The Anatomical Changes of Facial Aging
You can usually estimate someone’s age with a momentary glance at their face. How? It’s because our brains associate certain facial proportions, shadows, tone, and skin texture with general age ranges.
Babies and children have smooth facial contours and evenly colored skin without shadows. Older people’s faces develop depressions that cause shadows, sagging, and rough or irregularly colored skin. Firm highly elastic skin eventually becomes flaccid and thin, with enlarged blood vessels, brown spots, and bumpy growths.
Volume Loss in the Aging Face
Much of what produces the three-dimensional changes that make our youthful triangular-shaped faces become grim rectangles when we get older is the loss of fat and bone that provide the framework for the skin. Our cheeks become our jowls and the skin that started on our jawlines ends up under our chins. To understand how much volume we’re losing from our face as we age, consider that we lose about 1 teaspoon of fat and bone each year after the age of 25 so that by the age of 50, we’ve lost about 1/2 cup.
Fat Loss
One of the many cruelties of aging is that we tend to lose fat from the upper and mid-face before losing it in the lower face. Research has shown that fat in the face is partitioned into two layers of separate compartments with the superficial fat pads on top of the muscles and the deep compartments below them.
The superficial fat provides both structure and a plane to allow the skin to glide over the structures below. Deep fat pockets provide the underlying structure for the skin over the bone. Different fat pads start shrinking at different ages.
The fat under our eyes starts to decrease the earliest, beginning in our twenties, and is followed in our thirties by the beginning of the loss of fat in the temples and parts of the cheeks. The superficial fat tends to persist unless there’s major weight loss. With the loss of deep fat, the superficial fat loses some of its underlying support and starts to sag.
Bone Loss
Besides fat, we also start losing facial bone as we age, which is the frame upon which our facial fat, muscle, and skin are suspended. Like fat, some bony areas shrink faster than others, especially around the eye sockets, under the nose, around the mouth and chin, and the back of the jawline. The bony resorption in these areas combined with fat loss is why we develop the appearance of bags under our eyes and jowls.
Loose Facial Ligaments and Thinning Skin
Facial ligaments also play an important role in facial aging. Facial ligaments are fibrous bands of tissue between the fat pads that connect the skin to the bone or muscles and hold the skin in place. As the fat pads shrink, the ligaments pull on the sagging skin and cause depressions or grooves between the fat compartments. These grooves break up the previously smooth contours of the youthful face into the hills and valleys associated with an aged face.
With aging, the skin may thin up to 80%, its texture becomes rougher and it loses elasticity, especially in sun-exposed areas. Oil glands produce less oil so the skin becomes drier and skin color looks more mottled as the pigment production becomes erratic. Blood vessels may become dilated and visible, especially around the nose. Skin cells turn over slower leading to dull, rough skin at the surface and growths like crusty seborrheic keratoses and cherry angiomas occur more commonly in older adults.
Facial Aging Reversal Treatments
So how do we reverse these changes to look more like the age we feel on the inside?
The Skinspirations 3D Strategy For Reversing Facial Aging
Skinspirations’ facial aging reversal treatments help repair the changes caused by aging.
Treatment Types
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Microneedling
Laser Resurfacing
Photodynamic Therapy
Plasma Fibroblasting
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Intense Pulsed Light (IPL)
Laser Vein Reduction
Chemical Peels
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Muscle Crease Relaxants
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Other Tightening Treatments (See Sagging Skin)
Only Trust Experts with Your Face
With over thirty different fillers available in the US, how does anyone know what the best choice is for their goals and unique anatomy? You don’t have to choose. That’s our specialty!
You can rely on the experienced clinicians at Skinspirations to help you decide on the best treatment options to help you reach your goals.
REQUEST A CONSULTATION
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“I am so happy I decided to go to Skinspirations. The office is beautiful. The staff is nice, professional, and accommodating. I’m so pleased with my results. Overall - 10/10.”
– Stephanie Sinclair
Facial Aging Reversal
The Skinspirations 3D Strategy For Reversing Facial Aging
Skinspirations’ facial aging reversal treatments help repair the changes caused by aging. Most of the changes we see in our faces as we age are due to a combination of:
Fat and bone volume loss
Repetitive muscle movements leading to permanent creases or wrinkles
The loss of skin elasticity and thickness
Textural and pigmentation changes from cumulative sun damage
Age-related fat and bone loss produces 3-dimensional changes that require a 3-D solution
Repairing the changes caused by aging in the face can loosely be compared to remodeling an old house, with an older face often requiring treatments to restore every level from the foundation up to the roof. A younger face, in comparison, may only need the equivalent of a new coat of paint.
The Foundation
The facial bones provide the baseline structure that supports the overlying muscles, fat, and skin of your face, and parts of them start shrinking by the time you turn thirty. Replacing lost volume at the bone level lifts the overlying muscles, fat, and skin and is the best first step toward rejuvenating an aging face.
Sculptra® is a tissue stimulant that when injected under the muscles, builds up the foundation to make the canvas again fit the frame. Thicker dermal fillers like Juvederm® Voluma®, Restylane® Lyft, and Radiesse® can also be placed strategically to replace lost bone volume.
The Walls
Correcting facial sagging from shrinking fat compartments can be done with multiple dermal fillers and stimulants as well as with a transfer of fat from somewhere else on your body. As volume is restored to the fat compartments, the skin fills out and lifts up the tissue below it, providing a 3D improvement.
The Roof
Fractionated ablative laser resurfacing like Profractional, Microneedling, Photodynamic Therapy, and Plasma Fibroblasting are all methods that replace aged skin with brand new skin that has a fresher, younger-looking texture. Relaxing facial muscles whose repetitive contractions cause wrinkles can be done with neuromodulator treatments like Botox.
Details
Once the foundation and walls are in place, softer dermal fillers can fill any remaining wrinkles and lines. Decreasing and then preventing wrinkles that have developed from repetitive muscle movements, like smiling and frowning, is done every 3-4 months, usually, with muscle relaxant treatments like Botox Cosmetic.
Paint
Discoloration caused by pigment can be corrected with IPL, chemical peels, and sometimes simply with products. Our estheticians will be happy to recommend skincare treatments based on your skin type and concerns. Laser Vein Reduction will remove any visible veins and underlying redness.
If you’re new to cosmetic treatments this may seem like an overwhelming amount of information but we want you to understand the rationale behind our suggestions. We are not trying to pressure you into building a house. We recommend that most clients start with just a little remodeling.
Only Trust Experts with Your Face
You can rely on the experienced clinicians at Skinspirations to help you decide on the best treatment options to help you reach your goals.
REQUEST A CONSULTATION
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“I have been going to Skinspirations for years. Dr Elliott and her staff of providers are simply the best. Love my facials, my thread lifts and Daxxify….it lasts 6 months or more. Highly recommend them.”
– Janet Mistretta