Look Your Best for the Holidays With a Facelift

The holiday season is traditionally a time of giving, and while most of us focus on acts of generosity toward others, we often neglect to make time for ourselves. If you’ve been considering a facelift, this is the ideal time to schedule your treatment. 

Unlike fillers and other temporary fixes, a facelift offers long-lasting improvements by addressing the root causes of facial aging, smoothing wrinkles, and literally “lifting” your face to counteract sagging. In this post, Rishi Jindal, MD, and the team at Rejuvenate Plastic Surgery explain how facelifts work and why now is a great time to schedule your procedure.

Facelift basics

When we’re young, our skin is naturally firm and toned. But as we age, years of sun exposure, chronic stress, smoking, poor nutrition, and even good, old gravity take their toll. Skin’s supportive network weakens, volume declines, and suddenly, we’re faced with lines, wrinkles, and sagging skin, especially in the midface and around the neck, jowls, and chin.

While fillers and neuromuscular agents like Botox can help temporarily correct some issues like wrinkles, they’re not intended to be long-term solutions, instead requiring regular treatments to maintain results. Fillers and other nonsurgical treatments aren’t designed to treat sagging muscles, either, making it harder for many patients to achieve the natural-looking results they’re looking for.

Facelift surgery uses special techniques to address underlying muscles and tissue in your face and your neck too, gently repositioning your skin to help restore your youthful appearance. By tightening and repositioning tissues, facelift surgery enhances definition along the jawline and reduces deep folds around the mouth, helping you achieve a refreshed appearance that still looks like you — just more youthful and energized.

Recovering from your facelift

A facelift is a surgical procedure, so you can expect some swelling and bruising afterward. Not surprisingly, these “side effects” are especially noticeable within the first few days postop, becoming markedly less noticeable within the next couple of weeks. 

Once initial swelling resolves, you can typically resume many of your daily activities after about two weeks or so. You need to avoid strenuous activity for about four weeks to give your face plenty of time to heal and recover.

It’s also important to attend follow-up visits and follow your aftercare instructions. Using moisturizer, avoiding direct sun exposure, and staying hydrated play important roles in helping your facial tissue heal.

With the holidays around the corner, it’s important to schedule your surgery as soon as possible so you look your best at the height of the season. Scheduling a facelift procedure now also helps you face the new year with greater confidence, with benefits that last for years.

Winter is a great time to schedule your treatment

Scheduling a facelift right now helps you look and feel great for the new year, but that’s just one benefit. Having surgery in the winter makes it easier to protect your skin from the sun, an important part of your recovery process. 

That’s because the sun is lower in the sky now (yes, even in sunny San Diego), which means its UV rays aren’t as strong or as damaging. And of course, having facelift surgery in the winter means you are ready to face those warmer months and summer vacation plans feeling and looking your best.

To learn more about facelift surgery and whether it’s a good choice for you, request an appointment online or over the phone with Dr. Jindal and the team at Rejuvenate Plastic Surgery in San Diego, California, today.