What advice do you have for patients over the age of 50 interested in aesthetic treatments?

What advice do you have for patients over the age of 50 interested in aesthetic treatments?

In general, there are two groups of clients in the over 50 crowd seeking aesthetic treatments.

The first group are people who feel younger than they look and this difference has become dramatic enough to motivate them to consider aesthetic procedures. They can also be motivated to learn more about treatment options because they saw a nice result in a friend or partner making them curious about something that until now they had not been open to considering.

For this group of patients, I almost always begin with a neurotoxin (Botox, Dysport) to open the eyes and a touch of hyaluronic acid filler (Restylane, Juvederm) to the lateral face to pull up the beginnings of jowls. These procedures have very little down time with rapid results and when done by an experienced physician are very safe.

The second group are patients who have been be taking care of themselves aesthetically for the last 10 to 15 years and are interested in a more significant result. For these patients, fractionated carbon dioxide laser treatment is incredibly popular. This laser improves wrinkles, texture, and pore size by stimulating the skin to turn over and build collagen. It requires at least a week of downtime (initially red and swollen then becoming bronzed and very dry) and a month of staying out of the sun.

For both groups, it is important to help patients pick out the optimal skin care regimen to maximize the results from their treatments. As we age, our skin becomes thinner and more sensitive to ingredients in the products we use. For patients over 50, avoiding products with common allergens like lanolin, essential oils and fragrance becomes more important because the skin barrier is simply not as good at keeping things out. This is why I had to make Doctor Rogers RESTORE products. After every procedure I do, my patients use RESTORE healing balm and face wash to help ensure excellent outcomes without the risk of irritation during the healing process

I perform more aesthetic procedures on women than men but more and more men are having treatments. Often, the men that I see are the husbands of my existing patients who encourage them to come in the first time. I have one such patient who is in his 70s and we IPL (intense pulse light) his face once a year to treat his broken blood vessels and brown spots. He plays poker with a group of similarly aged men regularly and recently at one of the poker nights his buddies asked him why he was getting better looking while the rest of them were not. Kind of like when you need your car fixed and your friend tells you “I’ve got a guy.” He told them, “well, truth be told, I’ve got a girl and she will take care of you, just tell her I sent you.” Over the next 6 months I have seen them all. None of them vain, but curious to see what was possible. As long as you have a doctor you can trust, you don’t need to know what you need, you just need to be brave enough ask. 

Please contact us if you have any questions by filling out this form or emailing us at hello@doctorrogers.com.

 

 

Meet the author: Board-certified and practicing dermatologist, Dr. Heather D. Rogers, MD, is the founder of Doctor Rogers Skin Care and Modern Dermatology in Seattle, Washington. She studied at Stanford, University of Washington School of Medicine and Columbia University Medical Center. She lectures nationally, is well published, and an active member of the American Academy of Dermatology. Highly respected among the skin care community, Dr. Rogers has been annually named “Top 1% of Most Honored Doctors in the US” by Castle Connolly.

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