? Click here.

For your convenience, you can purchase the #1 Recommended Sunscreen Soleo Organics Sunscreen Organic chemical free sunscreen, SPF 30+, and 2 more recommended products: UV Natural Sunscreen, SPF 30+
and Obagi Nu-Derm Physical UV Block, SPF 32 at our online store.

Our online store is certified Hacker Protected and Verified Secure for worry-free internet shopping. You can pay using VISA, MasterCard, Amex, Discover, PayPal, and Google Payments.

Be confident that the sunscreen you're using is effective and safe by choosing a product recommended by the EWG 2009 Sunscreen Guide.

Why did this woman almost die from botox?

Front-page news: Botox injection nearly kills woman. Yesterday's Hamilton Spectator trumpeted the news.

Does this mean that everyone who decides to smooth out a few wrinkles is risking a brush with death? Not at all.

Let's look at what happened: Francine Giacomelli, a 25-year old woman who lived confined to a wheelchair because of severe cerebral palsy had botox injections into her thighs, hips and back to improve the function of those muscles and reduce pain.

Botox acts as a mucle relaxant, making a huge difference in conditions of severe muscle spasticity.

In this poor woman's case, she experienced side effects from the spread of the botox so that it affected the muscles that control the eyelids and her swallowing function. She will gradually regain control of these muscles when the botox wears off but it could take months.

What about botox treatments for wrinkles?

There's a vast difference between the way botox is used for cosmetic treatments and medical conditions.

Botox for cosmetic use is much more concentrated, meaning that it won't travel or diffuse any distance from where it is injected. We are targeting tiny facial muscles and we want the botox to stay put.

For medical conditions, particularly those involving large muscles, the botox is diluted so that it will diffuse into the muscle. This is a good way of dealing with large muscles but it carries the risk that the botox will spread beyond the target muscle to other areas.

The dose that we use for a tiny little facial muscle is much smaller than what is needed for a big gluteal or quadriceps muscle.

When I did our Fabulous Five in the 10 Years Younger in Burlington program, the most that I put into any one woman (targeting every single facial muscle that I wanted to) was around 75 units. Not one of these ladies experienced symptoms of the botox spreading to another area.

In contrast, a lot of these medical treatments for severe spasticity start at 100 units and go up from there. I don't know how many units this woman was given but an estimate for treating 3 large muscle groups, both left and right sides, would be a minimum of 120 units and probably a lot more.

Botox for cosmetic use in the face is very safe. There has never been a report of an allergic reaction or a death with true BOTOX® Cosmetic from Allergan.

Medical botox, on the other hand, carries risks related to the dose required, the size of the patient (the number of units per kilogram body weight is higher in children and small adults) and the part of the body being treated. However if you google botox and cerebral palsy, you will find countless reports of children and adults who experienced huge improvements in their lives, thanks to this new treatment.

I wish Francine a speedy and safe recovery.