The most effective methods of treatment for fat and muscle definition involve radiofrequency waves and multi-directional muscle stimulation and their effects on the different tissues of your trunk, abdomen, flanks, thighs, arms or buttocks, even chins. TruSculpt Flex and TruSculpt iD can combine to rock your abs and make you look more toned and firm as well as strengthen your muscles and reduce your fat. Trusculpt Flex tones and tightens your muscles. Trusculpt id permanently shrinks your fat and shrinks your skin if your weight stays the same. Each treatment takes about 45 minutes in the office. Depending upon your fitness level and B

BMI we do the fat treatment areas using up to six treatment zones in a single session. We usually wait about 6 weeks between fat treatments in your target areas. While you’re waiting for the fat to shrink, your skin will also tighten. During this waiting period, you can start the 4 to 6 sessions of the Flex treatments. Trusculpt Flex can be done twice a week and this will produce muscle toning and definition. Most patients are a candidate for treatment for this treatment, although there are some contra-indications. During the consultation, you will be evaluated to see if you are a good candidate for non-surgical improvement. If your goals are more extensive or you have too much laxity, then you may need to consider surgery. You don’t need to be a bodybuilder to benefit from hard-to-lose areas toning, or hard-to-shape areas slimming. People who don’t work out a lot can see some nice results. For those that are already in good shape, there are great sculpting effects that can occur because of the effects of radiofrequency waves on your tissues. Unlike freezing methods, the radio waves tighten the skin while it shrinks your fat.

You won’t get bigger fat in the areas treated with radiofrequency energy like seen in up to 20% of fat freezing treatments. It really works! The treatment has no recovery time and enables you to return to immediate normal activities after treatment. With the Trusculpt Flex, some people experience muscle soreness after the multi-directional stimulation of the muscle groups that replicate intensified twisting, squat, and crunch actions. In addition, the muscles are contracting and stimulated to the point of exhaustion, then relaxing occurs to increase strength and enhance endurance. The fast, deep, sequential contractions of the muscles simulate interval training to increase basal metabolic rate and define the muscle mass.

Give us a call and schedule a consultation. Whether it’s a bathing suit or a board room, you’ll look better!

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Beauty trends are always changing, but a good set of brows never goes out of style. Throw in the fact that, when wearing a mask, our eyebrows are one of the main features, and you’ll see why stellar eyebrows are one of your biggest beauty must-haves of 2021. Rather than spend hours of precious time plucking, penciling, and obsessing over your brows, perhaps it’s time to consider something else. If you want to make sure your eyebrows are always on point, a surgical brow lift might be in order — this endoscopic minimal incision procedure is long acting- lasting for over a decade, it takes one hour to perform, and is affordable compared to a decade of Botox that doesn’t raise your brow position or solve the concerns of droopiness around the eyes the way brow repositioning does. The patient who decides brow surgery is for them usually sees eyebrow hooding, unhappy face, tired face, or angry appearance. They may or may not have social feedback that reinforces that internal narrative that they “don’t look happy.” A brow lift can often be performed at the same time as upper or lower eyelid surgery. Often, elevating the brow to its rested, relaxed position improves the appearance of the excess skin of the upper eyelid enough to not have to do anything else!

The one-hour surgery called endoscopic brow lift is an innovation over older methods, in which the incision is placed from ear to ear in the mid-scalp. Instead, a 5 mm endoscope is placed under the scalp line through 3 tiny incisions covered by your hair. We won’t shave your head! The incisions heal in about 3 weeks, so those who color their hair should do it before surgery. For men looking to take some years off their face, the incisions are readily covered by a baseball cap or letting your hair grow out a little bit to comb over until you are healed. The brow elevation is natural-looking, the 11’s lines between the eyes are gone, and the brow muscles and sensation are normal after you recover. You can resume heavy exercise and contact sports in about 3 weeks. Because it is a minimally invasive, endoscopic procedure you may return to work in a few days. My staff and I will show you photographs of real patients who allow review of their recovery to let you know about how it will go for you. Our photo gallery of before and after pics will let you carefully decide what works best for you. I can morph your image to show you how you will look post-op.

Regardless of what specific goals or resolutions you’ve set for yourself this coming year, we hope that your 2021 is rejuvenating and filled with hope! If you’re hoping to grow your confidence by trying a new plastic surgery or aesthetic treatment this year, we are here to guide you along the way.

Just five blistering sunburns between the ages of 15 and 20 increases melanoma risk by 80%. We know that the use of sunscreen has been shown to reduce melanoma and skin cancer risks. Valisure, an online pharmacy known for testing every batch of medication they sell, announced this week that they petitioned the FDA to recall 40 batches of sunscreens and after-sun products they say tested for high levels of the chemical benzene. The company tested 294 batches from 69 companies and found benzene in 27% ― many in major national brands like Neutrogena and Banana Boat. Some batches contained as much as three times the emergency FDA limit of 2 parts per million (ppm).

Long-term exposure to benzene is known to cause cancer in humans.

“This is especially concerning with sunscreen because multiple FDA studies have shown that sunscreen ingredients absorb through the skin and end up in the blood at high levels,” says David Light, CEO of Valisure. The FDA is seeking more information about the potential risks from common sunscreen ingredients.

“There is not a safe level of benzene that can exist in sunscreen products,” Christopher Bunick, MD, PhD, associate professor of dermatology at Yale University, said in Valisure’s FDA petition. “The total mass of sunscreen required to cover and protect the human body, in single daily application or repeated applications daily, means that even benzene at 0.1 ppm in a sunscreen could expose people to excessively high nanogram amounts of benzene.”

Chemicals in sunscreen may be harmful to other forms of life, too. For years, scientists have been examining whether certain chemicals in sunscreen could be causing damage to marine life, in particular the world’s coral reefs. Specific ingredients, including oxybenzone, benzophenone-1, benzophenone-8, OD-PABA, 4-methylbenzylidene camphor, 3-benzylidene camphor, nano-titanium dioxide, nano-zinc oxide, octinoxate, and octocrylene, have been identified as potential risks. Earlier this year, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine created a committee to review the existing science about the potential environmental hazards.

Although I have advocated for the use of sunscreen for the reduction of wrinkles and the reduction in skin cancer, at this point it is difficult to recommend to you a specific brand of sunscreen. The reason is that some manufacturing processes introduce specific toxic residuals in the product that perversely, increase your skin cancer risk! After a lifetime of use and recommendation of sunscreen for me, and my children, and my patients, I am at a loss as to finding a resource to verify which sunscreens are still safe. Their claims and descriptions on websites do not validate that they have been tested.

If you’re nervous about using sunscreen, it isn’t the only way to stay safe. It may be as simple as seeking shade, which reduces the risk. Barrier technology clothing like Solumbra really works. We know it is not true that a base tan reduces your risk of skin cancer. The more sun, UVA, and UVB you get, the higher risk of skin cancer.
We need FDA safety testing of current products. Get our government working for us!

Men are frequently troubled by exercise-resistant pockets of fat in certain areas as they age. In many cases, this problem is genetic; their bodies are programmed to store fat in those areas, and no amount of exercise will eliminate it.

For men with good skin elasticity and only a moderate amount of fat, VASER Lipo® or liposuction alone can provide a solution for neck or body contouring. Vaser Liposuction has recently been shown by Dr. Vanek and many other clinical investigators to result in up to 53% more skin contraction than traditional liposuction technique. The VASER Lipo® procedure is a minimally-invasive form of liposuction that uses ultrasound waves to destroy unwanted fat deposits.

“This is a great procedure for treating the neck, axilla, arms, back, abdomen, flanks, inner and outer thighs, knees, and calves,” says Dr. Vanek. “Men have just an inch-deep layer of subcutaneous fat; the rest is intra-abdominal or visceral fat that will only shrink when he loses weight. But I want to be upfront: this is not an effective treatment for a man’s beer belly. The beer belly is impenetrable. The only solution for that is to lose weight through proper dieting and exercise.”

Dr. Vanek will meet with you one-on-one to speak about target areas, incisions, cost, risks and benefits, and any other questions you may have. He will attend to you himself in all of your follow-up care and will offer advice and support for further weight loss efforts.

“I pride myself on catering to the individual needs of my patients, and I think patients who are interested in body contouring deserve to have someone who sees them from start to finish, and who performs the surgery themselves,” explains Dr. Vanek, a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. “I can talk with you about your goals and our respective perfectionism and say, ‘What’s going to give us the longest-lasting result and what will make you very happy?’ If there is more than one choice, I have the ability to explain the difference in outcomes in a forthright way. That’s where having a doctor who has more than one arrow in his quiver becomes indispensable.”

In addition, we now offer one area VASER Lipo® in our office procedure room. A patient that meets certain criteria can come into our office in Concord and have a local anesthetic as well as the option of using our Pronox, nitrous oxide unit, to make them very comfortable during the procedure.

If you are interested, men or women, in a complimentary consultation to get more information on VASER Lipo® and see if you are a candidate, please reach out to our staff to schedule an appointment.

I hear that an Oxygeneo facial treatment will brighten my skin. How does it work?

An innovation in rejuvenation of the skin is available at Mentor Plastic Surgery & MedSpa. Oxygeneo is a spa that treatment uses the energy of ultrasound applied topically to activate a pathway in your skin to help restore a healthy glow and luster. Oxygeneo uses a chemical phenomenon, where the change of the skin pH during the treatment activates local oxygen, supercharging your skin appearance. It actually works on your own carbon dioxide in your blood serum. An ultrasound wavelength in the Oxygeneo treatment wand activates an applied gel that results in the chemical stimulation of your tissues.

What you feel is a cool and gentle exfoliation of your skin, removing dead cells and debris from your skin and deeper dermis. The results of the chemical reaction create an immediate healthy glow, and radiant skin improvements in luster and texture. The serial application of this technology improves blood flow to distressed skin, and creates your own immune response and cellular action to improve your brightness and appearance. It can be done on the face, neck and decolletage. You will notice an improvement after the first treatment.

How Oxygeneo Works

It can be done even the day of an important event to bring a glowing you to the spotlight. Some of our patients use this technique weekly on their countdown to an important time in
their life, like a presentation, a wedding or any other social event. You need a little moisturizer after the treatment, but make-up can be applied immediately after the treatment, if you like.

Your face is first cleaned by the aesthetician, and you are in a beautiful spa room. The thick cool gel is applied and the Oxygeneo Capsugen treatment head is activated. The treatment head creates the ultrasound and gel interaction, and feels coarse as it glides over your skin, even though there is no mechanical effect. This feeling is the blood flow stimulating effect on your skin after the exfoliation.

The gel is cleansed, followed by an antioxidant infusion step. Depending upon your skin quality, either Illuminate or NeoBright gel is activated and the ingredients that includes hyaluronic acid, retinol, and kojic acid get to work immediately to make you look and feel dewy and hydrated. We also have a Carbon Acne infusion mode to help treat and calm any active acne breakouts using Oxygeneo technology. You have warm towels to remove the excess and you are good to go. Men and women benefit from this complexion enhancing treatment.

Those who try it, say they didn’t know that their skin could look this good this quickly. If you would like a beautiful gift to yourself or someone you regard, who appreciates a beautiful
complexion then Oxygeneo is a great start. You can get your friend a gift certificate for this treatment, as it treats even the most sensitive skin types with great results!

What is new in the world of wrinkle filler?

A Swiss company has recently launched a new Hylaluronic acid (HA) wrinkle filler that has shown great promise for patients who don’t like their deep lines in their face. It is called RHA. Like other HA molecules, the drug is comfortably injected in the office. I do all the injections! The innovation is a newer method of chemical preparation that makes it act, feel and look like your own tissue. Hyaluronic acid is naturally found throughout your body, in your joints and ubiquitously in your tissue spaces. As we age, the content of both collagen and “ground substance” becomes less prevalent, giving us a depleted look.

There are techniques to stimulate cellular collagen that I spoke of last week. But a direct method of supplementing the face with a material that acts natural is through the use of an injectable formulation called RHA. You may have seen these advertised in past, as they are workhorse agents that have been successfully on the market for some years. Restylane, Juviderm and their newer iterations have been franchising the HA molecule effect with various cross-linking modifications that enable each formulation to work better in separate places in your face. They all derive their base molecular activity from the attributes of the original material found in high concentration from chicken cock’s comb!

Newer techniques of manufacture of HA have eliminated the animal sourcing, as well as refined the behavior and longevity of the HA agent. What this means for you is a supple, long lasting material that you won’t feel, but will love right after it is injected. It should last about a year, depending upon your physiology. My practice offers a host of injectable fillers and agents that restore your tired or sagging appearance. The day of the injection your face will be prepped and the injectable agents are placed in the area(s) we decide upon.

Multiple areas of the face can be addressed in a single injection appointment. The rationale is that doing more than one area is that you have only one potential bruising, swelling and social down time event. There is some risk of bruising which I address with having you off anti-platelet and anticoagulation drugs for a few days prior to injection. I also recommend you take some Arnica montana, which I have available in the office for your use. With coronavirus mask use, that social pressure of bruising is lessened, however.

Aftercare involves some icing and light massage after the injection to reduces the post injection swelling. Should you get bruised, you may return for some complimentary laser, which dramatically reduces the bruising duration. All the tools of analysis, decision making and photo-documentation are available in my practice at Mentor Plastic Surgery and MedSpa, for your facial rejuvenation using fillers.

I look forward to meeting you and assisting you in decision making to make you look natural, younger, and more rested appearing!

Can I buy a treatment for my friend from Mentor Plastic Surgery and MedSpa without knowing what she needs?

Who wants “Bohr-ing” skin?

An innovation in the rejuvenation of the skin in a spa-like treatment uses the energy of ultrasound applied topically to activate a pathway in your skin to make it recover a healthy glow and luster. The treatment technique is called Oxygeneo. It uses a chemical phenomenon called the Bohr effect, where the change of pH the treatment activates local oxygen, supercharging your skin appearance. The effects of your own carbon dioxide in your serum activated by the ultrasound interaction with the applied gel creates the Bohr effect. What you feel is a cool and gentle exfoliation of your skin, removing dead cells and debris from your skin and deeper dermis. The results of the chemical reaction create an immediate healthy glow and radiant skin improvements in luster and texture. ]

The serial application of this technology improves blood flow to distressed skin and creates your own immune response and cellular action to improve your brightness and appearance. It can be done on the face, neck, and decolletage. You will notice an improvement after the first treatment. It can be done even the day of an important event to bring a glowing you to the spotlight. Some of our patients use this technique weekly on their countdown to an important time in their life, like a presentation, a wedding or any other social event. You need a little moisturizer after the treatment, but make-up can be applied immediately after the treatment if you like.

Your face is first cleaned by the aesthetician, and you are in a beautiful spa room. The thick cool gel is applied and the Oxygeneo Capsugen treatment head is activated. The treatment head creates the ultrasound and gel interaction, and feels coarse, even though there is no mechanical effect. This is the blood flow stimulating effect on your skin after the exfoliation. The gel is cleansed, followed by an antioxidant infusion step. Depending upon your skin quality, either Illuminate or NeoBright gel is activated and the ingredients that include hyaluronic acid, retinol, and kojic acid get to work immediately to make you look and feel dewy and hydrated.

We also have a Carbon Acne infusion mode to help treat and calm any active acne breakouts. You have warm towels to remove the excess and you are good to go. If you would like a beautiful gift to yourself or someone you regard, who appreciates a beautiful complexion then Oxygeneo is a great start.

You can get your friend a gift certificate for this treatment, as it treats even the most sensitive skin types with great results!

What is the truth about collagen oral supplements and topical collagen and my skin, hair and nail health?

Protein makes us healthy, but it doesn’t have to be “collagen protein supplements.” Short answer- collagen supplements are not worth the money. Here’s why. All proteins are made of 20 amino acid building blocks. Each protein contains a varying amount of the 20 amino acid types. Our cells are like a 3D printer, and the amino acids are the ink letters. An analogy that works is that we ingest bibles (protein), they are broken down by our digestion and liver metabolism into the individual letters in the book, and are not delivered to our cells as chapters or words. We make proteins from the individual amino acids that we derive from food. All protein sources have amino acids within them, arranged the way they are based upon being from animal, dairy, or plant sources. When we eat them as food, each of the proteins in the food are broken down into their component amino acids and then absorbed into our cells. The amino acids are then re-formed into our own three dimensional protein that we need to function and be healthy.

Collagen that is rubbed onto our skin never makes it into the cell of the skin where it actually makes a difference! Collagen cremes have very moisturizing attributes, but they do not get the collagen from the crème into your skin architecture. The actual collagen that makes you look great is found around the skin cell, in the architecture of your skin. The collagen content of your skin is what makes you look youthful, bright, wrinkle free, and young.  Similarly, collagen that is ingested from our diet, no matter how fancy the claim, never makes it into our cell in its original form. The collagen source is broken down nearly completely and the amino acids are re-tasked to make your own collagen all over again. The topical and oral supplements termed “hydrolized collagen” are broken down in the factory and sold to you. Your digestive system is already the perfect ‘breakdown factory.’ You need no intermediaries. Any dietary source of protein in the right proportion is going to do the job. The billion dollar supplement industry points only to “possible benefits”, not science, the FDA, or our understanding of human physiology.

There are well known methods of increasing collagen in your skin that makes you look and feel healthy. Topical cremes that have signal capability have been the mainstay of modern skin care and wound healing. These bio-active agents truly increase your own cell capablility of making collagen by their use. Many of them are available in my office. Laser technology, Radio frequency energies and some injectable agents are very well known to increase your body’s ability to produce collagen in the right place. That is the basis for why skin that is treated with Sciton lasers, Vivace radiofrequency micro-needling, or injections like Sculptra are so spectacular for facial aging. As long as you have healthy protein nutrition, your body will respond to these state of the art modalities and they will work for you.

1927 isn’t just a year, it’s a laser wavelength measured in nanometers called MOXI. You will be very happy to know that it is now exclusively available in my practice. Scientific research has produced better wavelengths to safely and efficiently brighten the skin and treat brown spots and sun damage.  MOXI uses a random fractionated pattern at a specific strength to distribute microscopic depots of laser energy on the skin surface. This results in no actual open wound. But it creates a MEND that is a microscopic epidermal tissue response that really brightens the skin.

When you have your consultation we will talk about your skin and measure it with a computer scanning tool, called VISIA. This measurement is a state of the art method of analyzing your skin, and from there we can help you decide your best treatment options. We later use VISIA analysis to measure the performance of your treatments and compare it to where we started. With MOXI, a series of gentle, no-down-time laser treatments are planned about a month apart. The skin reacts with a bit of sun-burn like response that day.

The microscopic MEND sites are pink and slough off in about 5 days, depending upon the intensity of the treatment. During that time you can socialize and bathe normally and be back to ZOOM world without problems. During the 5 day skin response we have you apply crème to your face that is provided at the time of your skin treatment. During the 5 day remodeling phase after the laser, your skin will feel like light sandpaper, indicating response to the laser. Then the baby smooth phase begins!

For those of us who are exposed to blue light, sun light, or the baby oil and betadine sun goddesses- MOXI laser has a role in rejuvenating your skin to return it to a healthy glow. If you have melasma- the irregular pigmentation found often after pregnancy- this treatment series is shown to reliably improve it.

It substantially improves aging skin and allows you to return to a busy lifestyle. You will notice that your skin is smoother and has a luster you may not have seen in years. It is also an innovation that this laser can be used on all skin types, so it holds promise to improve the texture of dark complexions without the risk of hyperpigmentation.

We are announcing an introductory special for MOXI treatment on March 18th for 300$ on that day only! Call 440-205-5750 to schedule your laser appointment today.

Since March of last year the impact upon health screening has been noted due to the fear of being exposed to coronavirus during the encounter. Women who should undergo annual mammography have put off the screening test, risking early cancer detection with an easy, available test. It has been recently noted that women who have been vaccinated have more call backs or rescreening requests, due to the mammogram detecting enlarged lymph nodes in the axilla (armpit) on the side of the vaccination. The nodes seen are found in 11% of women after the first vaccine shot, and 16% of those after the second shot. As a result, it is recommended that women obtain their mammograms prior to their inoculation if possible, or wait a month or so after the second to allow the lymph node reaction to quiet down and trigger fewer reassessments.   

The COVID-19 pandemic has proven that nowhere you go is 100% safe. But all of society has to return to normal interaction with appropriate precautions. Delaying a mammogram for a month or two shouldn’t be a problem, but pushing it off for six months or waiting until next year allows a cancer that could have been caught early to progress. 

When it comes to choosing whether or not you want to postpone a mammogram, the answer is in weighing your risks, there are some things to consider: What is your personal risk for breast cancer, how common is COVID-19 in your area, and what is your risk for complications if you were infected with COVID-19? 

These questions should help you answer whether you should get screened ASAP or if it’s okay to delay a bit longer. If you’re at higher risk for breast cancer—say, if you know you have a mutation on a BRCA gene or you know you have a family history of breast cancer—or if you’ve felt a lump in one of your breasts, the chance of catching breast cancer at an early stage likely outweighs the risk of catching COVID-19 while you’re at the screening. If you’re at average risk for breast cancer, without anything in your or your family’s medical history to suggest greater risk, but at high risk for complications from COVID-19, it’s probably okay to delay a mammogram appointment until it feels safer to go out, as long as you clear that with your doctor. 

The abiding caution and sanitizing procedures adhered to by medical offices, hospital facilities, nursing and physician staff should certainly reassure all patients that the time to resume health screenings is now. The excess deaths seen from lockdowns triggering restricted health screening and psychiatric access is manifest in greater than 75,000 deaths from drug overdoses, increases in suicidal ideation from 7-11% per year to 25%, death rates for elderly with dementia increased by 123%, cardiovascular deaths increased by 94,000. It is past due time that patients return to their doctors for screening and assessments for medical treatment.