Coping with Chronic Health Conditions: Tips

3 Unusual Non-Surgical Facelift Procedures

27 April 2015 by Freddie Cox

There are a lot of reasons to consider getting a facelift. Maybe you're just getting older and want to head off the sagging skin before it gets too severe, or maybe you've lost weight rapidly and are dealing with loose skin as a result. Either way, a facelift can help you look more like your old self and feel better too. But there are many different types of facelifts, and it can help to have an idea what kind of facelift procedure you're looking for. If you think that you might like a facelift if you could avoid surgery, take a look at three unusual facelift procedures that you've probably never heard of – one of them might be the right choice for you.

The Vampire Facelift

Despite the name, this facelift won't leave you looking like a character from True Blood, and it has nothing to do with pointy teeth. However, it does involve using human blood for your own benefit, which is probably where the name comes from. You don't need to go out and find a victim, though – the blood that the doctor will use to tighten up your face comes from your own body.

Your doctor will take a vial of your blood and use it to create a gel-like substance called platelet rich fibrin matrix. Then, the doctor will inject the substance back into various parts of your face, in a procedure similar to botox injections. The platelet substance fills out your face, smoothing out wrinkles and tightening loose skin. It's possible that using blood from your own body could be safer and lessen the likelihood of developing bumps or other irregularities underneath your skin.

Stem Cell Facelift

If you like the idea of using material from your own body instead of a synthetic injection, but think that using blood sounds a little too ghoulish, you may like the idea of a stem cell facelift instead. In this procedure, the doctor extracts fat from your body, and utilizes the stem cells within the fat to create a customized injection for your face.

These stem cell procedures are becoming popular choices for patients who want to stay out from under the knife, and who are looking for more permanent results than botox can provide. Like the vampire lift, the stem cell facelift is non-surgical and non-invasive, and unlike botox injections, which wear off in a few months and require patients to get new injections if they want to maintain the look, stem cell injections last. Think about the difficulty that you have getting rid of fat anywhere else in your body – unlike botox, it won't eventually be degrade and be absorbed into your bloodstream.  

Poker Facelift

Sometimes patients want facelifts for very specific reasons – for example, they want to look better for a big event, like a wedding or a high school reunion. And then there are those patients that need the facelift for the next poker tournament. While that may sound strange, there is logic to the idea.

Experienced poker players learn to read the faces of their opponents, looking for minute changes in facial expression, often called tells. The tells let players know when they're being bluffed. You may curl your lip slightly when you have a good hand, or your eyebrow may twitch when you have a good hand. You have limited control over these tiny facial movements; they happen involuntarily. If you could somehow stop them, you would increase your chances of winning.

Enter botox, which – in addition to smoothing out wrinkles – has a reputation for rendering faces somewhat expressionless, due to the injection's paralytic effect on facial muscles. At least one doctor is offering strategically placed injections for poker players, in a procedure sometimes referred to as pokertox.

Of course, in addition to these procedures, you also have the option of more traditional surgical facelifts – there are also several varieties of those to choose from. If you have a good idea of what you're looking for and why, a doctor at a site like http://www.myplasticsurgerygroup.com can help you decide which facelift procedure is right for your face. 

Share

Search