When was the last time you saw a really gaunt face and said, “wow, she looks great?”  Doesn’t happen.  Just look at babies and you can appreciate this.

But I continue to repeat this because I see women during consultations who want me to remove facial fat.  It’s just not smart unless you don’t mind coming back in a few years, spending several thousand dollars more and having fat replaced.  I do need to pay the bills so I guess that’s okay.  NOT!  So let’s talk about where the fat needs to be for the face to appear youthful.  Specific areas that tend to need fat are the temples, cheeks and jawline.

In the upper face, the lateral brow/temporal region is a common area of fat loss.  Fat loss here can accentuate the orbital rims.  In the most severe cases the eyes will take on a skeletonized appearance.  Fat grafting in this region is essential but can be tricky.  The nerve that controls the frontalis muscle or forehead muscle runs through this area.  So care must be taken to keep the fat in different planes, including under the muscle but with limited trauma to the nerve.  With micro fat grafting the results will dramatically enhance the patient’s periorbital youthfulness.

The cheeks are a major area to exhibit facing aging.  As a person ages, his or her skin becomes thinner, the fat atrophies and the underlying structural tissues weaken, leading to cheek descent and accentuation of the lid cheek junction as well as the orbital region.  Again this can lead to a skeletonized appearance.  Worse yet the eyes, which are the focal point of the face and exhibit aging sooner than other areas, can appear even older with loss of cheek fat.  Micro fat injection of the cheeks from the nose, across the lower lids, to the lateral cheek bones and down to a line from the corner of the mouth in multiple planes will dramatically reduce the appearance of aging.

Finally the jawline, although not considered a primary location of aging, can show the thinning and descent of facial tissue.  Again micro fat grafting along the super part of the jawline can add facial width and youth.

So let’s end by repeating the mantra again: “fat is youth,” “fat is youth.” Call Katie at 703.752.6608 or click here to set up your consultation for micro fat grafting.

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