WHAT CAUSES FACIAL AGING AND HOW TO PREVENT AGE CHANGES? WHAT APPROACHES TO SKIN CARE WILL BE DEMANDED IN THE COMING SOON? IS IT DECIDED TO DECIDE ON SERIOUS PLASTIC OPERATIONS, OR CAN IT BE DONE BY NON-INVASIVE METHODS? ALL THESE QUESTIONS WE ADDRESSED TO A FAMOUS PLASTIC SURGEON, DOCTOR OF SCIENCES AND THE MEDICAL DIRECTOR OF THE CLINIC CACOONA CLINIC SANZHA PARASHARA, WHICH MORE THAN WILL BE TROUBLED.
Let's start with the most important thing. What factors cause skin aging?
Dr. Sanjay Parashar: Facial skin aging primarily begins with volume loss. The worst thing is when we lose weight, as it immediately affects the face. With weight loss, dips appear on the face, especially under the eyes. And the dark circles under the eyes are the first sign of age-related changes, which immediately adds you a few years. Then the area around the nose and lips sags, then the cheekbones, cheeks, then the line of the lower jaw, then the neck. The next factor accelerating aging is solar radiation. Studies of twins were conducted, one of which sunbathed a lot, the other did not. And the difference in how they looked was 15 years. That is, one looked at 65, the other at 50 (studies were conducted when both were 55 years old). So you need to protect yourself from the sun. The worst thing is to sunbathe in direct sunlight. But you need to consider that the sun affects you even indirectly when, for example, you are driving. Not so aggressive, of course, but the impact is still happening.
The third factor accelerating aging is smoking. Firstly, it leads to the drying out of the skin, and secondly, collagen is destroyed, so wrinkles in smokers appear quite early. And smoking a hookah is even more harmful, since the amount of nicotine that you inhale for half an hour or an hour while smoking a shisha is much more than when you smoke a cigarette.
There are also factors such as genetically determined skin type. People with white skin, belonging to the European race, to the Nordic or Scandinavian type, have thinner skin (skin type 1, 2, 3). People living in the Middle East and Asia have a skin type of 3, 4, 5. And, unfortunately, despite all the beauty of white skin, signs of aging appear on it earlier.
In the Middle East, the first signs are noticeable only after 35, 40, and even 50 years, while owners of white skin can notice the first wrinkles after 25. The thinner the skin, the faster it fades.
In this case, the aging process of the skin occurs not only superficially, but also at the internal level?
Dr. Sanjay Parashar: Yes, the superficial aging process manifests itself in the form of wrinkles - first expression lines, then, after 40-45 years - deep, which are visible even when the face is relaxed. The next step is sagging skin under the influence of gravity. Ptosis occurs, brylls form, and deep folds appear around the nose and lips. And then the internal aging process begins - the resorption (degradation) of the bones of the facial skeleton, due to which the temporal bones are narrowed, the projection of the upper jaw decreases, and the lower jaw bones, on the contrary, expand, the bone skeleton of the nose changes (the nose becomes longer). Atrophy of the soft tissues occurs, the muscles thin out. Of course, this process is very slow and does not happen on the same day, but it affects the contours and volume of the face. The process of bone resorption is continuous and little can be done with it.
Today, many are obsessed with a healthy lifestyle, go to the gym, run, diet. And you say that losing weight immediately affects the face not for the better - dark circles appear under the eyes, which immediately add several years. What to do?
Dr. Sanjay Parashar: The most important thing is to maintain a stable weight. I do not urge you to stop losing weight, I just want to say that a strong loss of body weight will immediately affect your face. The most correct - maintaining weight at the same level. In this case, you can continue to strengthen the muscles with various exercises. A study was also conducted on the twins, one of whom was intensely involved in sports and had an excellent figure, the other was not involved in sports. At the same time, the second looked much younger than his athletic twin in every sense - somewhere around ten years old. So draw conclusions. Everything is good in moderation. After 40 years, it is recommended to maintain a body mass index at a stable level (without sharp fluctuations) or even slightly above normal. And in no case do not lose weight dramatically. Nature itself calls us to a rational balance.
And you need to play sports constantly, throughout your life. Many, having lived up to 35 years without sports, suddenly begin to work hard for 4 hours a day. For the body, this is stress, which will certainly affect your appearance. Plus, when playing sports, you must follow certain rules - drink water, eat right. After all, many exhaust themselves with physical exercises and at the same time eat very little. This is the worst for the body. We need to eat in sufficient quantities, because during exercise we damage muscles and we need protein to restore them. The best protein is natural. These are eggs, then white meat, then only red. It is in that order.
But what about the scientific evidence that the less you eat, the longer you live?
Dr. Sanjay Parashar: Everything is correct, the way it is. With age, the amount of calories consumed should decrease slightly. For example, if at 30 you consumed, say, 2000 calories, then after 40 it is better to reduce calorie intake to 1800. Our body just does not need so much food. Moreover, food intake should take place intermittently for about 3-4 hours, no less.
Let's get back to purely aesthetic issues. Is it possible to remove the dark circles under the eyes?
Dr. Sanjay Parashar: The skin under the eyes is the thinnest on the entire face. There are no sweat glands, least of all blood vessels. When you lose weight, fat primarily leaves this area. Therefore, the skin around the eyes needs to be moisturized more intensely, using special creams. Well, of course, you can enter different fillers in this area to maintain volume. For example, introduce your own fat or hyaluronic acid. But there is a danger that these substances can be distributed unevenly and create tubercles. Therefore, at present, biofillers that are produced from your own plasma are gaining popularity. This revolutionary drug will be most in demand in the coming years and will surpass hyaluronic acid as a filler in popularity.
Tell us more about this.
Dr. Sanjay Parashar: We take your blood, put it in a special device that allows you to divide the blood into different layers. One of the resulting plasma layers contains growth factors. Then this solution is placed in a special device, where a gel is formed from it, which is then injected under the skin. So you get a natural filler that's perfect for you. Such a filler is more predictable than an adipose tissue filler. The whole procedure lasts about an hour. It doesn’t cost too much, because you get the raw materials from your own blood. Payment is only for the doctor’s work and blood separation technology.
Nowadays, the procedure for lip augmentation has become as familiar as botox therapy. What do you think about that?
Dr. Sanjay Parashar: With age, the lips lose their volume quite strongly, and not only the volume disappears, but also the clarity of the contours. In men, by the way, the volume of the lips decreases faster than in women, since women still follow them more, and any lipstick has a protective effect on the lips from the external environment. Significant age-related changes in the lips are after 40 years. So we doctors recommend starting to look after them as soon as possible. And if necessary, adjust. As long as it looks natural, it is acceptable. To date, nothing better than fillers for lip correction have not yet been invented. And here again, the biofiller is gaining popularity, which is excellent in holding for a year and even more and does not give tubercles, unlike hyaluronic acid. In addition, the biofiller itself produces collagen, so that it works all the time.
Today, going to any pharmacy, you can find a huge number of different medicinal supplements for skin rejuvenation - for example, the same collagen, elastin, biotin, carotene, hyaluronic acid. And all this in pills. Does it make sense to take them?
Dr. Sanjay Parashar: To date, there is no confirmed evidence that such tablets can give any significant effect, because most bioactive components are immediately destroyed in the stomach by acid. The only thing today recognized as effective is liquid collagen. But here it must be borne in mind that the effect gives only collagen of the 1st type. Therefore, always carefully study the ingredients that make up the product.
Also, today there is no confirmed scientific evidence that any pills can affect skin rejuvenation. All scientific experiments and studies that are conducted in the world are published on pubmed.com - this is a huge database of medical and biological publications created by the National Center for Biotechnological Information (NCBI). Anyone who knows English can gather a lot of useful information for themselves and thus protect themselves from marketing tricks from different manufacturers.
This also applies to face creams, which have been carefully researched by many scientific laboratories. In the end, it is believed that there are only 5 components that can benefit your skin. This is vitamin A (retinol), which fights wrinkles, vitamin C (tightens the skin), hydroquinone (eliminates pigmentation), any moisturizers (since the skin needs to be constantly moisturized) and, of course, UV protection. Therefore, you can use anything, but only these components will give an effect. And do not forget about natural ingredients - cucumber slices, tea bags, natural masks. No one has yet canceled their natural effect. Moreover, they do not have mineral oils, silicone and other chemical components, which are found in excess in any cream. This is real natural cosmetics.
A little philosophical question. Is facial beauty a symmetry?
Dr. Sanjay Parashar: I would say that beauty is the right proportion. And here no one has yet surpassed Fibonacci and the golden ratio principle. This is perhaps the only criterion for assessing facial beauty today. There are computer simulation programs that can show you your proportions. But in everyday life this is not so applicable and is more used in some pathological cases, diseases or injuries. But in my understanding, beauty is not so much perfection as the right combination of a pleasant appearance, a good soul and a beautiful body. Symmetry, of course, is also important. But nature conceived us so that the right and left parts of the face, including the eyes, eyebrows, nostrils, lips, will be different for almost any person. A slight asymmetry is normal. If the asymmetry reaches more than 35%, when it catches the eye of others, it can be corrected surgically.
Look at the models that go onto the catwalk today. Their appearance is sometimes far from perfect. About ten years ago, all models were very beautiful, but now they are all very different. This is done intentionally so that different people can identify with them. Beauty is an individual. This is how you comb your hair, how you serve yourself, how you talk, what you give to society. The criteria of beauty today are increasingly moving from purely aesthetic planes to purely social ones.
Interviewed by Irina Malkova
