Look more youthful, gain a competitive edge

Exercise.

Eat healthier.

Think positive.

Those may have been some of your new year’s resolutions, all to make you look better, as well as feel better about yourself.

However, as is human nature, those resolutions may not have lasted. But there is one thing you can do that will accomplish those goals – and last longer than a few weeks. Cosmetic surgery. In particular, eyelid surgery. “It is dramatic,” Dr. Bryan Vekovius said of the results. Vekovius is an oculoplastics surgeon and neuro-ophthalmologist in Shreveport. “I see people come in – their eyes are bright, and they light up when they come in after their surgeries a lot of times,” Dr. Vekovius said. “They feel great about themselves. They feel great about the way that other people see them.

“Unfortunately, in our society, people put a lot of weight on appearances. But it makes a huge difference in the way they feel about themselves. Then, it may encourage them to be a little more bold and may encourage them to do more things for themselves.”

Appearances may go so far as to impact someone’s employment.

“Let’s say someone has an eyelid that’s really droopy,” Dr. Vekovius said. “If you have two people that come in for a job (interview), for instance, and one person has a significant eye problem – or a significant eye difference in the way they look because of the way their eyelid configuration is – it may affect whether or not they get the job. (The results from surgery) emboldens them. It gives them confidence when they feel like they’re looking as good as they can.”

Just as age affects your vision, it also affects your skin. Bottom line is, the older we get, the more our body changes. Dr. Vekovius says most of his patients are 45-55 years old.

That’s not a coincidence.

“A lot of people have eyelid problems associated with what we call gravity and years,” Dr. Vekovius said. “People also have changes in their skin. Changes in their body tissue, in which they go from a tissue, in which they go from a more elastic appearance to a more plastic appearance. The elasticity in their skin and their superficial tissues becomes more plastic, so you see more wrinkles."

If you chose to have surgery, the physical pain and recovery time area lot less than they used to be.

"After you've done as many surgeries (an estimated 20,000) as I've done, and as we've advanced medical science, we've got it to where you can have very minimal downtime," Dr. Vekovius said. "You can get up, and really, within the next couple of days after surgery, you're back going. We often won't use a lot of anesthesia. A lot of it is done under local anesthesia. We may give you a little sedative, so you feel comfortable during surgery, and we numb the areas that we are going to operate on. Often, patients feel so good right after surgery that they want to go back to whatever it is they're doing."

But if you are hesitant about having surgery, there are non-surgical options that may improve your issue.

"We will paralyze muscles with Botox or other agents to stop their dynamic wrinkles from happening," Dr. Vekovius said. "That makes a significant improvement. We can do fillers, which will improve areas where they get fat atrophy over time. As you age, your fat begins to degenerate. As you lose fat, you get more holes in the way your appearance is. Fillers can be used to raise that depression and give them a more youthful appearance."

And fillers will last longer than most of your new year's resolutions.

To learn more about Dr. Vekovius and cosmetic surgery, you may visit www.drveko.com.