Fat Injection Grafting for Facial Enhancement

While now nine different synthetic injectable fillers exist for the cosmetic treatment of facial lines and wrinkles, none of them are permanent. As they are all artificially-created materials, the body will eventually absorb or break them down so their plumping effect dissipates with time. Fat from your own body remains as a very appealing injectable filler material with its own set of advantages and disadvantages.

Because fat is taken from your own body, it will never be rejected or cause any type of foreign-body reaction issues. But although it is your own tissue, its survival after being transferred to a new site by injection is not a sure thing. In fact, the unreliability of fat injection volume retention has plagued its use for over 50 years. Today we have learned and use certain techniques that help improve how well fat survives after it is harvested and injected. One thing that is certain is that the face does better with fat graft survival than the rest of the body. This is because that smaller volumes of fat are needed and injected which gives it a better chance of regaining a blood supply and surviving. Also, the face has a very robust blood supply (better than from the neck down) which makes more blood vessels available (and hence oxygen) to starving fat cells struggling to survive.

An interesting study on facial fat grafting and how well it survives was published in the July 2008 issue of Aesthetic Surgery Journal from Spain. In this study, 26 patients with HIV disease were treated with fat injections. HIV-positive patients were chosen as they usually have severe facial wasting (fat loss) which makes determining how fat grafts have survived easier to measure as little surrounding natural fat tissue remains. By CT scanning and computer measurements, they were able to show that a persistent (out to one year) change in the amount of facial fat present after the injections was maintained. This is particularly significant given that the HIV patient is challenging for a fat graft to survive over time given that their retroviral drug regimen had already destroyed the patient's natural fat.

Despite the appeal of fat injection grafting, it does have several disadvantages. First and foremost, it can not be placed into lines and wrinkles in the skin. Fat grafts are thick viscous materials that have to be injected through fairly large needles. All of the synthetic injectable fillers are materials whichi flow easily through very small needles. Therefore, fat grafts must be injected under the skin which makes them good for adding volume and plumping facial areas. Like the synthetic innjectable fillers, they can be used for lip and cheek-lip groove augmentation. But they should not be thought of as lines and wrinkles treatments since they can not be placed directly into the skin. Secondly, fat grafts are not 'off-the-shelf' injectable fillers. They require fat to be harvested, processed, and then injected. This entire process must be done in a sterile manner, which means that they can not be done in the typical office setting most of the time. Because of this consideration, I usually use fat grafts when the patient is having other surgery and we can take advantage of the operating room environment. Outside of having surgery, I will use synthetic injectable fillers in the office setting when no recovery and an instantaneous result is most important to the patient.

by : Dr Barry Eppley

Measure Your Progress

An extremely important part of your fitness program is being able to measure your progress.

Body fat testing is not painful, nor is it expensive. You can get it done at most any gym or fitness center. Simply ask if they have an expert who can measure body composition.

It's also a good idea to take before and after photos' and post them somewhere you'll see them every day.
But most importantly, measure 5 - 10 different aspects of your progress.

My most successful clients measure everything in their life that's affected by their weight loss, normally on a simple scale from 1 - 10, such as:

* their daily energy level
* their attitude
* the way they feel when they look in the mirror
* the way they fit into their clothes
* the compliments they get from people
* their level of mental focus
* their waist, hips, and thigh measurements
* their body weight
* their body-fat level
* their endurance in their workouts
* etc, etc, etc...

Make a long list of ways you can measure your progress - but be sure to include things that are truly important to YOU.

If having loads of energy is important to you, then you should be measuring your energy level every day to see if your diet and/or workout routine are doing their job.

On the other hand, if you already have a lot of daily energy, than you might not want to measure that - you might prefer to measure other things that are more important to you at your current stage of life.

Take time to design your list, then chart your progress in a daily journal every day for each of the categories on your list. Then take an average for the whole day, and write that average at the top of your page.


by : Christopher Guerriero

Take A Serious Look At Your Body Fat

There are many diets and fitness programs out there that are concerned with one thing: how you look. They are centered around the idea that in order to be attractive and valuable you must be thin. These diets and fitness plans are merely ploys to get people to spend money on the latest fad out of a guarentee that they will lose weight instantly and never gain it back while eating their favorite desserts and not lifting a finger. Those plans just don't work. In fact, they can do even more damage than good. As a fitness trainer, I consider one of my most important tasks to be informing people about the truths about health. People need to learn that their body fat levels are much more important than their weight.

As people are so consumed with their weight and their physical appearance, naturally little time is given to caring about actual symbols of health such as percentage of body fat or muscle mass. I find that this is one of the hugest truths about health that need to be firmly planted into people's minds. Why? Because body fat levels say a lot about the actual composition of our bodies and hence about our actual levels of health. Some of the thinnest people in the world have high body fat levels because they eat very little and they do no fitness routines to build and maintain muscle. So while they may be tiny, they are not strong nor are they healthy by any true standard.

Watching your body fat levels can happen in a variety of ways. An important first step is to get a simple test done that will reveal your current body fat percentage. It is a good idea to meet with a physician or a fitness trainer and discuss a plan of seeing your body fat percentage lessen to be in normal range. Making a goal and a plan for how to reach your goal is one of the best ways of attaining anything to do with health.

So take a serious look at your body fat percentage. Begin to watch what you eat. Add lots of fresh fruits and vegetables and replace sugar-filled drinks with water. Those two changes paired with an increase of exercise will have you feeling and seeing results in no time. Your level of body fat does not have to be your enemy. Use your body fat level as an inspiration to get into the best shape of your life for the rest of your life.



By: Julee Mitchelsin