A customer and I had a consultation in the OUMERE Boutique to discuss her skin concerns. With her approval I am writing of her case: She is in her 40s and has been getting Botox injections, hyaluronic acid fillers and other procedures for about 15 years. She claims that these were to prevent aging before it begun, a sort of proactive anti-aging measure.
Her complaint was that over the years her skin has gotten paler, lost its glow and has gained a greyish tone. She is too young to have the skin quality of a woman in her 70s. I also commented that her skin was beginning to have an embalmed appearance.
Her problem represents an interesting paradox of skin care, dermatology and anti-aging procedures: cosmetic procedures are meant to defy aging by smoothing wrinkles and restore volume to the skin. But by doing these procedures, the skin becomes permanently damaged causing the user to look old and artificial.
My advice was to cease with the fillers, Botox and to avoid getting threads, or facelifts and to begin the OUMERE regimen to get some bloodflow back into the skin, and hopefully detoxify the chemicals in her face. The problem is that procedural damage is irreversible to an extent, and you can never look how you did before getting significant work done, but the skin care regimen I prescribed can make you look as good as possible naturally.
After the consultation I researched published images of those before getting work done, and their appearance after many years of getting cosmetic procedures. There are a few commonalities amongst all users:
1. The skin is pale and has an appearance of loss blood flow.
2. The skin has a rubber-like quality
3. The skin looks embalmed reminiscent of a corpse in an open casket funeral
4. Female faces begin to look more masculine and some male faces tend to look more feminine
The reason why skin becomes paler with cosmetic work and loses its youthful glow is because the injections damage the blood vessels in the skin and interfere with providing blood supply to the skin tissue. When skin does not obtain adequate blood flow, oxygen and vital nutrients are not delivered and this causes the skin to become pale and aged. The damage from the injection can be caused by the needle itself or the inflammation from the injection.
I believe that the injection material itself also interferes with blood flow in two ways: first the injected material pushes against blood vessels, causing a strangulation effect. And two the preservatives in the injected material break down or harden the blood vessels, interfering with their function. Dermal fillers often have a range of preservatives to maintain their shelf stability.
The preservatives and other chemicals in the injected material is the reason for the rubberlike- embalmed quality long-time users of injections all have in common. This is one reason why people who get procedures all end up looking the same after a while. When you get the injections many times, the preservatives, I believe end up embalming the skin which may not be reversible.
Skin when mutilated through toxin and filler injections, threads and facelifts loses its feminine quality in women. I believe this is because features become sharper and harsher and lose the fine quality attributable to a feminine look. I have seen that the reverse is true in some men, who through overuse of filler, get a soft look to their face that gives a more feminine appearance.
I often feel like a broken record because my answer to 99% of skin complaints is always the same: stop doing unnatural things to yourself and start a natural skin care regimen. For some reason no one wants to believe that natural simplicity is the answer. It is the answer because natural is beautiful and fake is not. This is the philosophy I live by and is the foundation of OUMERE.
Botox, fillers, facelifts and other cosmetic procedures are advertised as an age reverser. The dark reality is a twisted fate: these very procedures, over time, mutate the skin into a caricature of its former self, betraying the natural aging process for a fake semblance of youth.