Age is just a number: or it can be when you have access to fillers that can keep you looking young and fresh. At Nunnally Dermatology in Baton Rouge, LA, we offer Sculptra, a natural-looking dermal filler that can plump up hollow areas of the face for a younger look.
Who Is a Good Candidate for Sculptra?
If you have certain aspects of your face that you’re not happy with, and if you’re over the age of 18, you’re likely a good candidate for this treatment. There’s no wrong age to seek treatment, and the issues you’d like to correct could be the natural result of aging, something you’ve lived with all your life, or the result of an illness.
What this treatment does is fill in the face. It’s especially effective on the cheekbones, temples, and jawline, and it’s formulated to be very safe. This could be the right treatment for you if:
You Want Full Cheeks
Our cheeks are some of the first areas of the face to lose fullness, as the effects of gravity keep tugging at us and reduced collagen production starts to compromise the supportive matrix that connects the outer areas of our skin the fat and muscle beneath.
As our cheekbones become more prominent and our cheeks less full, we signal clearly to everyone that we’re getting older. Sculptra is specially designed to add fullness here, lifting the surrounding skin as it does so.
You Want Less Hollow Temples
Another common side of aging, and sometimes a side effect of certain illnesses, is hollowing temples. This can make us look gaunt and older than we are. Sculptra is also able to fill in this area and increase fullness by as much as 40%.
You Don’t Like Your Marionette Lines
Marionette lines are the lines that appear around the corners of our mouths, and they’re caused by a combination of repeated facial expressions and volume loss in the skin. When you plump up the area with this treatment, many of those lines will be smoothed away.
You Don’t Like Having Jowls
As our cheeks lose volume, our skin starts to sag, creating the dreaded “jowls” of aging. This can make a person look noticeably older and contributes to a lot of feelings of self-consciousness. This filler will lift the skin and reduce or eliminate jowls without the need for invasive surgery.
You Want To Get Rid of Nasolabial Folds
We move the whole area around our mouth and nose a lot, so it’s common for wrinkles to appear: nasolabial folds are those vertical lines that appear between the nose and mouth. While these can be treated in different ways, Sculptra will also help to smooth them out by plumping up the area.
About Sculptra
Sculptra was originally developed so that those living with HIV could regain a healthy fullness of cheeks and face. It worked brilliantly: so much so that it became clear that this filler would work for anyone who needs more volume, whether that’s because of illness, dramatic weight loss, natural slimness due to genetics, or aging.
What Causes Volume Loss?
Our skin contains collagen and elastin. These are two proteins the body makes naturally, and they give our skin strength and suppleness, keeping the skin tightly tied to foundational tissues beneath and able to bounce back quickly from stretching.
As we get older, our bodies produce less and less of these proteins. This means our skin can’t bounce back from stretching as it once did, and our faces fall in response to gravity.
How Does Sculptra Help?
This treatment is made up of something called PLLA: poly-L-lactic acid. PLLA stimulates collagen production in the body, so your body will essentially rebuild itself in response to your injections. Over the course of a few weeks, you’ll notice that your face is more full and your wrinkles have begun to smooth out as the skin behind it plumps up. The PLLA will be absorbed and eliminated, but the collagen will remain.
About Treatment
Consultation
The first step is to come to talk to us about whether this is the right treatment for you. It’s a great treatment for a lot of people, but we do need to understand your medical history and take a look at your skin. We might even suggest a treatment that’s better for you or treatments you can combine with this one to address other areas of concern.
Preparing for Treatment
There’s not a lot that needs to be done before treatment. All you need to do, really, is just avoid a few things for a few days. Anything that will thin your blood, like aspirin or St. John’s wort, should be avoided for a week before treatment. For at least 24 hours before your injections, you should avoid alcohol and nicotine, as well.
Injections
We will first clean the area carefully to ensure there’s no chance that bacteria could enter your body through the injection sites. Then, we’ll apply a numbing cream so your treatment is comfortable. Once that has taken effect, we use very fine needs to apply your injects at strategic points for a natural look. The whole process should be completed in around half an hour.
After Treatment
All you need to do after this treatment is take care of your skin for a few days. You can go right back to your normal schedule and routine, with the exception of heavy exercise or anything else that might make you sweat.
Just be careful to stay out of the sun and keep your skin moisturized. Avoid pushing hard on the treatment area for the first day or two, so be careful when applying or removing makeup or when exfoliating your skin.
The Benefits of Treatment
We have been offering this treatment for years, so we know the benefits and what people like most about it. Here’s what we think you’ll love about it, too:
You’ll Feel More Confident
The number one benefit of this treatment is that it simply works. It makes you look younger and brighter, and it gets rid of those aging signs that betray your age (or sometimes even make you look older than you actually are).
With just a few treatment sessions, you’ll notice a big difference. You’ll look younger and healthier, which goes a long way toward feeling younger and healthier, too. You’ll find your confidence increasing as you worry less about what people think of you.
It’s So Much Better Than Surgery
No filler is a permanent solution, but that’s not a bad thing. The more permanent solutions, like surgeries, are painful, expensive, time-consuming, and can’t be undone once you’ve committed. While you will have to come in occasionally to maintain your results with a filler, you’ll still enjoy a youthful appearance for months: up to two years if you keep up a healthy lifestyle to support your results.
And if you weren’t perfectly happy with your first treatment, then, unlike with surgery, you can do some tweaking the next time for a bit more or less fullness. It’s also less painful than surgery, not nearly as expensive, and doesn’t require you to make a huge commitment of time to set aside for prep, surgery, and recovery.
It Looks Natural
We’ve all known someone, at work or perhaps in the celebrity world, who obviously “had work done.” We all want to look our best, but we want to look natural, too. And we want results that can be seen but that aren’t so dramatic they have everyone at the office water cooler talking about it. One of the best things about this treatment is that the results are very natural.
The changes happen gradually, as your body builds up collagen in the area and naturally plumps and lifts the skin. People will notice that you look healthier and fresh, and they’ll wonder what you’re doing to take good care of yourself.
Get Started Today
If you aren’t happy with the volume in your cheeks and face, and if you’re missing the healthy, supple skin of your youth, then this treatment could be the perfect way to address the problem. It will fill in volume, add definition to your face, smooth out wrinkles, and reduce the appearance of jowls. The results are natural, and the process is fast, painless, and easy. To learn more, contact us at Nunnally Dermatology in Baton Rouge, LA today!
