Until several years ago, lip fillers were the main option for lip augmentation. But now you have a choice.

Lip implants vs fillers

Lip fillers are made of hyaluronic acid, the same gel in your joints. Fillers like Juvederm, Restylane or Belotero can define your Cupid’s bow and fill the lips. But they typically require retreatment every 6 months. Using your own fat is also an option but that requires a trip to the operating room.

If that’s too much effort, then implants, made of silicone may be the answer for you. These silicone-based lip implants provide symmetry and fullness in an accurate way that may not always be possible with fillers.  And best of all, they’re permanent!

These devices can be implanted under local anesthesia. As the news story above suggests, the procedure is available as a lunch-time treatment. After the numbness wears off, you’ll have pain but this is treatable with moderate strength pain medication.

But don’t worry about leakage from these implants. These implants are like a gummy bear and don’t contain a liquid silicone. They’re safe and available in 3 different lengths and 3 different widths. You can learn more about pricing and these implants in general by clicking here.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post All you need to know about lip implants first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

Let’s say, for a moment, I care about 90 Day Fiancé or any of the “stars” of the show. If that’s the case, I have a small window of opportunity to weigh in on the latest news that Larissa Dos Santos Lima had $72,000 of plastic surgery to look like Kylie Jenner. But is that really true?

90 Day Fiancé spends big!

If you look at the “after” photos above, you’ll notice some similarities to Kylie. Larissa has big boobs and is curvy like Kylie now. But when it comes to really looking like Kylie from the facial perspective, she doesn’t. That’s not to say she looks bad. Not at all. Not here to body shame.

But if she’s putting all of this money towards looking like Kylie, it will be hard to have the same face as Kylie. Their underlying bone structure and head shape are different. Sure she had a rhinoplasty and I’m sure other fillers to the face. But that alone doesn’t make her look like Kylie. The dark hair and makeup do most of the heavy lifting on that front. Not saying there’s no similarity between the two women, but the similarities reflect similarities that women with an olive complexion and dark hair would have anyway.

Also, who said she’s trying to look like Kylie? When I read this article, it never clearly quotes Larissa herself that she wants to look like Kylie. On the show, she told her boyfriend that she wanted liposuction to look like a mannequin, but not Kylie. If she wants to look like Kylie and that is her deliberate plan, fine. But I can’t tell if that’s her goal or just a click bait title for an intriguing article put forth by TMZ. It’s possible the fake news strikes again!

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post 90 Day Fiancé spends $72,000 to look like Kylie Jenner first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

Kylie is pregnant, can she still get lip fillers?

First off, I don’t know whether Kylie gets Botox but we know she gets lip fillers. She’s admitted to it (and I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt here)! But for the purposes of this post, I’ll answer the question in general – can pregnant women still can get lip fillers and Botox?

No doctor will encourage you to get BOTOX® or XEOMIN®, injections that reduce facial wrinkles, while pregnant. It doesn’t mean those injections will affect your pregnancy but since there are no studies on the effects of BOTOX® and XEOMIN® on a pregnancy, no doctor can say for sure. And there will never be a study on the effects of those products on pregnancy. because no company wants to take the liability.

I will tell you however, that I have injected patients with BOTOX® or XEOMIN® when they didn’t realize they were pregnant. And the patient and their baby turned out fine. So while there’s no evidence of a problem in being injected with these products while pregnant, it’s impossible to say they’re safe. In other words, make an informed decision between yourself and your doctor.

As for fillers, I believe this is more straightforward. Botox is a toxin that does not naturally occur in the body. So it’s understandable that consumers would be wary of injecting this into their body during pregnancy. Fillers on the other hand are made up of compounds that are naturally occurring in the body. Hyaluronic acid, the compound found in Belotero and Juvederm, is naturally found in joints. So in summary, even though Kylie is pregnant, I still think she can get fillers!

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post Now that Kylie is pregnant, can she still get lip fillers and Botox?! first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.

Do patients actually want duck lips?!

I don’t believe patients want duck lips. They end up with the overly filled augmented “lip look” because they lose perspective. Perspective of their baseline. Here’s what I mean.

A patient goes in to see their doctor because they’re unhappy with the appearance of their lips. Maybe they want a fuller upper or lower, or more typically, fuller upper and lower lips. They get a syringe injection and look great. But then they get used to that appearance over the next 6 to 12 months. As the filler dissolves, they notice their lip volume is decreasing.

However, the situation begs the question: Are their lips really smaller or maybe they’ve become used to their appearance and don’t recognize how the lips are larger than what they started with. So they go back to their doctor and ask for more. The problem is they’re no longer volumizing their lips in step-wise fashion from their original state. They now have a newly “recalibrated” baseline and their perspective is altered.

In other words, if the patient’s original baseline is assigned the value of zero, their first injection took them to a 1. As they become accustomed to this new appearance, that 1 recedes back to a zero in their mind. When they go back and get more filler they think they’re again going from a zero to a 1 when in fact they’re going from a 1 to a 2. After treatment, the ‘2’ becomes their new zero, so when they go back in to get additional filler, the injection brings them up to a 3 and now they have duck lips! Hopefully this numeric analogy makes sense.

Lip Augmentation with Filler Video

The best way to avoid this problem is by documenting your baseline with a photo before the first treatment. When you return for your second treatment, review that baseline photo with your doctor before getting a 2nd treatment. Maybe you only need a small touchup, but not the whole syringe. Regardless, you now have the correct perspective, thereby walking out of the office without those enigmatic duck lips!

To check pricing on lip augmentation and other fillers from Dr. Kaplan, click here.

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Jonathan Kaplan for BuildMyBod.

The post How to avoid duck lips with lip filler [video] first appeared on Plastic Surgeon San Francisco | Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery.