Why You Should Be Underwhelmed by Your Anti-Ageing Result

Edited from the video captions.

I'm an aesthetics doctor and this is the one thing I say to all of my patients in their consultations who are worried about looking weird. The most common reaction to having a dermal filler treatment by me is being underwhelmed by the results. While that might seem like an unusual thing to admit, it requires a comprehensive understanding of the ageing process and how aesthetic treatments actually work. When I do a consultation, I'm looking at the face as a whole. And that involves all of the structures. So, your bone density, your muscle bulk, your fat pads, and your skin quality. All of these things deteriorate or change in quality as we get older. If we want to look natural and normal, we need to gently nurture all of the aspects of this facial ecosystem. And that involves multiple modalities and several different treatments, but also the understanding that cosmetic treatments are a marathon and not a sprint. So there is no need to do lots of things quickly. So when I'm assessing a face, I'm looking at muscle dynamics. So how the facial muscles move and how they look at rest, as well as volume loss from bone density, muscle bulk, and fat pads. And then also skin quality, both what we see on the surface and also the way the skin behaves. It's actually quite normal that I'll recommend several treatments in a consultation, but that doesn't mean that you look horrendously old. It's just that we need to target all of these different layers if we want to look natural or normal. So, if you do a lot of one thing like dermal fillers and you don't do anything to improve skin quality over time, you will end up looking strange. While it is inevitable that you'll lose volume in your face as you get older, the actual amount of fillers we need to volume replete someone is relatively small, but just in quite a few places in the face. And so, as a result, because we're not using very large volumes, generally a common reaction to having a treatment from me is being underwhelmed by the result. And that's the point where we start optimising skin quality, optimising muscle dynamics, and starting this long-term relationship and marathon. My aim essentially is to underwhelm a patient many times and then 12 to 24 months later for them to be able to look back at the starting point and be like, "Yeah, I'm quite happy with that." And also, if 2 years can go past and you look younger than the point at which you started, then that's actually really quite impressive. Essentially, if I'm going to do your treatment, if you're looking for a quick or dramatic fix, you should probably look somewhere else.