Keeping Up with a Younger Workforce

Anand Patel • Jul 08, 2021

This post was originally published on August 3rd, 2017. It has been republished on July 8th, 2021.

The Problem

Angie, who was her early 50’s, came to see me about premature aging she attributed to stress. She is a high-powered professional in marketing who started to feel old among her work peers. Her firm was constantly hiring younger and younger talent and she wanted to keep up. She felt that opportunities for career advancement may have past her by due to a perception that an older woman would have trouble in a constantly evolving profession. What struck me about Angie when I first met her is her positive energy and enthusiasm for life. I was willing to bet that she had no problem keeping up in her profession. She has such a bright spirit and I could understand what she meant when she said “I feel younger than I look.”

Facelift Before and After + Rhinoplasty Before and After

The Solution

The areas that bothered her the most were jowls and lax skin in her neck. She said that she, like her mother, had developed strong bands in her neck. She also mentioned that she really hated the fine lines around her mouth that worsened when she pursed her lips. We often see more severe versions of these lines in smokers. Angie assured me she was not a smoker and that these too she had seen in her mother. Angie surprised me when she also mentioned another feature that had bothered her for a long time and contributed to an older appearance: the bump on her nose. While it’s mostly a myth that our noses continue to grow as we get older, it is true that age-related loss of tip support can make a bump seem bigger and a nose seem longer over time.

Angie decided to undergo multiple procedures:

1) Minor rhinoplasty to reduce the bump
2) Face and neck lift to improve her jawline and neckline
3) Submentoplasty to address the neck bands (i.e. platysmal bands)
4) Modified Phenol peel around the mouth for the fine lines

In our practice, we perform a deep plane lift. This is a technically more complicated facelift that allows, in my opinion, the most anti-gravity lift possible. The submentoplasty, performed through a small incision behind the chin, allows us to more directly deal with the strong bands in her neck. We do not perform it with all facelift patients, only with the ones who have strong neck bands. A modified Phenol peel is a diluted version of the original Baker-Gordon formula. It works very well to removed etched fine lines and may be customized to various regions of the face.

The recovery went as expected and never dampened our patient’s wonderful spirit. I am a big believer that positive thinking promotes better healing and Angie is Exhibit A. Below are her after photos.