Perhaps you want to tackle that bulge in your lower abdomen or slim down the silhouette of your upper thighs. These areas are notoriously tough to change through diet and exercise alone, leading you to consider cosmetic procedures.
The good news is that more body contouring options exist now than ever before, so finding a solution won’t be a challenge. And once you factor in your skin’s elasticity, the path becomes clearer.
At McHugh Plastic Surgery, Dr. Thomas McHugh is a body shaping specialist who has helped clients meet their goals for decades. Based on this experience, we want to share what we’ve learned about the role that skin elasticity plays in your body contouring efforts.
Two important proteins determine the tone and elasticity of your skin: collagen and elastin.
Collagen, the most plentiful protein in your body, helps provide structure and strength for every tissue and organ, including your skin. The other protein, elastin, provides the stretchiness — it’s 1,000 times stretchier than collagen.
As you get older, the production of both proteins diminishes over time, leaving your skin to loosen, wrinkle, and sag. As a result, your skin doesn’t bounce back as it once did — sort of like a rubber band that’s been stretched too much.
If your skin still has some stretchiness left, you have a wide range of body shaping options.
For example, we can reduce unwanted deposits of fat in key areas using our SculpSure® system, which melts away fat cells. We can also use laser technologies to tighten skin in certain areas, such as around your face and neck. With these less invasive body contouring treatments, your skin responds well and remains fairly taut.
For more dramatic body contouring results, we can turn to liposuction, which remains the number one cosmetic procedure in the United States. During this procedure, we suction out excess fat in your treatment areas. Afterward, your skin resettles over your newer, slimmer profile.
If your skin doesn’t bounce back like it used to because of age and collagen/elastin loss, the procedures we outlined above may leave you with sagging folds. For example, we can tackle fat in your abdomen with liposuction, but if your skin has been stretched too far for too long, you might end up with sagging belly skin.
In this case, we would need to get a little more aggressive to meet your body contouring goals and might suggest a tummy tuck — a procedure in which Dr. McHugh removes the loose skin entirely. This leaves you with much tighter skin across your belly.
To figure out which body contouring options are available to you based on the elasticity of your skin, we invite you to come in for a consultation. To begin, please contact our office in The Woodlands, Texas.
