REGENERATIVE AESTHETIC MEDICINE 

Youthology is based on “regenerative aesthetic medicine”. This means that whatever part of your body we are working on, we are going to essentially work on making your skin healthier and replacing collagen, elastin, and essentially fat. This approach treats the cause and the effect of the aging process and looks more balanced and natural than just treating the effect (what you notice while looking in the mirror). Aging starts around 23-25 years old, so we are all playing some sort of “catch-up”, but we don’t have to do it all at once! We usually have several approaches for each area of the body and we can help educate you on which would be better suited for your needs, skin, and body type. We do like to work gradually because subtle and ongoing usually looks better than rushed results. How gradual we work like this will essentially be either determined by your budget or by any time constraints (upcoming wedding). 

    

APPOINTMENTS 

If you are a new patient and are going to be making an appointment, please know that there is usually a little bit of a wait. This is because our patients follow with us routinely and have their appointments set for the foreseeable future. When you make your initial appointment, it is often beneficial to make follow up appointments. For example, if you come to us for Dysport on your forehead, you will need to be in every 4-6 months depending on how your body metabolizes it, or how you like your results to look. If you want to work on contouring or rejuvenating your face with collagen, biostimulators, or fillers, then you would make appointments based on how often you would want to do that. Because our products and approach lasts longer, you don’t need to come in as often!

Our general visits are called “facial contouring” appointments (see “why facial contouring” after this to learn more). Each facial contouring level is based on your budget. The length of time of the appointment and how much of your face we treat, directly correlates to the associated level. For example, if you need your lips and Dysport done (usually under $1,000) then you would book a Level I facial contouring appointment. If this is all you usually want, then you would just continue to book these. If you eventually want to add your undereyes or cheeks, and still need to do your Dysport and lips, then you would need to bump up your level to a level II facial contouring appointment. If you want to build out your jawline (usually $2,500-$4,000), but want to stay under a smaller budget (like $800), then you would book a Level I facial contouring appointment and book 2-3 Level I appointments after that in a timeframe that fits your budget and enables you to achieve the look you are going for. If you are trying to achieve a certain look by an event (wedding), then you would want to space out your appointments in a manor that would both fit your budget and that timeframe. 

During your appointments, we will take pictures of you with our 3D camera system and regular cameras to track your journey with us. Our computer system will help quantify your results by showing you different metrics. You can see volume changes, skin changes, symmetry, and progression. All of our appointments are scheduled to treat. We do not do face consultation appointments because we will essentially do a consultation with you during every appointment. 

If you have to wait a little bit for an appointment, use this time to educate yourself on the products that we use. This “For Beginners” page is a great resource, but we encourage you to call if you are confused! We also have videos on here and our social media platforms that you can reference.

As always, if this is confusing or if you are unable to read all of this, you can always call and one of our patient care coordinators will be glad to help! 

 

WHY FACIAL CONTOURING 

When it comes to the face, the products that we use are often combined. This is because we try to take a full-face approach on everyone. For example, if your undereyes look sunken in, sometimes you need to directly replace the volume lost, but other times you may benefit first from mid-face, temple, or cheek correction. We don’t expect you to know exactly what you need, that is our job to help guide you! We will go over concerns, options, and pricing with you before we inject you. Because of this, at youthology, most of our appointments are called “facial contouring” and not an “undereye filler” or “cheek filler” appointments.

 

SUBTLE AND ONGOING

With respect to all aesthetic products, you have to understand that they are not a lot of volume and are rather expensive. For example, a syringe of “filler” (hyaluronic acid jelly) is $600, but has the volume of a blueberry (1ml). 5 syringes of filler (5mls) would be equivalent to 1 teaspoon. If you are experiencing signs of aging due to volume loss (or volume loss due to weight loss, pregnancy, etc) imagine how many teaspoons of jelly or how many little blueberries of volume you would need to replace that amount of volume lost…the answer is A LOT!

Now, that being said, we understand that these products are expensive and that patients usually need more than they think to give them a balanced and natural looking result. That’s okay, we don’t need to do it all in one sitting. This is why we encourage you to make subsequent follow up appointments. We will build your results with you, over time, based on your goals and budget. The majority of our patients come to youthology every 4-6 months to either work towards their goal or maintain their results (see the “Appointments” section above). 

The facial contouring appointments have different levels to accommodate every budget. Our appointments are designed to guide you with the best way to achieve your goals in a balanced fashion. We do not always charge by the syringe, but we charge by how much of a syringe we use. For example, if we use 40% of a syringe to contour your chin, you would just pay for that 40%. If we use 1 or 5 products during your appointment, you don’t have to buy “syringes” of each product, we will just charge you for how much of each product we use and always stay within your budget. 

 

BIOSTIMULATORS

At Youthology, we mostly work with products called biostimulators. These products are different than traditional hyaluronic acid gel fillers and neurotoxins in that the not only replace volume lost through weight fluctuation, pregnancy, or aging, but they do directly affect the skin by building new, healthier tissue. Hyaluronic acid gels work mostly under the skin and do not do that much in terms of improving texture and tone. 

Bellafill is Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) infused in a bovine collagen gel matrix. This gel matrix will give you an “immediate” result while the PMMA gets converted by your body into collagen types I and III. The PMMA will convert into collagen over a several month to several year period and last 5-10 years. The initial bovine gel will be metabolized by your body over the first 2-3 months. Bellafill is used all over the body to build collagen, replace or build volume, and tighten skin/tissue.

Sculptra is Poly-L Lactic Acid  (PLLA) infused in Saline. Sculptra will not give you an immediate result because your body will absorb the saline over the first day or two. Your body will covert the PLLA into collagen types I and III over the next several months and lasts 2-10 years. Sculptra is used all over the body to build collagen, replace or build volume, and tighten skin/tissue.

 

BODY PROCEDURES DONE UNDER LOCAL ANESTHESIA 

Whether it is liposuction, skin tightening, or fat transfer, all of our body procedures are performed under local anesthesia. Some procedures are gentle enough that they do not require any anesthesia and are done comfortably with microcannulas. If a procedure requires anesthesia, we use Tumescent Lidocaine Anesthesia (TLA). 

TLA is infused directly into the area that is going to be treated and does not usually affect you mentally. Because of this, you are able to drive to and from your procedure with minimal downtime or restrictions. The amount of TLA that can be infused in a person is directly correlated with their weight. This is different from general anesthesia (GA) in the sense that you would not be able to do as big of a procedure under TLA as you would be able to do under GA. 

Because the TLA procedures are generally smaller, our approach to the body is often similar to our approach to the face. We can work over time to fine-tune the result that you desire with smaller procedures, or you can do more at once knowing that you would be limited by your weight and the amount of TLA that we can use. Sometimes we are not able to treat you this way because the result that you may desire would not be able to be achieved under TLA (ie if you have a BMI over 30 and want liposuction, the amount of fat that would need to be removed to usually give you the desired result would not be able to be removed safely under TLA and would have to be done under GA while you are being monitored). 

Because of all this, our body procedures do require an in-office or virtual consultation prior to being scheduled. We have a HIPPA-compliant and secure virtual consultation server for our body procedures.