Celeb anti-aging treatments

It’s hard enough for any woman to look in the mirror and see the incipient wrinkles, sagging jawline and uneven pigmentation that come with aging. Now, imagine seeing your face in a pore-magnifying, imperfection-exaggerating close-up, displayed on a giant screen. It’s no wonder celebrities seek professional help. Of course, neither these beauties nor their doctors are talking, but it seems clear that their sustained youthfulness is more than genetics. So, we’ve asked some A-list experts about the latest and greatest techniques, treatments and procedures that keep these famous faces unlined, firm and dewy.

Let’s take it from the top: the forehead. Even noncelebs are aware of Botox and its role in creating smooth, sometimes preternaturally serene brows. After all, nearly 250,000 Canadians availed themselves of Botox injections in 2008. Well, now Botox has a rival in Dysport (a.k.a. Reloxin), a less-expensive and, some say, longerlasting botulinum-based injectable recently approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) but not yet approved in Canada. Dr. Fredric Brandt, a celebrity dermatologist who has offices in New York City and Miami, participated in the FDA trial and says that Dysport works really well and should be very popular. “But we only used it on frown lines between the brows in trial,” he adds. “There will be a learning curve for applying it to the other areas where we use Botox now, such as the forehead, crow’s feet, the neck and the tip of the nose.”

Time out: the tip of the nose? Brandt explains that with age, the tip of the nose tends to droop; Botox apparently perks it right back up.

Even noncelebs are aware of Botox and its role in creating smooth, sometimes preternaturally serene brows. After all, nearly 250,000 Canadians availed themselves of Botox injections in 2008.

Brow-wise, it’s notable that Dr. Brian Novack, a McGill University-trained Beverly Hills cosmetic surgeon rumoured to have done work for Demi (including a knee lift), has sworn off the traditional surgical approach. “I haven’t done a primary brow lift in eight years because I realized that many of my clients weren’t really dissatisfied with their brows; it was their upper eyelids,” he says. “Thermage [radio frequency energy directed below the skin surface that heats and contracts collagen, stimulating the formulation of new collagen] in combination with Botox works very well to restore the natural height of the brow. Then, fat transfer to the brow and upper and lower eyelids restores that fullness you see in younger people. Take a look at someone like Drew Barrymore: Her eyebrows aren’t super-elevated; they’re not hiked a third of the way up her forehead and shaped like the McDonald’s golden arches. People got into the wrong aesthetic.”

Novack has pretty much abandoned surgery on lower lids too. For puffiness and eye bags, he prefers to inject fat around the bulge to level the lower-lid area and replicate a younger person’s fullness and volume. “A new technology I like is plasma energy,” he says, describing a machine that fires energy released by breaking up a nitrogen molecule. It’s moved from spot to spot over the skin. Healing takes seven to 10 days, and there is some sloughing off of skin. “But it heals beautifully, thickens collagen and gives very nice tightening to the lower eyelids,” he says. “Plus, there’s none of the risk of hypopigmentation [loss of pigmentation] you get with CO² lasers.”

Keep reading to find out how celebs keep their skin smooth and line-free


PUBLICATION DATE: 2009-09-01