Social Safari: Donations Offer Hope
October 19th, 2009
"Social Safari"
This month’s Smile Network Benefit, hosted by the premiere Minneapolis stylist and salon owner, Jason Deavalon, was a huge success. It was my pleasure to take part in raising donations to fund facial reconstruction surgery for needy children through the humanitarian efforts of Smile. During my recent medical mission trip to Lima, Peru, I saw firsthand how the lives of children are transformed through this kind of surgery. A disfigured child is offered new hope and a chance to flourish, where he was once shunned. It is truly a life-changing experience to provide a medical service that is simply out of the reach for many suffering children and their families living in impoverished nations around the world.
A Night to Celebrate
Jason’s Social Safari event raised over $50,000 in contributions from family and friends attending the event.
Models help raise donations
$10,000 was donated by attendees that opted to trade their own smile lines for Nipntuck Botox gift certificates, to help fund the important work of The Smile Network. I offer my sincere thanks to everyone whose generous contributions will be instrumental in improving the quality of life for hundreds of children.
Jason and friends
Jason’s upcoming trek in Kenya continues to raise awareness about the enormous need being confronted annually by Smile. You will be able to follow his ascent online as he climbs to the summit of Mt. Elgon. Please go to www.smilenetwork.org and click on Jason’s Journey.
Lip Sculpting
October 16th, 2009
I find that a significant part of doing cosmetic surgery is sculpture. Whether I am removing (liposuction), adding (breast enlargement) or rearranging (face lift), the quality of the result and achieving a natural appearance is the direct result of sculpture. Lip enlargement using injectable materials is no different. I first start out with mental image of what normal lips look like. The lips are then sculpted with the injections to look like normal lips. Just this past week, I did three lip injections to minimize wrinkles and give the face a more youthful appearance. All of my patients have a nice improvement in their appearance, no hint of the “sausage lips” look, that seems to be popular in Hollywood.
I have noticed that many injectionists must think lips look like sausages! Jimmy Dean fills cylindrical tubes with meat to create this shape. I do not find this look to be attractive. Nobody’s lips look like sausages except the ones which have been injected! Lips have a subtle curve know as a “Cupid’s Bow.” This complex curve is created by the mirror image of the upper lip meeting the lower lip. The Cupid’s Bow shape is most apparent along the upper lip where the red lip meets the flesh-colored skin also known as the vermillion border.
Lips injected with fat, collagen or hyaluronic acid will look like sausages if they are injected evenly along their length. It is a simple matter of physics. To maintain a normal appearance, they must be injected differentially, maintaining relative fullness of the central upper lip compared to the lateral upper lip. The lower lip should be the mirror image of the upper lip. The lower lip should be fuller lateral to a central relative thinness. You might think of the lips like gears which mesh. Full on top meshes with thin on the bottom and thin on top meshes with full on the bottom.
Three other things to remember. First, the lower lip is almost always fuller than the upper. Julia Robert’s lips are an exception to this rule. In other words, they are not normal. Seeking this appearance will give you unnatural looking lips. Second, lips naturally taper toward the corners of the mouth. Injections here distort this natural shape. Finally, lip enlargement can be accomplished with about 2 ml or cc. This equates to two syringes of most products. Injecting more than 2 ml, increases the risk of getting an unatural appearance (or sausage lips) and more importantly, the risk of terrible scarring from skin necrosis or skin death.
In other words, there is more to creating a naturally pouty lip than most people might appreciate.
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