S03E49 TIPS IF YOU OR SOMEONE ELSE IS CONSIDERING PLASTIC SURGERY

How much thought have you given to the idea of plastic surgery? Has it been consuming your thoughts lately, or are you simply curious about the possibilities? Do you know someone who is thinking about plastic surgery?

Join me as I share my professional advice on evaluating whether plastic surgery is the right choice for you, touching on everything from Botox and fillers to more invasive procedures like neck lifts and face lifts.

But it's not all serious talk, as this week's thankful is the celebration of the resilience of today's youth, especially amidst the added stress of the COVID-19 pandemic. With my daughter's high school graduation, I reflect on the incredible accomplishments of this generation and extend heartfelt congratulations to all graduates. So, whether you're thinking about plastic surgery or simply seeking some inspiration, this episode is just for you!

#thoughtfulplasticsurgery #podcast #plasticsurgery #cosmeticsurgery #boardcertified #plasticsurgeon #beauty #aesthetic #botoxandburpeespodcast @crossfittraining @crossfit #crossfit #sports #exercise #health #movement #crossfitcoach #clean #fitness

#thoughtfulplasticsurgery #podcast #plasticsurgery #cosmeticsurgery #boardcertified #plasticsurgeon #beauty #aesthetic #botoxandburpeespodcast @crossfittraining @crossfit #crossfit #sports #exercise #health #movement #crossfitcoach #clean #fitness

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S03E49 TIPS IF YOU OR SOMEONE ELSE IS CONSIDERING PLASTIC SURGERY

[00:00:00] Sam Rhee: This podcast idea is to talk about whether you should get plastic surgery. And it was kicked off because I attended an event this past week where I met a bunch of new people and inevitably when you meet people, you talk about what you do.

And so I said I was a plastic surgeon. And it's pretty common when you meet a bunch of new people and you tell them you're a plastic surgeon. They have questions, they have a lot of different questions about plastic surgery or what it's like sometimes what my favorite procedure is details about anything that they're interested in.

And it's pretty normal and I don't mind talking about it. I'm happy to answer anything that people have in terms of questions. And this time around, I was asked on two separate occasions by two men who both said they had a spouse and that spouse was thinking about plastic surgery.

And they asked me my opinion, whether or not their spouses should get plastic surgery.

And what they wanted, what their spouses were thinking about having done really doesn't matter so much. But I will talk about the advice I gave them, and it's actually pretty much the same type of advice I give to anyone who comes in for a consultation.

So this is the advice I give to anyone who's thinking about plastic surgery and hopefully you can use it as well to help gauge whether or not this is something that you should have done.

So the first thing I always ask people is, Regardless of the procedure, pretty much, whether it's a breast augmentation or a tummy tuck, or a facelift or eye lift, you know, liposuction, whatever. So I ask potential patients whether or not it is significantly impacting their quality of life. Are they thinking about it all the time? When they see themselves in the mirror, how much are you thinking about this issue that you want corrected?

If you're avoiding certain activities or certain clothes or doing certain things. Or how you behave. If it's affecting your self-confidence in some way, in a really significant way,

then maybe it might be worth considering whatever procedure you want.

Sometimes I have people who come in and they say, well, I was, you know, this isn't something that really bothers me a whole lot. It's just that sometimes I look at myself and I think about it and, and I think, Ugh, and I just wanted to see if there was something that could be done about it.

For most of those patients, I'm going to counsel them, this might not be something you are ready for at this time.

Plastic surgery is a pretty powerful way of changing your life. I have seen some patients who have thought about changing their body in some way because it really was so negatively impacting what they were doing on a daily basis, and the improvement in their self-confidence, in their self-esteem, how they looked at themselves, it made a huge difference. And it's worth doing a cosmetic surgery procedure in those situations.

So the first thing I always ask patients is how big of an issue is this aspect of your appearance in your life?

Now, the second thing that I often try to evaluate and talk to patients about is, is there some other issue that has caused you to change your mindset about yourself? And the stereotype is a patient has a separation or a divorce or some other life event or something that kicks off this issue where they don't like themselves in some way.

And this is not uncommon. you know, we all undergo issues or situations where we start to question how we look or how we feel, or what our self-confidence is. If there's a big change in our life, some sort of relationship issues. It's natural to do a self-evaluation and say maybe this is something that would help me become a better person in some way.

Now, as a plastic surgeon, I really only have about 45 minutes to evaluate a patient and to talk to them in a consultation. And sometimes I can understand what, what the issues are and what the patient is going through, um, if there is something that's spurring on this need for self-improvement or for change.

But oftentimes these are fairly private matters and not everyone wants to talk about this with their plastic surgeon, and if so, that's fine, but I would ask you if you're thinking about something to really understand what that root cause might be.

And I gave this advice to these guys who are talking about their spouses.

If your spouse is talking to you about wanting or considering plastic surgery, if you know that person well, you don't have to be their psychologist, but you can sometimes help them by working through what that root cause is.

One of the guys said that their spouse has a bunch of friends who are doing this procedure. And so that was one of the big reasons why this person wanted it. And that might not be the best reason.

I have had patients who had said that they had had a friend who looked so great after their procedure, and so they wanted it too, and again, if they weren't really that dissatisfied with their appearance in the first place, just because someone looks so much better than them or they think they look so much better.

That's, again, not a reason necessarily to choose to undergo plastic surgery.

And all of us go through these issues every day, whether it's our clothing, the car we drive, everything that we have around us. These are all aspects of ourselves that we often discuss or think about or consider changing. And our bodies and our faces are no different in that regard.

But almost all of the time, it's really better to focus on what it is that impacts you personally, not necessarily in comparison to someone else.

And I talk about this with, especially my body contouring patients, is what are you doing to help yourself before you consider plastic surgery? Particularly for liposuction, where patients want to reshape their bodies.

Is this surgery taking place of other things that actually should be done for your health, like improved nutrition, sleep, weight loss, exercise? These are often things that are not necessarily easy or may be beyond our control at certain times in our lives. For example, you may be in a work situation where you're extremely stressed, you don't have a lot of sleep, it's difficult to eat well, and in those cases, you may not like the way you're looking or how you're feeling or what, what your appearance is.

So patients will sometimes come in because they feel like they don't have the resources or time or or energy to address these issues, and plastic surgery could do that instead. So it's basically about throwing money instead of other resources at it.

And honestly, 15 years ago, when I was first starting, if a patient had money, there was something that I could do and I knew I could make a difference in some way. It wasn't hard to just say, okay, and just do the procedure, and in the long run, and I learned this over time, and I think most patients also realize that if you talk to them about it, if these underlying issues haven't been addressed, people are still eating poorly after the surgery, they're not sleeping well, they have a lot of stress.

Um, they're not managing their weight. These, these surgeries are not particularly long term. In fact, they can be extremely short term. And I've had the unfortunate experience of having patients do multiple procedures because they didn't see enough benefit or the benefit didn't last after the first one, and then they come back for a second or a third and, and at some point you have to realize if you really wanna help people, you have to really work with them to help to address some of these other issues.

I think in part that's why I became a CrossFit coach is because I really enjoy helping people, but I also saw what other avenues of making people healthier and fitter were. And this is not easy for anyone.

It is interesting with Ozempic and some of these new weight loss drugs.

I have a feeling we'll probably see less of these body contouring patients who, uh, looking for a quick fix because now we have a drug that can, that's sort of the new quick fix that might be able to help these patients. But again, any of these aids really won't work unless some fundamental changes are made in people's lives.

And there's a lot of evidence that these medications, if they are stopped, the weight gain returns. And there's also evidence that when you lose weight on these weight loss medications, there is not just fat loss, but a fair amount of just complete body mass loss, including muscle.

The emphasis now is that these drugs have to be done with the same things that we've constantly been pushing. Good nutrition, more exercise, better sleep, all of the things that we've consistently pushed for patients over the years. So basically there's no quick fix.

Now there are some procedures where like a breast augmentation or a tummy tuck where no amount of diet, exercise and eating right is going to fix these issues. If you've had a pregnancy, that skin is not going to shrink back and become smooth no matter what you do.

These are issues that only a surgical procedure can really address or can best address for you. But there are a lot of other procedures where optimizing yourself is going to make a huge difference before considering surgery.

The next issue is, is what is the procedure? So there are different procedures and like I said, what that procedure type is, does make a difference sometimes in terms of what I recommend for a patient or what I think. There are levels of complexity, invasiveness. For example, Botox and fillers such as Juvederm are very low risk and relatively non-invasive.

So it, if someone is interested in just trying it out, I have no problems just recommending that for most patients. They're temporary, so even if they don't like the effects, it's not something they have to maintain or it's not permanent. and most patients actually like the results as long as you're careful and you are judicious in terms of what the treatments that are being done. People shouldn't even notice that you've had anything done. And that's sort of the gold standard in my mind in terms of having these treatments.

Really big invasive procedures.

Some of those things I do talk a fair amount with patients. There's a lot of patients I see who want neck or jaw rejuvenation. They feel like it's slightly jowly. But to do a neck lift or a facelift on a patient, it's a pretty, it's a pretty big surgery and I generally will recommend less invasive type of treatments prior to even suggesting something that dramatic.

One of the bonus tips I will give, and I said this to the two people that I saw, was certainly do your due diligence, research. The internet is actually a great source for learning about a lot of these procedures. You can actually understand a lot about what each procedure is. If you Google it, look at videos, YouTube, you can find out a lot online.

There's a lot of good resources out there. I mean, I wouldn't necessarily say go to TikTok and look at every trend. But there are very reputable sources out there that, that do a good job in terms of explaining what the risks and benefits of most procedures are.

I would say don't see a surgeon until you're actually pretty sure you wanna do something. And the reason why I say this is twofold. There's a benefit to both the potential patient. And second, there's a benefit for us as surgeons. So at us as surgeons, and this pretty much goes for any surgeon, whether it's a cardiac surgeon or orthopedic surgeon, or neurosurgeon. You know, or a plastic surgeon, we like operating.

The reason why we do what we do is because we like to operate. I don't think I've ever met a surgeon who said, ah, operating isn't so great. What I really like doing is sitting in office hours all day, seeing patients and talking to them. Like, that's not really our goal. We don't mind, most of us don't mind seeing patients in the office.

But where we truly derive our satisfaction, we wanna be difference makers. And the biggest difference we make is when we operate on somebody. So office hours generally, like we love when our office hours are relatively efficient. We're seeing patients before surgery, we're seeing how they're doing after surgery.

And of course, a big part of seeing patients before surgery is talking to them about the surgery. Now, most surgeons, if you are not a good candidate for that surgery, are going to tell you you're not a candidate for that surgery, whether it be shoulder surgery or knee surgery, or back surgery or breast augmentation or whatever. Unfortunately, there are a few that are maybe swayed by the financial incentive to do surgery.

And so that's something to consider when you're seeing somebody. The second thing is, is that most of the time you should have a pretty good idea for a lot of these elective type procedures. Obviously not like a triple bypass procedure or a stent or something, but if, if you're, considering something where you're not sure whether you should have it, you should try to do as much due diligence beforehand and go into that consultation knowing that you're really seriously thinking about having surgery.

I say this to my friends who have shoulder injuries or knee injuries or other orthopedic type injuries, like generally, I counsel them, see the orthopedic surgeon when you're at the point where you're really considering surgery, not like, oh, I just sprained my ankle and now do I need ankle surgery? No, there are other resources out there where that that can help you determine whether you are really at a point in your life where you might need that surgery.

And it's the same with plastic surgery. You should really be, have thought about it before coming in and talking to a plastic surgeon about it because one, we might try to sell you on it. And two, the information we talk about most of it is often available, so you can make it more efficient for yourself.

And that being said, if you're really not sure, you've done the research and you're still thinking about it, but you're not sure, yeah, if in doubt come, go and see a plastic surgeon, we're happy to talk to you about it. There are certain aspects that might be unique to your situation that you might not be able to find online or talk to others about where we can certainly help you.

And I'm really happy to do that. I actually do like helping people figure out whether or not they, they need surgery. Um, it is super helpful if they already know something about the surgery, but if I have to take someone from start to finish on it, I'm okay with that. But, to save you time, it might be helpful just to, to know as much as possible before talking to a plastic surgeon.

The last thing I would say is if you are not the one considering plastic surgery, but you have a spouse or someone close to you is considering plastic surgery and they've talked to you about it, uh, I told these two guys the same thing. I would probably not just say no right off the bat.

When someone asks you a question like you think I should have, you know, I really wanna have this plastic surgery procedure. If you're a spouse and you say, no, you're not gonna have it. that sets up not a great dynamic in terms of communication.

There are generally real reasons why someone's considering a procedure and understanding what that is can be very helpful. I know that if you love somebody, you are concerned about risks, about costs, maybe, other issues that come into play with these types of procedures. But even if you feel like this is not necessarily the right thing for this person, it's generally better for them to come to whatever decision it is.

They need to maybe take some time to process it. So generally, even if I see a patient and I don't think they're a good candidate for a procedure and I suggest that they might not be, and they're a little resistant and they're still really thinking about it, I generally will have them, I suggest taking some time to consider it. I might consider saying, you know, Well, I think you could optimize your procedure if you did this for a while. So maybe do that for a couple weeks and then come back and talk to me again. And I think as a spouse, or someone close to, to that potential patient, listening to them, understanding what it is that, what the underlying issues are, or reasons why they might be considering something, and then instead of giving them a hard no, asking them to consider this over some more time might be helpful.

For example, one of the guys I talked to, they just had a baby who was a couple months old and it seemed to make sense that maybe they should probably wait a little while before considering something. You know, maybe another year or two or when their support situation was a little better set up.

And those are the kind of suggestions that can help someone who's thinking about plastic surgery take a step back, really review all of the pluses and minuses, and their situation.

And I always tell people, you should really optimize your situation so that you can make sure the procedure is going really well. Seeing the patient who comes in and says, I'm going on vacation in three months and I really need to have this done now is generally not a good idea. Or, I've had patients literally who said, oh, I've been meaning to have this for a while, but I just found out I'm moving to Texas and so I need to have this done with you before I go.

Or I just got my tax refund and I'm worried that I might have other issues or expenses. So I want to be able to do this procedure right now since I have the money. These are all situations where I will ask patients to take a step back, um, think about is this really helping make this procedure the best procedure and result that it could be? Or is this something that is putting additional stress, on you and what we're doing in terms of what the best outcome could be?

To summarize, talking about whether or not you should have plastic surgery, think about the impact that that surgery will have for you. What kind of quality of life are you having now and is it really that big of an issue for you?

The second one is, what are the underlying reasons?

Are there other reasons? Are there other life events which are kind of pushing you to consider plastic surgery? The third is are you optimizing yourself? Have you attempted to address these issues non-surgically before considering something like plastic surgery?

The next point I talked about was about, making sure you do your due diligence beforehand, before talking to someone about it.

and then last was just if you're the support person, take the time to understand what what's going on. Being super negative may not be helpful.

If you do have some concerns, generally try to help the patient take some time to, to work through those concerns and see, um, if, if that can be helpful in terms of helping them make that decision.

If you have any other questions, thoughts about this, please DM me @BotoxAndBurpeesPodcast on Instagram. Website is botoxandburpees.com. I'm happy to answer any questions or if you have anything in particular you'd like to ask me, please let me know.

Thank you.

For my thankful this week, my daughter did graduate from high school this past weekend. It was a very joyous occasion. It was very special for her, special for the whole family, and, you know, high school is one of those things that pretty much everyone does graduate from high school.

I don't know if I know that many people who haven't graduated high school, but it's still important. You're generally around the age of 18. It's a big landmark event in terms of steps to adulthood. And I think it's exciting to see how people develop and where you think they might go in the future.

I am thankful for the 18 years that my daughter has been growing up. And I'm thankful for her every day, but it's just one of those occasions where the family can really raise her up. For kids these days, there's a lot of stress. There's a, as much stress now as there ever has been, maybe more.

They talked a lot during graduation about the COVID period that was extremely stressful for kids. Resilience and, and I do believe that kids these days are more poised, more mature, more aware, more knowledgeable than I certainly was when I was 18. So I really want to congratulate all the high school graduates out there, including my daughter and I, I wish them the best of luck in the future.

Thank you.