Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to The Holistic and Scientific podcast with board certified plastic surgeon, Dr. Robert Whitfield, Austin's natural choice for plastic surgery and the expert in smart laser and energy treatments.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (00:21):
So we've gone through your fat transfer and now you're in the process, you've been kind of out and about healing up and we've talked a little bit about what you want to do in the future. Moving forward, what do you think is the next step for you in this journey?

Candice (00:41):
Well, I'm supposed to get, I did pay a lot of money for my failed fat transfer, so I'm working with a different surgeon that is taking over and is going to help me out, but I'm only doing a very small amount. We're doing like 100 ccs, we're just filling in. It's almost like a fat transfer to the face because we're just doing a couple areas that have dents. I do not want to mess with the area anymore. I've accepted where I'm at, so it's just so that I can wear v necks basically. We're not trying to do anything other than fix an indent, essentially. So I'm fine with that. I would be more concerned about trying to put in fat again. I think that unless I was to come to you I don't think I want to go through that again and as you know I'm a difficult case. And just focusing on other aspects of my health and I love to work out and fitness and my body is important to me.

Candice (01:46):
So I'm very excited about all of the different holistic, noninvasive devices and things that you offer. So at some point I'll probably, I did have three children and I gained 75 pounds with my first so. While I work on abs I still have loose skin and the arms have gotten looser and then where I had fat removed from my legs there was no skin tightening done with that and just that at my age all of the skin laxity things become, and I don't focus too much on that. It is kind of part of my job to some extent and because I'm able to play younger I like to be able to act in those roles as long as possible. And everyone in Hollywood does it. They just don't admit to it. So I have no problem sharing those secrets with women as I'm able to do them.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (02:36):
Yeah, I think Candice highlights something that she's done a lot of internal healing and she feels very good and comfortable, and I really appreciate her actually discussing everything. It's not easy to come on a show and discuss things, but these are the realities that happen over time and no one's ever walked into my office and asked me to make their skin looser or give them fat. It's always "make my skin tighter and better in appearance and reduce fat in these areas I don't like". So our focus has been to develop a completely noninvasive and minimally invasive line of treatments to that end and use the best products. And I feel comfortable both in how we address skin tightening in a non-invasive way and minimally invasive way, and then of course surgically.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (03:31):
But I would say that the way we do it is going to be different much in the same way I approach an explant patient with all the effort spent basically on the five ways we take care of an explant patient with food sensitivity testing and entire blood panel and hormone balancing and toxicity testing and looking carefully at the gut microbiome and genetics. When we look at skin tightening, your genetics dictate a lot of this. So there are genes, the foxo3 aging gene which has been studied extensively now. I can do your genetic testing and unfortunately tell you if you're more prone to wrinkles or not and will you lose your hair or not and would you benefit from these supplements to help you methylate better or detox better so genetics always play a role, but to be insightful and understand when you come in I've spent a lot of time over my career taking care of patients and developing plans and proprietary treatments, but really I think probably the strong suit is combining and not being afraid to combine things to get the best results.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (04:41):
So whether it's a skin tightening treatment, just let you know when you go, whether you go to me or someone else in Beverly Hills or anywhere in the New York or for that matter anywhere in the world, there's always a limitation with a single modality. So if someone says I'm going to use this device and it's going to heat this up and it's going to cause this result, you're not 20 and you're not 30. Things like that work extremely well in that age group. Why? Because their collagen level is so much higher and the elastin level is so much higher. Elastin is what gives you a snap in your skin. That's what retracts the skin. Collagen level goes down after the age of we'll say 34, and it's on its way down sometimes earlier, but that's what leads to the appearance change and laxity and aging.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (05:33):
So the ways we combat that are, and I get asked every day, Dr. Whitfield, can I take this collagen something, can I drink this collagen supplement? I'm like, Candice, you can eat and drink collagen all day long. I don't know if your gut can absorb enough collagen to make an impact. What I do know in my very large number of years of experience is if you poke a little hole in skin it always heals unless you're dead. So if your skin tightens from healing, which it always will, that's called the basically wound healing or injury hypothesis. I know that if I use this modality coupled with this modality, coupled with this modality, no matter where I use it always works. And the products I use always work because they're studied with those types of modalities to stimulate more collagen synthesis. So for everybody the take home message is if you want your skin tighter you use things to promote collagen synthesis in the skin.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (06:37):
And I'm not here to disparage vital proteins or anything that Jennifer Aniston is getting paid to peddle, but I can't tell you how well you'll do with that and my wife is no different, she's like I drink this, I want to drink this. It will help me. I'm like, I love her to death, but I don't know how much she'll absorb. I mean, on a whole, collagen is a very big model, but I know microneedling works. I know radiofrequency skin tightening works. I know the things I do with liposculpture work. I also have a great cellulite treatment that it's not one tool. I'm not going to name any products that have been out in the past that say they will get rid of it or a current injectable product I'm not going to name either, but I have a way to do it with energy based technology and microneedling and product and you can tighten the areas all over the body and make them look more youthful in appearance.

Candice (07:37):
I've seen your cellulite work. It's just absolutely incredible and even looked like it seemed to help with stretch marks, which I've not seen anything help with stretch marks ever. And it's generally because they're just doing one thing, which is very interesting that you're talking about combining all of these different things.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (07:57):
Since you brought up the stretch mark. So everybody needs to know what a stretch mark is since we've gone down the rabbit hole. A stretch mark is a tear in the dermis, which I mentioned earlier. The top layer of the skin is dead. That just prevents you from basically evaporating. The middle layer's the dermis and so when that tears from rapid growth, which happens to women in puberty, basically by the time they get to eighth grade sometimes they've already grown to their maximal extent at the waist we'll say and that's why women get exceedingly tall very quickly versus the boys of the same age. They'll get rapid expansion which will cause stretch marks in the hip, thigh, buttock area and then if they go on to have children similarly they can have further stretch marks, but they still have that area around their hip, thigh, buttock region that leads to laxity and appearance changes that are unwanted.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (08:54):
And that's where I've concentrated a lot of work to both help my cosmetic patients and every patient of mine is a cosmetic patient because I did their explant doesn't mean they can't have or get better appearing skin anywhere on their body. And those are ways to do it. And I combine things because I've learned over time it's very difficult to get a result in that setting with one particular modality if you use for skin tighten, especially multimodality therapy and the appropriate products. Like I like Alastin Regenerating Skin Nectar because it's proprietary method of stimulating collagen synthesis. So most people don't even know Alastin as a product because it can't compete with something like whatever, L'Oreal or Revlon on a television network or any kind of ad platform because they don't have that kind of capital.

Dr. Robert Whitfield (09:46):
But their chief medical officer is a plastic surgeon and when I decided on what line I would carry principally in my office I spoke to the plastic surgeon who runs their studies and they're a wound healing studies so it all makes very good sense that it stimulates and increases collagen synthesis and helps heal a wound more rapidly. So basically like you described with, you had poor blood flow and the product you used helped increase blood flow. That's what all these things are. I would not say they're all masquerading about them, but the majority of them offer very little in that.

Candice (10:17):
Right. Yeah. Well, that's exciting. So I'll probably be back for some of that down the line.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Dr. Robert Whitfield is a board certified plastic surgeon located in Austin, Texas near 360 and Walsh Tarlton in West Lake. To learn more go to drrobertwhitfield.com or follow Dr. Rob on Instagram @drrobertwhitfield. Links to learn more about Dr. Rob's smart procedures and anything else mentioned on today's show are available in the show notes. The Holistic and Scientific Podcast is a production of The Axis, the axis.io.