Cosmetic Surgery & Beauty #72

feature
When it
comes to
how our
skin ages, it
seems it’s a
case of like
mother, like
daughter.
We’ve all heard the old adage told to hubbies-tobe
that if they want to know what their wife will
look like in years time, just look at her mum. As it
turns out, there may be a large grain of truth when it comes
to ageing skin.
A group of plastic surgeons from the Loma Linda
University Medical Center in California scanned the faces of
mothers and their daughters using computer modelling and
3D cameras. The research team found that mothers and
daughters who look similar also age in a strikingly similar
pattern. They found the daughters’ faces were beginning
to sag, wrinkle, thin and lose elasticity around the eyes in
exactly the same patterns as their mothers’ faces. This
similarity particularly increased after the daughters hit the
age of 30.
One of the surgeons, Dr Matthew Camp, says the study
was the first to prove scientifically that women age like their
mothers. Until now, Dr Camp says studies of facial ageing
have mostly been subjective and observational.
The findings may be especially helpful for women in
their mid-30s to early 50s, which is the ideal window for
using minimally invasive techniques to maintain a younger
looking appearance. Recognising how your mother’s
face changed over the years could help guide a cosmetic
surgeon in the appropriate procedures to address similar
patterns of sagging skin or volume loss. For example,
doctors would be able to pinpoint the appropriate areas to
inject dermal fillers.
Another author of the study, Dr Subhas Gupta, says
knowing exactly how a woman’s lower eyelids will change
with age can help surgeons plan a surgical correction
that will prevent the changes seen in her mother. ‘If you
come in when you’re 30, we can tell you where you will
have changes and quantify what you will need and where,’
he says.
’The findings were surprisingly repetitive regardless of
ethnicity and actual age difference between mothers and
daughters. You can beat Mother Nature to the punch and
not have your mother’s eyes,’ says Dr Gupta.
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