‘My Eyes Were So Puffy I Couldn’t Even Unseal Them’

Amanda Preisinger experiences worry about her child’s impending 13th birthday celebration. It’s not due to the typical causes related to a home packed of loud adolescent children, but because it’s the initial occasion she will reveal her new face to acquaintances and extended family. “Clearly I’m going to inform everyone as they arrive, ‘Just so you know, this is not the way I look,’” says the thirty-year-old property agent from Southern Florida.

How she looks is, admittedly, a little startling – her face puffed up and unnaturally tightened, as though secured by heavy-duty tape. Her new – and she’s eager to emphasize, temporary – appearance is the result of six cosmetic procedures, such as an endoscopic mid-facelift, conducted by a surgeon in Turkey’s Istanbul, last month. “My poor husband teared up when he viewed me for the first time because I couldn’t even unseal my eyes. That indicates puffy I was,” she tells me via video call from her house. “I had to tell him: ‘Babe, I’m fine, I’m not hurting. I just look like someone jumped me.’”

Growing Trend of Youthful Facial Lifts

According to cosmetic specialists, Preisinger is one of a growing number of individuals choosing to have a facelift in their twenties and thirties – significantly before a ten years before typical surgeons’ typical patient age range of 40 to 60. (Although most surgeons are keen to emphasise the industry edict of: “We treat genetics, not years.”) “I have 28-year-olds requesting facial lifts,” says based in London cosmetic surgeon Georgios Orfaniotis, a ex-NHS doctor who focuses on the facial area. “It’s a major procedure, and I’m a bit concerned when I see people choosing it as a lifestyle choice.”

Understanding the Rhytidectomy Surgery

A facelift, also known as a facelift, lifts the ligaments in the face that begin to droop as we age. “Human faces are built a bit like onion layers,” says Kent-based face specialist Marc Pacifico. “Skin and fat on the surface, then a stratum of connective tissue known as the superficial musculoaponeurotic system. Consider the facial framework as the soft tissue skeleton of the face. And that’s what causes aging; that is what becomes lax and drags the skin down with it.”

You endanger operating on people that have underlying problems. It’s not a practice for an conscientious surgeon to follow

Previously reserved of affluent seniors, “filler fatigue” – when overuse of dermal fillers stretches the face and causes looseness in the dermis – alongside the widespread use of weight-loss drugs, low-cost surgical travel, and the advancement of novel, famous-figure-promoted surgical techniques are attracting a different type of patient towards this major operation. Statistics show an 8% increase in facial lifts over the past 12 months in the United Kingdom; while a survey found that the portion of youthful candidates is increasing, with one-third of procedures now performed on patients aged 35-55.

“Patients are asking now to appear as the best version of themselves and obviously the methods are evolving,” says Orfaniotis. Currently, the operation du jour is the deep plane facelift, a method promoted by everyone from Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, to fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

Advanced Lifting Method

While a more traditional facelift entails lifting the SMAS, the deep plane facelift loosens the underlying structures beneath it, enabling doctors to restructure the face by repositioning the deeper tissue, and preventing the taut, pulled appearance occasionally caused by older methods. “We’re not putting stress on the skin because we’re targeting deeper, to the deeper tissue,” says prestigious London plastic surgeon Rajiv Grover, who specialises in the advanced method. “It is the deeper tissue that is adjusted. The skin follows along as a secondary element.” Lifting the whole facial structure as a unified block allows for a authentic-appearing and more durable outcome. It additionally implies that the procedure is not just being used for the express purpose of anti-ageing – or revitalization, as the aesthetics industry terms it – but for “enhancement” and facial restructuring, too. “We’re getting many inquiries from clients aged late twenties to mid-thirties for this reason,” notes Grover.

Personal Journey

Preisinger had never planned on undergoing a facelift – at least not at the age of 30. But years of using hyaluronic acid dermal fillers in an attempt at “facial balancing” implied that by the time she entered her late 20s, she was “damaged”. “I didn’t do this because I wanted to look youthful,” she clarifies. “I underwent it because the filler harmed my face. I regret ever using it. If I didn’t have the injectable, I don’t believe I would be in this situation currently.”

Whether injectable substances completely disappear has long been a point of contention in the cosmetic field. “Research have indicated that not only do they rarely completely dissolve,” says Grover, “but they migrate and can obstruct lymphatic channels. One of the contributors to what we call ‘puffy appearance’ is additionally the fact that in a sense, the face gets slightly fluid-filled because its capacity to remove lymphatic fluid has been reduced.” Though research into the area is early-stage, warnings on injectables’ possible effects on the body’s drainage have been released, and additional studies initiated. One highly regarded facial plastic surgeon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says he would never use injectables in a patient because of the risks they present. “A lot of surgeons avoid talk about this, because the manufacturers who produce injectables can be pretty aggressive.” He’s heard stories, he says, of cosmetic doctors facing legal actions after expressing worries.

Decision and Procedure

For Preisinger, after beginning using injectables, she felt as if she needed to continue adding more – particularly when it began moving to other parts of her face. She was only twenty-eight when a local plastic surgeon in the state suggested that a face and neck lift might be what she needed to finally step off the cycle of treatments. After 24 months, she ended up choosing between a list of recommended hotels in the city, texted to her by the patient coordinator at her doctor’s clinic.

Originally, Preisinger had planned for an eyelid surgery – commonly called eyelid surgery – but her doctor advised her that a facial lift was the right solution for the looseness she was experiencing in her face. She arranged a forehead lift, a mid-facelift and a jawline surgery. The day before her surgery, one day after she’d touched down solo in the country, she opted to include a lip lift. “Subsequently the surgeon stated, ‘We will lift the under-eye bags.’ He added, ‘I believe if we remove some cheek fat, it will sculpt your face.’ So I ended up including additional surgeries,” she says. She spent $22,000 (sixteen thousand five hundred pounds) for the half-day operation, plus a three-day|