The lasers and fillers sound all promising. These options can have some mild to moderate effects. I have done lasers and other acne scar revision treatment for over 16 years. No one treatment is going to treat all the scars of acne as a single modality. Hence over the past 16 years I’ve developed a combination approach that uses five to seven steps treat all types of acne scars. Fillers are temporary and may not be the solution. They are supposed to only last 6 months to 1-2 years. Also fillers cannot change the scars like other procedures do. I work with fillers many times before for ice packs, rolling, elevated and boxcar scars. Sometimes it can work but a lot of times it can actually make them look a lot worse especially with ice pick scars. And the reason is because the very tough scars or so scarred around them that the fillers tend to go around the scars instead of under them where they need it. I’ve seen that before and have tried that many times. We have a combination approach that uses five to seven steps and it’s all done in about 2 hours and it’s called the Acne Scar Vitalizer Treatment. This was developed over 15 years of experience with scarring and acne scarring.
Permanent Solutions to Acne Scars
September 1st, 2016Red Active Acne and some scars that are present
September 1st, 2016This is an answer for a patient that had red active acne and some scars as well:
“Well the good thing is that some of your scars are really just what appears to be active acne. Sometimes active acne can look like scarring and if you treat it your skin can get a lot better. I think if you control your active acne, I think your skin can be a lot better. You do have scars but they’re not as bad or nearly as bad as I’ve seen. You probably better than 80% compared to other people who have come to me. I would suggest doing aggressive skin care treatments. We can help you with this. After using aggressive skin care, we can see what you have left after you give that a full chance. We can see if some of these marks are really going to turn out to be scars that are permanent. You also want to see if you can control your diet and see what’s triggering the acne possibly. One way to do this is to do a food diary and see what is leading to your acne. I would look for worsening in a 4 or greater than a day period. So introduce new food every 3-4 days to see what could be the cause.”
Enlarged Pores and Acne Ice Pick Scars. Are they related and are the treatments the same?
September 1st, 2016Enlarged pores can act in the same way as ice pick scars. Ice pick scars respond much differently than other acne scars like elevated scars, box car and rolling scars. Ice pick are scars that look like they were made as a cast to make a needle. They are small tight and deep. Box car scars are side more open scars the size of at least more than 3-4mm in diameter. Rolling scars are areas of depressions creating a look of a rolling hillside. In my experience acne scars or more in the Superficial layers of the skin versus deeper layers that other scars involve. Although acne involves all layers of your skin and it can reach into the deeper layers even above your muscles, there’s certain specific treatments that work with certain types of scars. Some scars respond more to work in the deeper layer. Some scars like box car scars respond to certain methods that help ice pick and other methods that help more rolling scars. With ice pick scars you have to create controlled trauma to try to get it to raise up to the rest of levels skin. So there is an answer to try to help ice pick scars and enlarged pores and it’s by creating that trauma and we have done this before and have a lot of experience doing that. Here are links to specific treatments:
Acne Elevated White Hypopigmented Scars,
Acne Scar Vitalizer for Asian, Ethnic Skin
31 year old female with acne scars. Single mother and she wants to get results for the money that she is going to spend.
September 1st, 2016This is a questions I answered for a patient recently:
Your acne scars show some volume loss. You scars also show what we call rolling scars and maybe very wide boxcar scars. Any single approach is not likely to give you the best results like lasers, fillers, or deep chemical peels. You will definitely need some treatments in the deeper layers of your skin as well superficial treatments and this is where combination approaches help in getting the best results. We have an approach that uses five to seven steps that treats all the layers of your skin and that is done in about 2 hours. This can help you and we have done it before for people just like you. We have helped people with all different skin tones, and ages and different scars. This procedure is called the Acne Scar Vitalizer Treatment.
Large Pores from Acne Scars and Use of Retinoids
September 1st, 2016Large pores and scars from acne that are similar can be described as an ice pick scar. Ice pick scars respond differently than other acne scars like box car or undulating scars. Ice pick scars require that the skin be raised up to the rest of the level of the skin. What is required is controlled trauma from chemical peels or lasering to do this. The skin anatomy can explain some of the reasoning behind this. There are multiple layers in the skin.
Lip Augmentation Options Seattle Bellevue
August 5th, 2016Lip Augmentation Options Seattle Bellevue:
Having big lips can be really important for someone’s looks. Big doesn’t mean that increasing the size is going to do it all. You have to know the aesthetics. Based on Dr. Young’s Theory on Beauty. The upper lips should be 1/2 the colored part of the eye or iris. The lower lips should be 1 Iris Width. You can click here and read more about Dr. Young’s Theory on Beauty. The width of the pucker is also important. If you follow the links you can read more about Dr. Young’s theory. Essentially the pucker should be about the same width as the width of the eye. Why is the lips so important to aesthetics. The lips are the entrance to the mouth and oral cavity. It is associated with many elements of humans animalistic part of the body. The lips and mouth are associated with eating, yelling, biting, i.e. some of the most primitive elements of our body’s. When you enhance the lips you enhance someone’s animal sexuality.
There are temporary and permanent options. The main option for temporary lip augmentation are fillers. Permanent options include Permalip Silicone Implants, Lip VY Advancement, Lip Lifts, and Fat injections. you can click here to read more about these options: Lip Injections Augmentation of Seattle Bellevue.
Avoiding the Unnatural Look with Facelifts
June 24th, 2016Avoiding the Unnatural Look with Facelifts:
This is our post on how to avoid the unnatural looking facelift. (Click here to learn more about Facelifts)Why do people look unnatural with a facelift The biggest problem is likely found in our understanding of Aging. Previous thought has centered around the face dropping and hence pulling the face back has always been the solution. However, nowadays aging has been thought to be played or is due to more of a volume loss. And hence the volume loss to the face always makes the tissues of the face move in and down. But facelifts and traditional procedures have always pulled the face upwards and backwards which is the reversal of the Descent which is good. But it does not create the outward protrusion that is needed to more accurately reverse aging.
Facelifts are good at pulling back the jowls and creating a more v-shaped look in the face and it can improve the nasal labial folds and marionette lines to a degree. But to fully rejuvenate the face and some volumizing should be done throughout the whole face to get a more well rounded and more natural look. Here is more information on Facelifts Explanations and Options.
Here is a picture of a face and neck lift
This person looks great and this can help you if your jowls and neck are bad and you want to reverse the square look. To rejuvenate this person’s face more, we would suggest filling like this person. This person had the YoungVitalizer, The Incision Less Facial Rejuvenation:
The Facelift Incision: Pretragal, Post tragal, smokers, non smokers (Seattle, Bellevue)
June 23rd, 2016The Facelift Incision: Pretragal, Post tragal, smokers, non smokers
This is to help our Seattle, Bellevue Clients understand the facelift incision and when we us the pretragal versus posttragal incision. Below is a picture of the facelift incision. Click here if you want to learn more about Facelifts for our Seattle Bellevue Clients:
If you look carefully the incision goes behind the tragus. The tragus is the cartilage skin composite tissue that sits in front of the ear canal. You can take the incision either in front or behind that piece of tissue. Below is a close up of the incision. 
So when do you use the pretragal or in front of the tragus and do you go behind the tragus? The incision behind the tragus can be done for non-smokers and patients without peripheral vascular disease or diabetes. It should be reserved for the healthy patient with less chance of small vessel disease. The thought is that the tragus is an added distance from the blood flow and would be put at risk for skin death there if you were to put the incision behind the tragus. People with more chance of small vessel disease, we like to place the incision in the pretragal location or in front of the tragus. We like to find a wrinkle that is obvious or would be a good location for the incision. Many times, especially in men, there is a wrinkle in front of the ear that can serve as an obvious place to place the incision.
Below are some incisions of patients who had the same incision including the solid and dotted green lines that are shown above. Notice how these incisions hide very well for patients. You can learn more about facelifts in our Facelift Frequently Asked Questions Section of our website:
Facelift Options Today for our Seattle Bellevue Clients
June 22nd, 2016Facelift in Seattle Bellevue:
Hello there and thanks for visiting. So we wanted to talk about what are thoughts were on today’s topic of facelifts and how they stand today. Very simply, we have a simple approach to things on the face and neck. If you have jowls we would suggest the facelift first. If you have neck banding or neck laxity, a neck lift is ideal. For the rest of the face we suggest the YoungVitalizer. Below we will discuss more on why we choose those options for simplicity.
Facelift:
The facelift procedure is done through an incision around the ear. For the pull in the face the solid green is used. For more action in the neck the dotted green line is used. The blue indicates the undermining that occurs with a mini lift. The yellow denotes the undermining for a more complete face and neck lift.
After the elevation you will see this below. This shows the deep plane approach. The smas is the layer that most facelifts use to pull up the face. We use sutures to tie this smas layer up and tight. This also shows where the incision is placed:
Neck Lift:
A neck lift entails using an incision under the chin along with the facelift incision just discussed. If you are to do just a neck lift you can limit the incision at the dotted green line. Here is a video on the neck lift procedure that we do:
YoungVitalizer:
For the rest of the face, you can look younger in natural way with the YoungVitalizer the incision less facial rejuvenation procedure. here is a before and after of the YoungVitalizer:
Chin Implant learning videos update
May 13th, 2016We just updated our page on live videos on chin implant surgery covering topics like revision surgery, chin reduction surgery, keys to a successful revision chin surgery, and fillers in the chin to help with chin aging. For chin implant revision surgeries, if you are considering a smaller implant, you should know that putting a smaller implant is better than taking the original chin implant out without putting anything back in. If no chin implant is replaced, the chin can ball up and deformities can arise. Chin revision surgeries always make the mental nerve harder to identify. Also we believe in fixing the chin implant and leaving less room for error. Titanium screws fix the chin implant so that there is less motion, there is less risk for movement and asymmetry, there is less chance for infections, there is less erosion. This takes longer but we like the much better results.
For chin reduction surgery you will see how it is done in a live video demo. We make the incision under the chin in a well hidden position. Chin reduction can be done for feminization for females and transgender females. The chin is burred down with a drill and soft tissue is removed to help the chin adapt.
Fillers in the chin can help with chin aging. A new view is that the chin shrinks so that marionette lines and nasolabial folds become more prominent. Filling in the chin can have a major impact on making someone look younger in the mouth region