Looking older already
Seattle Plastic Surgeon nags about smoking.
Yesterday evening I took my dog, Stella, for a nice long walk. I live just a stone’s throw from Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood. Fremont is the self designated Center of the Universe and home to many, many hipster bars and clubs.
Seattle has had the most wretched spring on record and last evening was lovely. Everyone was out. Seattle has very stringent anti-smoking laws and it seems everyone was outside these hipster hangouts, on the sidewalk, smoking. It made me wanna holler – “Lose the cigarette if you care even a shred about how you will look in 20 years!”
And it reminded me of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery meeting I attended in Boston in earlier this month. One of the presentations was on how much younger someone looks after a facelift. This was a well done study using lay observers with standerdized before and after photos of before of facelift patients. The magic number was 6 – facelift patients look 6 years younger after a facelift.
What a coincidence! Because similar studies show that smokers look 6 years older than non-smokers. But don’t go thinking that smokers can just undue the cosmetic damage with a facelift because careful and prudent plastic surgeon (moi, for example) will not do a facelift on a smoker because they are at much higher risk for healing problems and resultant unfavorable scaring after a facelift.
So all you dudette (and dudes), lose the cancer sticks, and save your cigarette money for your facelift at fifty which you will likely “need” until we figure out how to turn off the gravity.
Thanks for reading! Dr. Lisa Lynn Sowder
@lisalynnsowder
