Getting older can be depressing, especially if we like to reminisce how youthful we looked then versus now. If you thought the boob sag was the most concerning past childbirth or past our 30s, well guess what, gravity works against our faces before it even begins to draw your nipples to your waistline. “Our skin starts the aging process as early as our early 20s. First it loses water and becomes thinner, and then you start losing volume in terms of fat, bone and even muscle, making your skin sag around your jawline as if it is a piece of thin chiffon blouse drapped over a hanger”, says Dr Michelle Lim, Medical Aesthetics Consultant at the SW1 Clinic. Until recently, the surgical facelift was the only way to go if you wanted to do anything to lift it. Today, give Dr Michelle any of the following and she can help you restore your jawline to its youthful tightness, without anyone knowing.
1. Dissolve The Fluff
According to the experts, one of the first things to happen when the face starts to sag is a displacement of fat. Double chins are the worst culprits of the jawline doing it’s slow disappearing act and causes of skin aging which dismantles the stoic architecture of young skin such as smoking, sun exposure, alcohol consumption and poor diet choices add on to the insult. To relieve yourself of the fatty fluff which you should definitely first lose, try Lipodissolve, a nifty injection of a fat dissolver that breaks down fat cells – forever. The other good thing about fat dissolving of the double chin area is that this will relieve your skin of some weight and result in less skin sagging in the long run. Up to 6 treatments can be required, but this is a fantastic non-invasive alternative to a vaser (liposuction) rod in your neck, if you are as terrified of how that sounds as I do.
Lipodissolve : from $500 per treatment
2. Plump It Up
Contrary to what most people think, one of the cardinal signs of aging in the face is deflation. Parts of the face loses fat and sinks, while remaining fat slides over facial ligaments, resulting in stronger facial lines, such as the nasolabial fold. According to Dr Michelle, one of her favourite treatments for such faces is to replace the volume loss with a filler cheek lift. The immediate volume replacement returns a youthful contour to the face. When the cheek lift is sufficient, it can even modestly lift the sagging skin at the jawline. Just don’t get too excited or you might result in looking too cheeky (pun intended).
Volume High Definition Lift: from $1400 per treatment
3. Soften Your Bite
If you grind your teeth in your sleep, chances are you have strong chewing muscles. Relaxing those muscles with a small Botox injection will soften those muscles and you go from square-faced to a tapered new V within a few weeks. These last between 4 to 6 months and if done on schedule, can last approximately 8 to 9 months past 3 or 4 injections.
Botox Jaw: Around $1000 a pop if Botox is used. Enquire more about pricing here.
4. Make Your Skin Work Harder
One of the main culprits of loose, saggy skin is sluggish production of intrinsic collagen. To jumpstart this (or should I say, wake the h*ll up), try these cutting edge non-invasive skin tightening treatments.
Ultherapy is a novel, non-invasive skin lifting procedure. Using ultrasound energy, it heats up approximately 4.5mm beneath the surface of the skin – a collagen-rich layer to induce a productive wound-healing response, without disturbing the topmost layer of the skin. This results in a natural skin lifting effect as your skin regenerates new and higher-quality collagen over the next 3 to 6 months. Results are expected to last up to 12 months or longer. The catch is, there are some Ultherapy knock-offs in the market which have not undergone the same rigorous testing, so avoid these at all cost as not only have they been known to have poor results, there have also been reports of skin burns.
By contrast, Thermage (another age old but gold procedure) uses radiofrquency energy to heat the skin more superficially, but also without any downtime. The SW1 Clinic has an interesting approach, which Dr Michelle shared during her interview with me. By heating up both deep and superficial more superficial layers of the skin, you are stimulating a facial uplift and a pore-to-pore tightening effect at the same time. This 3D facelifting procedure is known as their award-winning Trinity Facelift.
Honestly, all these without even a pin pick? Jocelyn Wildenstein would have killed for this 40 years ago.
The SW1 Clinic has an interesting approach, which Dr Michelle shared during her interview with me. By heating up both deep and superficial more superficial layers of the skin, you are stimulating a facial uplift and a pore-to-pore tightening effect at the same time. This 3D facelifting procedure is known as their award-winning Trinity Facelift.
Trinity Facelift: Enquire price here.
5. String It And Lift It
A bio-dissolvable thread with tiny anchors are inserted under the skin with a long-ish needle (usually blunt) is how the Silhouttte and Infinity Instalift theadlift works. Not really for the faint-hearted I admit, but this is the amazing lift for saggy faces which need some heavy lifting. Some doctors prefer to numb the face under the skin (where the needle and threads will go) by introducing a layer of diluted numbing solution, so it can really be quite pain-free if done by an experienced doctor. Once inserted, the tiny anchors “catch” onto the skin beneath and your doctors artistically “models” the contour you need, placing skin strategically back to where it was 5 or even 10 years ago, resulting in an immediate face lift, sans scalpel!
Small tip – some artistic imagination and good hands required for this, so make sure you really choose the right person to do this lifting for you. And, some clinics might promote with cheaper prices but the amount of lifting also boils down to the number of threads used. Ask about it!
Infinity Instalift and Silhouette Instalift: Around $4000 per treatment.
