Anti-aging: Understanding and Fighting Loss of Facial Volume

Although it is a fact that we all age at some point, it is not wrong to look younger than your supposed years. And one of the secrets to looking younger or cheating age naturally is through facial volume restoration. This is mostly done with the use of facial dermal fillers, fat transfer or cheek implants, which replace the lost configuration. 

During our youth, our faces are full of volume, without any wrinkles. But as we grow older, we begin to lose the facial voluptuousness that we once had, or simply speaking, that shape of a fresh grape. Wrinkles begin to appear, our cheeks begin to sag and our lips start losing their lusciousness.

Some people would opt to have a face lift to get rid of the wrinkles and saggy skin, but unfortunately, according to the experts in aesthetic medicine, this can never work. Volume to the face cannot be restored by pulling the skin. The only way this can be done is through adding more volume to the areas that lost it in the first place.

Facial areas that suffer from volume loss

Youthful faces that have not yet lost their volume tend to resemble an up-side down triangle with the eyes area forming the base and the chin forming the tip of the triangle. But as we lose our facial volume, the face takes a square shape, due to all the sagging. The areas affected mostly by loss of volume include:

Cheeks:  When the cheeks sag, they tend to move down from their high position near the eyes. This causes the development of nasolabial folds, which stretch from the corners of the mouth to the corners of the nose.

Jowls: As the cheeks sag, they also cause the sagging of the jowls, which is the skin on the jaw line, causing oral commisures. This skin sags lower than the jaw line, leading to that square shape we mentioned above after the loss of volume.

Lips: Luscious lips are considered beautiful because they have volume. When they lose it, they become very thin and lose their contour.

Brows: When the brows lose their volume, they expose the upper orbital rim leaving the face looking skeletal and old.

How facial volume can be restored

Before we find out how facial volume can be restored, we have to know about how it is lost in the first place, so that we can know which method of volume restoration would work best. Facial volume loss can be caused by:

• Skin aging
• Hormonal changes
• Dieting
• Lifestyle factors like stress, smoking and sun exposure
• Receding bones

There are different ways that facial volume can be restored, and these include:

• Dermal Fillers: These injectable fillers are non-invasive and have been used for decades to restore the shape of the face. Although they do the job of restoring volume, it is only on a temporary basis. They give instant results and are usually used on the cheeks, lips, under the eyes and the temples. The injectables include Radiesse, Collagen, sculptra, Restylane and Juvederm.
• Fat Transfer: This procedure involves the removal of fat from one area of the body and injecting it to the area where one has lost volume. Most common areas that can be injected for volume restoration are the cheeks. It is considered a natural process because no foreign substances are injected into the patient’s body. This solution is long-term but requires a touch-up once in a while.
• Cheek implants: This is an invasive cosmetic surgery procedure whereby the plastic surgeon places a solid implant under the skin, over the cheekbones. This augments the sagging cheeks, restoring volume to this area. The results are more permanent than the other two methods, but the down time is also longer.

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