Everybody wants to know how can you have the results of the facelift without going under the knife.
Well I’ve got the secrets for you in this article on how you can get the results of a facelift or close to it without surgery.
As we get older, both men and women, we get droopiness of our face and our neck.
The first thing you want to consider, especially if you’re younger, is a retinol moisturizer. If I were to pick one
anti-aging cream that everybody should use is a retinol moisturizer.
If you’re younger, if you’re in your 20s, your 30s and your 40s and you are just starting to notice a little bit of looseness, start by applying a retinol moisturizer. Apply it every night as long as your skin is tolerating it. If you get some redness or some dryness, try stick with it if you can because typically that reaction will subside.
What’s the next step?
If you’re on the younger side and you’re starting to notice things getting a little bit loose, there are radiofrequency treatments that many salons across the country have. They are completely painless and non-invasive.
These radiofrequency treatments heat the deeper skin to a certain temperature to cause a collagen in the skin to tighten up. The great thing about these treatments is that they’re mild, they’re not super expensive and sometimes you get them done for a couple hundred dollars for a treatment. There’s no downtime with it and you can definitely see and feel some changes.
But the negative is it’s not super powerful. If you’ve got a lot a lot of drooping, then don’t waste your money on radiofrequency. This is for people who are in their 30s and 40s and they’re looking for some mild tightening, just to get them maintained what they have and maybe get things a little bit tighter.
If that’s not quite working and you want to take the step up from that, then I would encourage you looking into a fractional laser and most skin care companies have some brand of fractional laser.
What these lasers do is that they target the deeper skin by lasering or heating it up. It’s a bit more invasive or a bit more painful and aggressive than the radiofrequency treatments. But with the more aggressiveness, you get a bit more tightening.
So if you’re in your 40s and if you’re in your early 50s and you don’t want surgery and you want something that’s pretty fairly quick and easy, not super painful, than a fractional laser may be a good option for you.
Is Vaseline Good For Your Face?
For a non ablative fractional laser the downtime is typically less than a day. It is a great laser for just getting some mild tightening, more than what we can get with radiofrequency, but not as aggressive as some of these next treatments.
Another option is to inject Botox into the platysmal bands. Botox is the most common and most popular cosmetic treatment in the country.
For those people who say I’ve got these bands in my neck that move when I talk, Botox is a great non-surgical way to do it.
So what they typically do is inject Botox right into those bands. They typically inject it about every centimeter or so all the way down the band for a total of anywhere from 10 to 15 units of Botox.
By injecting it into those bands, it weakens the muscle that creates those bands and in a lot of cases, it can cause the neck to smooth out in those bands to soften.
When they don’t work as if there’s a lot of loose skin around it, because that loose skin takes over and whether the muscle is relaxed or not, you’ve got that hanging.
This is great for people who have reasonably good tight skin but they’ve got these bands that they just don’t like, then Botox is a great thing to try. It lasts about three to four months.
Now we’re getting a little more aggressive.
If you are in your 40s or your 50s and you really want to get some definite tightening but I don’t want to have surgery, then microneedling with radiofrequency is that next step up.
There are two well known brands: Fractora and Vivace. If you’ve ever had microneedling, basically these little needles that go into your skin, it’s the same thing but those needles are supercharged with radiofrequency to also create heat after it goes into the skin.
By creating that heat like a fractional laser, it can help that skin and the collagen to tighten up. This can create some redness, it can be fairly uncomfortable, so usually topical anaesthetics are used for it. But doctors are finding that they can get some reasonable tightening with it.
Once again, this is good for somebody who’s in their 40s and maybe early 50s and are looking for some non-surgical tightening.
Then we have Ultherapy. If you don’t want surgery and want to know what is the most aggressive way to non-invasively tighten your neck, then I would say it’s probably Ultherapy.
It utilizes ultrasound energy to heat up the deep skin to cause that skin to tighten up.
All of these, whether it’s radiofrequency, lasers or microneedling with radiofrequency, they all function by creating heat into the deeper skin to cause the collagen to tighten. Ultherapy does it with ultrasound.
Ultherapy doesn’t work in everybody. The satisfaction rate isn’t a hundred percent, but it’s about as aggressive as you can get.
The other thing with Ultherapy is it can be fairly painful for some people. Because it’s not treating the surface of the skin like the other treatments are, there’s no way to really numb it up and so it can be fairly uncomfortable for people.
Ultherapy sometimes is done under a sedation but if you don’t want any invasiveness but you want some tightening, Ultherapy may be worth a look.
Now we’re getting into a little more invasive.
If you don’t want an actual facelift but you are okay with a surgical procedure, then FaceTite is probably the best thing.
What this procedure does basically is you make an incision typically in the chin and a tiny probe goes under the surface of the skin as well as on top of the skin to heat the skin from the inside out.
These other treatments that I’ve talked to you about are all heating it from the outside in. FaceTite heats the skin both on the inside and on the outside as well and so it’s that one-two punch that can get more tightening than Ultherapy and these other treatments that I mentioned.
But it is surgery, it’s not a facelift and it’s quite expensive because the device itself is very expensive to purchase. If you’re wanting to get some tightening of your neck and you’re open to spending a good amount of money, then FaceTite may be an option for you.
When is a facelift your best option?
Even though I’ve given you a lot of options, sometimes the only real option is to go under the knife to treat your issues.
FaceTite is your best option when you’ve got so much loose and hanging skin that those other treatments aren’t going to do it.
Unfortunately it really does take an experienced board-certified plastic surgeon to really be able to tell you can you get with FaceTite what you’re looking for or are you gonna be able to get with Ultherapy what you’re looking for or should you just go with the facelift.
What I would tell you is if you’ve got severe jolly, if you’ve got a lot of loose skin that is hanging, then those other treatments are unlikely to be powerful enough to get you a sharp jawline.
They may get you some tightening and if that’s all you need, then that’s fine, but if you’re looking for a sharp jawline, if you look in the mirror and you say this is the only thing that’s gonna make me happy and you’re seeing everything move up, then it’s definitely possibly the facelift is your best option.
Rebecca is a licensed aesthetician and certified laser technician with almost 15 years experience in the dermatology. Her life-long passion is making people look good and happy.