Hi lovelies,

Now that festival season, warm weather, and summer body season is upon us, it’s time to get confident from the inside out, so our inner Queens can shine through.

That’s why on on Tuesday, April. 2, L.A. philanthropists and owners of Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery Inc.  Christine and Dr. Gabriel Chiu hosted a Pre-Coachella brunch to debut the newest trends and procedures in the field of plastic surgery - removing any shame or stigma of taking back control of living your best life in your best body. 

The soiree was held at Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery Inc. in Beverly Hill’s Golden Triangle. Delicous bites included mini crustless quiche, avocado tartine, and char grilled, herb marinated chicken atop Lola Rosa lettuce with grilled asparagus and Kumato tomato. We then had the opportunity to speak first hand with leading edge beauty , body, and skincare brands like Ultratherapy, Restalyne, Skin Better Science, and Cool Sculpting.

Beverly Hill’s Plastic Surgery generously gifted us with a $1,000 gift certificate to come back to the center and try out some state-of-the-art equipment as well as gift bags filled with SH-RD, JOICO, SHISEIDO,  PROUD SOURCE WATER, and LYDA BEAUTY.

What are the best mistakes that women make with their skin that they don’t know is actually aging them faster?

“..one of the biggest things is dehydration. Everyone forgets about dehydration when they’re drinking, but alcohol is going to dehydrate you even faster, and what your skin needs the most is hydration. “ “With dehydration, one of the things that really helps besides drinking fluids and trying to avoid alcohol is IV infusion therapy. It’s not only a great antioxidant, but repeated treatments will actually help bleach your skin.

When should one start preventative work such as fillers or Botox?

“Antioxidant therapies, preventative treatments on your skin, I always encourage patients in their twenties to go ahead and start that, because they’re not really thinking about what they’re going to want to recover in their thirties and forties.”

Any more interesting stories and facts?

“It’s interesting that most of the top procedures have stayed popular, with breast augmentation, liposuction and rhinoplasty being the top three procedures, with the top non-invasive procedures being Botox, fillers and peels. The interesting thing about it is the trend that we’ve been seeing with regards to these different procedures and treatments is that less is more, and I’m sure you’ve heard that term a lot, because just about every plastic surgeon is saying it right now. Patients today are more into these “tweakments” instead of having treatments; for instance, people are being more subtle with the Botox injections, they’re going with fewer units to have a more natural look. With facial fillers, no one wants overdone lips and cheeks anymore. They are going after results that look a lot more natural.

Some patients I get even want these, I guess you’d say “microinjections” of HA fillers, where you put just a tiny bit to enhance their “Cupid’s bow”, the little upturn on the lip there, because they don’t want to go and have that lip-lift that I’m sure some of you have heard about, where an incision is done underneath the nose. And then a lot more emphasis is being put on having a gentler series of facial treatments rather than having one big splash treatment. It used to be very popular to go ahead and do a very aggressive chemical peel for instance, and then you would have to recover, see your skin peel like a snake. Now it’s more popular to do a series of smaller treatments that aren’t as noticeable. You don’t have that downtime, so you can go back to work that same day and still get the results that you’re looking for. 

Smaller breast implants are also a lot more popular now for a more natural look. And with rhinoplasty, there’s a desire to keep some of the ethnic nuances of your nose. Those requests have been a lot more popular. As a matter of fact, we were at dinner, double-dating with friends of ours, and they were thinking about maybe doing her nose and saying how she only wanted to have these little subtle things. It’s very, very common. Most people don’t want to look like their favorite person on TV anymore.

With the non-surgical treatments, these are also the latest, hottest treatments that are out there. Some of you may have heard of a treatment called “emsculpt”. Emsculpt is using a magnetic field – we used to do the thing where you attach the wires to your stomach, and you’d see them spasm and everything and it’d hurt like heck, right? They’ve actually modified that treatment now where, instead of hooking wires up, they put these paddles on you, and it’s only FDA-approved right now for the abdomen and for your butt, so you can actually get a butt-lift without injecting fat or doing something else and looking like you did this hardcore glute routine that gives you a kind of rounded, full butt, but it’s the muscle of your butt instead of injections.”

Is it several treatments that are required?

“Basically, when you go ahead and do it, it’s recommended that you do about four treatments every two to three days apart. And you’re literally getting - let’s just say on your stomach. You’re literally having your muscles contract about 20,000 times in half an hour. The program that it goes through starts off getting your abdomen used to it; you’re going a couple hundred times a minute. Then, after a little while, it starts going a couple thousand times a minute, and it’s quite a different experience, but hopefully you’ve tolerated the sensation when it’s at a couple hundred. Then it starts to slow down and goes a lot slower again. The reason for that is to push out the lactic acid and the metabolites from the contractions because these are the things that are going to cause you to have soreness, and that’s why most patients do very well afterwards, and don’t end up having that sore stomach feeling or that “just went to boot camp” feeling and you feel very normal. The results are supposed to be permanent, but again, as with anything else, if you go ahead and let it go, and you’re not working out anymore, of course those muscles are going to get soft again. That’s quite a bit of detail…

“I’ll never go to the gym again!”

“Well, if you went ahead and did this regularly, you’d have a pretty good case to stop going, actually. There are a couple doctors who do that.”

ABOUT Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery: Welcome to Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery, Inc., also known as “BHPS”. We are a full-service plastic and cosmetic surgery practice, led by the surgical expertise of renowned plastic and reconstructive surgeon, Dr. Gabriel Chiu. Located in the heart of Beverly Hills, our luxurious spa office is completed with the most modern technologies available and a staff of knowledgeable and personable consultants, nurses, and medical aestheticians.

*Photo credit to Dina Douglass: http://www.andrenaphoto.com