The New Maturity

In the future, aging won't look the way it does today.

The signs of aging will accumulate more slowly - much more slowly. Just as today's 50-year-olds with access to cosmetic medicine look different from the 50-year-olds of a couple of generations ago, tomorrow's will be even more youthful-looking. We are entering the age of preventive cosmetic medicine.

"Thirty is the New Fifty"
A few years ago magazines began announcing that "Thirty is the new fifty." Our culture began acknowledging a revolution in the aging process. While the fitness revolution was preserving bodies, cosmetic medicine began finding myriad ways to keep facial beauty from declining over time.

It Starts with Hygiene
The aesthetic revolution started with skincare and sunscreen.

New knowledge about skin chemistry resulted in today's gentle cleansers, vitamin- and mineral-rich moisturizers and other anti-aging preparations. These get better and better as time goes by. More important, the sun's role in aging the skin has been pinpointed, and a new generation of sunscreens has emerged. Used religiously, sunscreens can now offset the central cause of deteriorating skin.

Women who avail themselves of the best in skincare preparations and sunscreen can expect to see a quantum difference in the quality of their facial skin from that of earlier generations. The longer they use these lotions, the bigger the difference they will see.

Botox the Next Step
A few years ago researchers acknowledged muscular contraction as the prime cause of early wrinkles and facial "hardening." (Previously everyone thought the culprits were gravity and lack of moisture.) Botox injections were introduced to reverse those signs. Botox was so successful it immediately entered the front lines in the battle against facial aging.

Now Botox Can Be Used Preventively
The next logical step in this revolution is to use Botox preventively, to keep wrinkles from forming in the first place.

Foad Nahai, M.D., vice president of the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery and a plastic surgeon in private practice at Paces Plastic Surgery in Atlanta, has already taken this step. He has his patients smile and frown for him "and if they have deep lines, I may suggest that Botox could help their appearance, but it will also have a preventive effect over the years," he says. "Getting Botox now may prevent lines from becoming very deep and, in turn, stave off the need for more aggressive treatments such as facelifts down the road.

Facelifts Will Come Later - If At All
"In the long run," Nahai says, "the need for invasive major facelifts will be much less because the current generation of 20- and 30-year-olds will not allow their faces to get to the stage that today's 50- and 60-year-olds have….we have needles, creams, and potions you can do and use that will…delay the inevitable."

And that's not all cosmetic medicine can do to turn back time.

Light Skin Resurfacing
Skin resurfacing is on the rise as a preventive measure, too. It began with women who, in their early 30s or late 20s, had developed early sun damage or acne scars and opted for microdermabrasion or nonablative StarLux IPL resurfacing. It soon became apparent that the treatments helped slow the aging process.

They worked like a preventive tool, stimulating the production of collagen beneath the epidermis, adding support to the surface and staving off the thinning process that makes mature skin "crepey."

Now Employed on the Front Lines
Today these light resurfacing procedures are used by actresses, models and others who make their livings from their looks, to keep their complexions fresh and healthy. Not only do these women get an immediate freshening effect, they keep processes like collagen production at optimum levels, thus lessening their vulnerability to a variety of factors that cause facial aging.

Where Actresses Go, Other Women Follow
It's only a matter of time before ordinary civilians begin imitating these actresses and models. Effective strategies always find their way into the mainstream.

In the future, we'll look at photographs of our mothers and grandmothers and stare in wonder. While they entered their emotional primes in their 40s with compromised faces and bodies, today's young women will do it at a peak of physical perfection.

It's Happening Here
Everything you need to experience this revolution is available at our office. Talk to our aesthetician, Anne, or Dr. Lawler about a preventive regimen.

www.lawlercentre.com