Men are Best Candidates for Tweaking their Physique with Liposuction
- Posted on: Feb 23 2017
Men are Best Candidates for Tweaking their Physique with Liposuction
The number of cosmetic procedures for men increased by more than 106 percent between 1997 and 2012, according to the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Dr. Orna Fisher is not surprised. “You see men that are very fit and pretty muscular well into their 40s, 50s and sometimes older. I think the fitness craze has increased over the last 10 years and I think that’s due to movies and TV,” Dr. Fisher explains of the uptick in plastic surgery for men. “I have just seen that overall, there’s just more fit people.”
So if men are becoming more fit, why the need for surgery? “Even though they are fit and eating well, they are still storing fat in very specific areas that are keeping them from having the physique they want. Usually that is in the area of the posterior flanks or the love handles. On a lot of these men you can’t really call them love handles, they already look very good but to match the rest of their body they do, oftentimes, feel like they want that diminished.”
Liposuction is a popular choice for men who just want to tweak their physique. “Liposuction is not a weight loss procedure, but a minor body contouring procedure for people in good condition who just have some disproportionate fat in some areas,” explains Dr. Fisher.
Men with fit bodies aren’t the only candidates for liposuction surgery, according to Dr. Fisher. “Of course there are people who are not quite as fit or whose diet is not quite as dialed in and they are definitely nowhere close to having the physique that they want but they do still store fat in the love handle area or in the lower or central abdomen. They are also good candidates, within reason, assuming they are not in any way obese.”
Elasticity is Optimal
The optimal time for a person to get liposuction is before their skin has lost elasticity. Once people get into their fifth and sixth decade of life their skin tends to lose elasticity and their candidacy for liposuction decreases to a point where the result can be unpredictable.
“I like the results of liposuction on men, in particular, because their skin remains elastic longer. They haven’t had children, and they have not had as many weight fluctuations as women tend to have. Fluctuations such as extremes in weight within 20 lbs. back and forth, pregnancy — all of these things can cause gains in weight which then can stretch the skin.
“Once skin stretches beyond a certain point the skin loses some elasticity, and that means if you remove the fat underneath, the skin won’t shrink and fit around the new shape and that’s the whole principle of how liposuction works,” says Dr. Fisher. “You suction the skin in a sculptured way then you hope that the skin shrinks appropriately to conform to that new shape. If the skin doesn’t shrink appropriately, you can be left with looser skin which is why men tend to be better candidates in general.”
Yes, it’s permanent!
Liposuction is permanent as long as people remember to be diligent about maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Everyone is born with a finite number of fat cells, which can be imagined as little balloons. When you have a healthy lifestyle, the balloon is small and may have a small amount of liquid fat inside it. When you are overweight and not living a healthy lifestyle, each of those fat cells is fuller which causes the balloon to expand.
“With liposuction we are physically removing the number of fat cells that a person’s body has, but the remaining fat cells can still shrink and expand depending on how much fat is in there. But it’s never going to get as big as it would have been if you had your original number of cells,” explains Dr. Fisher.
As for the common assumption that once fat is removed via liposuction it can never return to that spot is incorrect. “If you liposuction one area and then go back to an unhealthy lifestyle, you will gain weight and think the fat went to other places, but it doesn’t go to other places it just means you gained weight. The areas where you have more cells will expand more compared to the areas where you have fewer fat cells. Those areas will always be smaller compared to other areas, but if you gain weight it will look proportionally different.”
Road to Recovery
Although it does depend on the number of areas that have undergone treatment as well as a person’s pain tolerance, recovery time for someone who has had a liposuction procedure is relatively short, about three days. Post-surgery a patient will be very sore similar to having a really tough workout or a fall, and they will feel swollen.
Post-surgical care includes wearing a compression garment, which is much like a girdle, for four to six weeks and helps the tissue shrink down and aids with internal scaring. “With liposuction, we are sucking out the fat and, in turn, creating empty spaces which are ultimately filled with fluid and that fluid has to be absorbed and the compression garment helps with absorption and shrinking down of layers of tissue,” says Dr. Fisher.
Although people want to see results right away it takes about three weeks before someone will get a sense of their overall shape. “It takes a few weeks because of the fluid and the shrinking of the tissue occurring on the inside, and for the skin to conform on the outside. It’s really three months until people see their final result because the shrinking of the tissue has finally occurred,” explains Dr. Fisher.
Because liposuction is not a weight loss procedure but for body contouring, Dr. Fisher says, “If a man is happy with his lifestyle and he is eating and exercising in a sustainable way, but there are one or two areas that are a problem, like the love handles or central abdominal area, then he may be a good candidate for liposuction and that’s the time to be evaluated.”
Posted in: For Men