Hi everyone, I'm Dr. Amir Karam, board certified facial plastic surgeon and founder and creator of Karam MD Skin. I specialize in facial rejuvenation, which basically means I help people look as young as they feel. And today I'm going to probably share with you one of the most important videos I have ever made on this channel, and that is 20 mistakes to avoid in facial rejuvenation.
Okay, so this is 20... things that I've learned throughout my 20-year career from not only my own mistakes, my observations, my patients' stories, and I'm going to basically break them down for you one by one to essentially save you the heartache, the financial burden of making these mistakes, and the disappointment, of course, on your own. To empower you, hopefully to steer you in the right direction and keep them from happening to you and anyone else who... happens to be watching this video. So without further ado, let's break it down.
Let's break down the list and go through this one by one. One caveat I do want to mention, this is in no particular order of priority, just as they came to me as I was jotting them down. So make sure you stick with me through the list. And at the end, I think you'll find that the collective value of all of these, and you can go back and watch them at different points, will be extremely, extremely high. So stick with me all the way through the end.
All right, folks. Excited to share. All right, so number one, lasers in skin aging. So a huge mistake is people think that they can use lasers as their tool, their mechanism, their high-end Ferrari-like approach to skin anti-aging.
And because it's expensive, because it's technology, because it is what it is, that it somehow eliminates the need for doing this simple stuff like sun protection. and use of daily skincare. I'm here to tell you, nothing is further from the truth. Liking it to this, daily use of sun protection and the right actives is like fundamentally like good diet and exercise. If you want a great body, you want to be in shape, you want to be healthy, every day, a little bit of exercise, a little good diet, year after year compounding, that's how you're going to reach incredible health and physique goals, right?
Now take... lasers, for example, that's more like a boot camp. That's like every three months you go in for a week or two and you just bust your butt and you go hardcore. You get in this, you know, improvement of shape over that period of time. Then what happens afterwards?
All those gains start to diminish again, right? So you've got a boost and then you drop. That's what happens with the laser. You can't make long-term gains because the time in between them is just simply a downward sloping sort of a change.
Who really goes every three to four months to get a hardcore laser anyway? It's usually like once a year or twice a year or whatever it is, and then in between they do whatever they want. Worst way to manage your skin.
Mistake number one. Don't think lasers can replace good sun protection and good active skincare, like retinol use, vitamin C, niacinamide, et cetera, big actives. All right, so number two.
It makes me laugh to say it, but popping pimples, right? So. You're like, okay, what's the big deal? I've got a pimple, you pop it. Well, here's what happens.
You pop it, you leave yourself a higher chance of having a scar from that acne. You also increase the chance of spreading the bacteria to different pores along the way, effectively worsening the situation in many cases. So bottom line is, resist the urge, don't do it. I can't tell you how many patients we've had who've had major issues with discoloration, with deep pitted scars, etc. from The act of popping pimples.
Very simple. I thought we'd get that one out of the way early on. Number three, trying to lift your face by filling it like a balloon.
Now, I know you think that sounds kind of like I'm joking with you, but it's not actually a joke because the fundamental reality over the last 20 years for all involved, including me and my practice, etc., was thinking wrongly that you can... Take somebody who has laxity, whether it's early laxity or late laxity, and you can put fillers into their face and their cheeks and their jawline, etc. to kind of fill them up and take care of their jowls. Long story short, it doesn't do anything to lift the face other than start to deform the face by putting fillers in places that didn't have volume to begin with, like your cheeks or your bones. They don't have a bunch of volume added to that area.
Your jawline, when you add it to it, it actually makes you look heavier. So the use of filler can actually... aid you when it's done with the intention and purpose of actually lifting you.
And without question, these fillers do stick around. They, you know, they stay a lot longer than than we've ever thought they would. Five, 10 years, they're still there. Slowly over time, you start to get a transformation in the overall shape and look of your face, which is usually not in the right look, and you end up regretting those changes.
Like this point has been beaten, you know, I think on this channel, especially over time, but I'm summarizing it here is, do not try to lift your face by adding volume to it. That's not going to do it. If your face is sagging, Filling it isn't going to do anything. Surgery will. Number four, doing a neck lift alone.
Folks, I can't tell you how many times I've seen patients come in, their overall face and neck is sagging, but of course they're bothered more by the thing that they're bothered more. And a lot of people are bothered more by their loose neck. You know, they could do this and they see the laxity under here and they're bothered by it. So they go in and they want to do something simple and they go in and do, you know, a neck procedure, like a neck lift or liposuction, et cetera. Never works.
Why it never works is because the neck is connected to the face. As the face starts to come down, so goes the neck. Because the neck is being held up by the face.
This is a very important point. Anatomically, the fascia of the face is holding the neck up. If you don't believe me, just put your fingers on your cheek and pull up. And you can see the effect it has on your neck.
Your neck comes up with it. So going in here and just doing something, whether to do a platysmaplasty to the muscles or liposuction, Without tightening the muscles up vertically and going upward, you're going to be right back where you started from in no time. And it looks weird.
It's like, why would a neck look tight and the upper face not? And if you think that your upper face is not bad enough to warrant some kind of a treatment, just give it another year or two. And after a neck lift, not only does your neck come down and your face looks down, but it always looks a little funky and weird.
So long story short, I never do. Neck lifts alone on people who are aging. I do them on 30-something-year-olds who have a heavy neck, but I won't do it on a 45, 50, 60-year-old, no matter how much they tell me that their face isn't bothering them. Face and neck go together.
That's the premise of the Vertical Restore. It addresses all the fascia up vertically together so everything looks balanced, harmonious, because at the end of the day, the name of the game is to look natural and to have an effective change. And you can't get that with a neck lift alone. That is a...
Really, really weak procedure, in my opinion. Number five, using energy devices. What are energy devices? These are things like thermage, or therapy, morphosate, et cetera, that are pumping external energy into the tissues to try to lift the face.
Again, avoid surgery, right? We've tried all of them. We've been around, we've done it.
I mean, when I say we, I don't mean me. I actually stayed away from all those. But as a industry and as a collective group, I've seen it all, I've heard all of it, I've talked to colleagues, etc. None of them work to lift the face accurately, I mean appropriately. They really don't do anything other than potentially risk losing the subcutaneous fat, which is the fat under the skin, the energy that's being placed through the face to get down to the fascia, oftentimes will melt some of that fat.
People complain all the time that their face looks more gaunt and they actually look... older as a result of that. I did a whole video on things that can actually age you and energy devices is part of that equation.
And I definitely don't think that there's any place actually for the use of energy devices in the continuum of facial aging and the management of facial aging. I mean, that's a strong statement. You can quote me on that, but I'd like for you to prove me otherwise that some of these treatments actually do anything effective. And I'll tell you anecdotally, I know people who my patients who are actually spa owners and medical spa owners and dermatologists etc who've done it over and over again and they say yeah it gives you like a temporary improvement but then it goes away. Okay so along the way you're potentially risking some damage and not getting an improvement.
Worthless procedure in my opinion. Number six on that same note is thread lifting. Thread lifting has been around for over 20 years. Came hit the scene, made a huge splash.
Everyone realized it didn't work, disappeared, 10-15 years later showed up, now has these PDO threads and we're coming to the same conclusion after another big marketing push and everyone started to use them and try them and essentially we're realizing they're very temporary improvements. They're also filled with complications from like infections and tethering and nerve issues and all this other stuff for what for like a three to six month potential improvement in a continuously aging face that you can't keep up with with the threads and again A lot of time and money and energy and risk spent for literally nothing. So thread lifting is one of those procedures that doesn't even have a place in the toolbox for anti-aging.
I don't care what age you are. If you're old, if you're... Truly lax enough to where you're thinking you need to do this and you should be thinking surgery. If you're not lax enough, then you should just not do anything, you know, but don't waste and risk anything for something that doesn't actually work and has risks associated with it.
Number seven, we're going to switch gears into skin now. Number seven is foaming cleansers. Folks, I did not even realize until I got into the process of formulating my own skincare line and developing the Karem MD trifecta and all the research that went into it, it took like five years to develop this thing but I didn't realize how important the cleansing step is.
I mean trust me I'm a guy who's like just used Dove soap on my face the whole time. Now I can't use anything other than my own rinse cleanser because it feels better and it does better but also because I know better now. And the reality is the foaming action is abrasive.
Abrasiveness causes two things it causes dryness of the skin and it also causes inflammation irritation to the skin. All of which keep anything that you want to put on your skin after the cleansing step. less likely to make it through and also to set your skin up for success.
You need to have a calm skin surface that is clean and properly removed of all dirt and debris, but it's also not inflamed and it's very calm. And that was the, for us, I mean, the formulation of rinse, which is our cleanser, was about being very, very gentle, very mild, but also having things like aloe and apple amino acids and all these other components in it that... soothe and calm the skin so that in addition to cleansing, it allows those things. Now, just a proud father moment here, but our rinse cleanser won the Harper's Bazaar 2023 best daily cleanser. And that's a big, big deal.
Obviously there's a lot of cleansers out there, but it goes to show there's a lot more to cleansing than just putting a bunch of suds and wiping it. In fact, a lot of people when they make that transition find it very weird that their face isn't, they're not doing a lot of suds on their skin. You're not getting that foaming, but afterwards you feel your skin.
your skin and you realize it actually feels better than it ever has. So foaming cleansers are a big no. Number eight, not using sunscreen. Folks, there's probably nothing simpler for preventing and managing skin aging than avoiding sun to the facial skin.
It is so sensitive. Your neck skin and your face skin are so, so sensitive to sun. It maybe accounts for like 80% of the changes that are related to skin aging, you know, from like collagen breakdown to discolorations. to dehydration, all that kind of stuff comes from sun exposure.
And it's a lifetime accumulative effect. So the sooner you can stop bombarding your skin with UVA and UVB light, the better your skin is going to perform in the long run. So if you're even serious about doing anything positive for your skin and defying skin aging, it starts with sun protection.
Cannot stress that enough. One of the simplest, most simple things to do, but also one of the most impactful and important things. And majority of patients and people out there.
like will spend $5,000 on a laser series, but will not put sunscreen on their face on a daily basis. It's like, it doesn't make any sense. Same thing with all the routines that you put on.
You can do all these things you want, but if you're not managing the sun, you're kind of like either treading water or losing ground. So it's really, really important. Number nine is treating your face, whether it's with skincare product or whether it's with chemical peels and lasers, but treating your face and not treating your neck.
Folks, your face and your neck are basically what you're doing. one thing, right? Face, eyes, neck, all one thing.
The neck skin actually is thinner and it actually ages more aggressively. So when you go and you do these treatments where you put product on, don't forget your neck. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people over time, their face looks like 15 years younger in terms of the skin quality than their neck. And you ask them, like, have you been treating your neck at all? Like, no, no.
I, you know, I go get IPLs and BBLs and Lyslaser and chemical peel and put my retinol on and all this stuff, but I don't treat my neck. Huge mistake because over time that gap will widen and you'll regret not treating your neck. It is a very, very hard skin to recover from because it's so thin.
You can't do like a deep resurfacing. You can't do a lot of things you can do on your facial skin if you want to take a big jump forward. So best thing to do is apply whatever you're doing for your face on your neck at the same time. Very important. Skincare wise, you should be able to manage this aspect or trifecta or illuminate all these different product categories.
that we use for anti-aging. They were designed to go on the eyes, the face, and the neck simultaneously. So you just do it all at once so you don't have to think about it. But I know some products are meant for the face and not meant for the neck.
I mean, it gets much more confusing. You need a neck cream or an eye cream, whatever it is. But generally speaking, make sure that you're treating face and neck and eyes simultaneously so everything is being exposed to the same beneficial treatments.
Anytime you get a laser, treat your neck at the same time. Cannot stress that enough. Number 10, this is a huge one. Following social media fads and trends. Folks, people have been burned so hard from this.
There's a period where people were putting two, three syringes of filler in their lips because they wanted to look like one of their Kardashian sisters. There's people that are getting their brows lifted, their eyes tilted in surgeries. It's because someone, I'm blanking on the celebrity's name, who did that, the cat eye and the fox eye and all these different things and the Brazilian butt lifts and all these different types of fads.
procedures and you see them all the time come on and off, you know, Instagram and TikTok and whatever it is and catch fire and everyone wants to do that. Well... Don't mess with your face.
Don't change your face. Don't, I mean, surgically, that's a huge no. I did a whole video on that actually. Do not do that because you're going to regret it.
The fat will change immediately. Like within, before you know it, the fat will be gone and then you'll be stuck with the surgical changes. And that's a huge regretful thing. But also when it comes to, you know, products and this and that, and the other thing of these, be very careful with those decisions because they're not always, they don't always end well.
And you need to have a trusted source where you. Balance these ideas off of, get a honest opinion about something before you start doing it. Don't just jump into it because it's very popular and it's trending and it's viral and all this kind of stuff. Usually we'll end up in a regretful situation. You don't always know the whole story in those conditions.
That's, again, one of the big reasons why we have this channel, to be able to give a very thoughtful evaluation of everything that's going on so you as a consumer can make good decisions. So don't just jump into a fad. Don't jump into a trend.
Be mindful. Tread carefully. And number 11, it's a follow-up to that exact point, and that is be your own best advocate. Be your own best researcher. If there's a product you're interested in, research the product.
Research the ingredients. Try to understand why you're doing something. If it's a procedure, really take your time. Don't be the first to adopt that.
Don't be the first to get the thread. Don't be the first to do this new laser treatment. Let it hit the market for a year or two and see what's going on. Have some consensus about it.
And really, really importantly, if you're going to have a procedure done by a doctor or a provider, research them, get to know them, understand the differences between their technique and other people's techniques. Because at the end of the day, this is your face, folks. You don't have that many chances to get it right.
And sometimes the things that you can do that are irreversible, some changes are, you have a bad facelift, you're stuck with that change for a very long time. And sometimes you can't reverse those type of things. So do yourself a favor, be a great advocate for Do things that make sense. Be careful about it.
Be willing to get into a plane. Be willing to get into a car. Drive to somewhere where they can give you the best possible treatment.
Don't skimp out when it comes to your face because at the end of the day, you can't cover it, folks. It's exposed everywhere. Everywhere you go, everyone's going to see it. So you got to make sure it's done right, whatever you do.
Number 12, starting retinol, getting red, getting flaky, and stopping. I get it. It's not easy.
I mean, retinols can be... I mean, it's almost like going through a surgical recovery sometimes. I mean, your skin can get worse before it gets better. But folks, there's probably nothing more impactful for your skin in the long run than being on a retinoid, whether it's Retin-A or Retinol.
It takes about two weeks to get through that stage. There's ways you can get through it. We talk about it on some of the videos, etc.
But ultimately, you want to make sure you get to a place where you're putting it on your skin probably every day, honestly. If not, a minimum of five days a week. You don't want to be one of these people that do it like once a week and think you're on Retinol.
That doesn't work. Five to seven days a week is what it should be, ideally literally every day. And you know obviously there's different types of retinols. The one we have that's in Illuminate is it's microdose so it's like a split dose between morning and evening.
That's our way of getting around it so you're getting less impact on your skin all at once. In addition it's an encapsulated time release form of retinol so your skin's not getting more. That's how we help patients go from like zero to right on it.
right away without having to like acclimate. But if you're not using a product like that, it doesn't matter. Like stick with it, push through it, get through it no matter what.
Even before Illuminate, before that, before the trifecta, my wife was on, you know, straight retinol and Retin-A. And every time she had to get off of it, she went through a week or two to re-acclimate. She did it. If she had to get off her laser or did something, she would just do it.
And bottom line is it's worth it because the long-term impact of retinol on your skin is incredible. incredibly good. And so many people make the mistake of starting it, getting a little funky reaction, and they're like, okay, my skin can't tolerate it, and backing out.
Your skin can't tolerate it. You can get through it. You just got to do it the right way.
Use sun protection, blend it, do whatever you got to do, find the right type of retinol, et cetera. But make sure that that's part of your daily routine. Number 13, not using active skincare as part of your skincare routine.
Folks, I mean, I can't even stress to you the importance of and the impact that active ingredients like retinol, vitamin C, niacinamide, growth factor, peptide, hyaluronic acid, all these different things and the lighteners, all that makes on the quality and the anti-aging effects of your skin over time. And so many people, I mean, they're not on the right mix. They're not on the right components.
They're just grasping for this or that. And you look at what they're on and it's like, oh no, I'm on great stuff. It's like $300. And that's really, really good.
It comes from France or it comes from here or whatever. And you look at the ingredients and it's, there's no actives in it. You got to make sure you're on actives.
I mean, there's no point to, it's like, you know, empty calories basically is the idea. Like the actives is what's creating the change. Why would you be on a skincare routine that doesn't have things that are making a actual change in your skin? And these are not new, fancy things.
These are things that are tried and true decades and thousands of years ago. of research papers and thousands of studies have been done to show the consensus that these things are making and imparting a real effect on the skin. So big mistake for people are they're on, they think they're on skincare routines that have no actives.
Major, major mistake. Number 14, On that same note, when you are on an active skincare routine that is creating biochemical and genetic changes at the DNA level and making the skin express more collagen and more elastin and decreasing pigmentation and doing all these wonderful, beautiful things that are going in the direct opposite direction of skin aging, but you're not consistent with it. The lack of consistency is a massive mistake and I can't say how surprised I am by how little people really appreciate and understand the importance of consistency when it comes to skincare. Back to the exercise analogy.
Again, you want your body to shape up. You want to keep the weight off. You want to build muscle. Consistent routine daily in and out of the gym, eating the right things month after month, year after year, year after year, year after year. What's your body going to do?
Only going to get stronger, only going to get leaner, only going to maintain its weight better, only to get healthier, right? just the way it is. Skin's going to do the same thing, consistent use over time. And we have folks who are on, for example, the trifecta. I see them after 15 months, 12 months, their skin looks better than it did at six months afterwards.
And the skin looks night and day from zero to six months. So the concept of consistency on skincare is imperative. It's imperative. It's like every other good habit in your entire life that comes from the use of the right thing consistently over time, skincare is no different.
different. Active, pick the right things, get the right stuff on you, and then stick with it and don't even look back. On you go, onward. And again, I'm not saying this for any other reason, but the fact that problem with consistency was a huge reason why we developed the trifecta. So it's like three steps, takes two minutes to put on.
There's no excuse for it being complicated and too many steps and forgot this and forgot that. I got to go buy this and go buy that. It's like, boom, done, delivered at the same time on your face in a couple of minutes.
minutes twice a day, you forget it, right? So you want to basically create a situation for yourself, a routine that you can stick with and stick with over time because that's where you're going to get the benefit. Number 15, using lasers to lift the face.
I can't tell you how many times. Now, remember earlier I said lasers to replace good skincare. This is using lasers to try to lift the face. I can't tell you how many patients I've had who go in and get these deep laser resurfacing procedures. CO2, deep erbium, whatever, because they have a bunch of sagging jowls and lines and wrinkles, and they think by like hitting the skin hard, burning the skin hard, you're gonna somehow like shrink the skin so much that it.
gets rid of it. Well, folks, the skin isn't the issue. It's the deep fascia that is sagging.
The skin is just coming along for the ride. Pounding your skin with heat and laser isn't going to do anything to the deep fascia other than put your skin through basically a very, very traumatic, unnatural experience and the healing of lasers like the CO2, et cetera. We've all seen it. I mean, the skin, it's like kind of porcelain white, kind of looks waxy. it looks funky.
That's not how you want to manage the skin aging process. Deep chemical peels, deep lasers for that purpose is not the answer. Don't even try it. It's not going to do it. Again, sagging is surgery.
Skin changes is skin treatments that are much lighter and much more humane than those types of treatments. All right, so now we're going to switch into more surgical stuff again. So number 16 is doing a lifting procedure.
procedure, well, in my practice, it's called a vertical restore where we lift everything up together or facelift in other practices. But the concept is doing a procedure to address sagging without addressing volume. So simply put, to do a vertical restore without doing a fat transfer is a mistake. It's a very common mistake, one that effectively leads the face looking imbalanced because the way the face is aging is you're sagging and you're losing volume. So if your goal is to look...
look like you did, look like a younger version of yourself, then you have to address the changes that are happening as a part of aging. Does that make sense? So if your face is losing volume and sagging, and when you were younger, you had a little bit more volume and your face was tauter, you want to go back to that.
You had to add a little bit of volume and you got to tighten up the tissues again. So vertical restore, facelift combined with volume augmentation is a beautiful compliment that really, really creates a very natural, but a very high impact level of rejuvenation. Now on the flip side, flip of that is a lesson I've learned the hard way, and that is to try to use fat transfer or any type of volume in anyone above the age of 45 to make them look younger.
It just doesn't work. So if you've got any kind of sagging going on, any kind of laxity going on, and you're using fillers or a fat transfer to try to correct the sagging related problem, you will not be happy with the result. It becomes like putting a, especially if you're using it with a conservative surgeon who's not... you know, ballooning up your face, it ends up, you miss the whole thing.
You don't even really see much of a change because the thing that visually looks the worst is the fact that the face has fallen and it's squaring and it's jowling and the neck is sagging. And if you don't put, if your volume put in there doesn't fix this problem, you're still going to be disappointed by the sagging. So for me, it's almost like a mid forties and below can oftentimes get a fat transfer alone if they don't have any sagging whatsoever.
But anyone with the slightest bit of sagging, which is almost like a hard line at 45 and above, we'll never get a fat transfer without a vertical restore at the same time. So mistake is trying to use volume without lifting in a patient who's in their 40s, you know, mid 40s and above. Big mistake, disappointing outcome. You feel like you wasted the money, even though you didn't actually waste anything. You're just, you're not going to get the look that you're going for.
Number 18 is pulling the face sideways. Now, That might sound crazy because when you go into the mirror, you're usually going like this, right? That's a typical way that the face ages as it comes down and you're lifting it by going back up. But that's not the way 90% of facelifts are performed. Most facelifts are performed by going this way.
If you open up any one of our surgical textbooks, whether it's a deep plane, whether it's a SMAS, etc., it's more or less a kind of a pull this way. Wrong paradigm leads to the funky, weird, windswept. pulled look.
You don't want that. You want a lift that's more or less vertically oriented. That's, you know, a vertical restore. There's a number of other type of lifts, but you've got to have that conversation with your surgeon. You've got to look at their before and afters.
You've got to see, does this outcome look totally natural looking? Does it look like the face has been stretched or pulled? Or does it look like it's been, you know, repositioned back to its younger position and where the person looks just rested and soft and younger? That's the key. So mistake is to pull the face sideways.
You want to go vertically. Number 19. If you're going to have a lower eyelid procedure, like a blepharoplasty because you have bags or loose skin, most likely you have volume loss going on at the same time. So if you go in there and you just take out the fat pad or the skin or combination and you don't feel the volume loss that's happened underneath that eyelid, you're going to end up being disappointed because you're still going to look hollow, you're going to look gaunt, you're going to look tired, and in many ways your eyes are actually going to look worse as a result of that. So in my practice, Every time that I treat the lower eyelid, I'm doing a fat transfer at the same time.
There's no exception. If I do a lower bleph, it's with a fat transfer. I've learned the hard way. 99% of the cases I've ever done have been done that way. Once in a while, a patient talked me out of, this was years ago, I'll never let anyone do that again to me, because they talked me out of doing the fat transfer because they wanted to stage it and see what it looked like.
They were always disappointed, very, very disappointed. It looks terrible. But you can only realize how terrible it looks when you see the results that, for example, I post where I have like a fat transfer and a blepharoplasty done at the same time.
And you're like, wow, the eye looks rested. It looks natural. It looks rejuvenated.
And then you don't do the fat transfer in a case and you're like, ah, that doesn't even look right, you know? So bottom line is the rejuvenation should be taking direct linear steps back to where things used to be. If you're when you're younger, again, you didn't have the bag under there and you had more volume. So if you want to restore that type of look, you need to take the bag out, but you also need to restore the volume.
So fat transfer in combination with lower blepharoplasty, very important. And if the surgeon that you're interested in doesn't do a fat transfer, then just use a light amount of filler along the orbital rim to kind of, you know, soften that transition to get that effect. But fat transfer, in my opinion, is, you know, the gold standard, but not everyone does fat transfer. So At the very least you need to get some kind of volume back in there. Number 20, back to skin.
So here's the deal. People have this feeling that the more expensive something is, when it comes to skincare, that it has more impact and has more effect. And oftentimes it comes in a very beautiful glass jar. It's a white cream. You put it on.
It feels very luxurious. You spent like 500 bucks on it, 300 bucks on it, 600 bucks sometimes. and you know it's imported from wherever and you look inside of it and it's literally just a moisturizer. Very very expensive moisturizer, beautiful packaging, feels nice on the skin but it's not you know it's nothing more than that.
So the mistake is to believe that there's a direct correlation often with cost of a product and the efficacy of a product. That's not always the case. Now certainly there are great examples of highly effective product. that are more on the expensive side because the ingredients are more quality, there's more product in there.
But bottom line is, it's not like you can just go based on price. Same thing, you can't go based on just the price of a practitioner. You got to look very, very specifically at what you're getting for that price. If you're using a product, it's clinically tested, it has all the big name active ingredients in there, it has everything you need, etc.
And it has the studies to back it. And it costs a little bit more than it's... worthwhile.
If it costs a little bit less but doesn't have any of the studies behind it, it doesn't have a story that supports it, then I wouldn't spend the money on it. It's that simple. And a lot of times that's how it is.
Same thing goes with practitioners. I mean, just because somebody's office is in a really nice location, et cetera, doesn't automatically mean that they're a gifted artistic practitioner who can do a really good job, whether they're a surgeon or a doctor. You want to make sure you look and study and understand that there is that relationship between the outcome that you're seeking and the price that you're paying.
And if it means that you have to pay a little bit more to get a better outcome, it's often worth it. But the last thing you want to do is pay more and get a worse outcome. So don't be fooled just because of expense or fancy packaging or fancy office in the right locations that that necessarily indicates that you're in the right place, getting the right product or the right procedure.
Very, very important. And when it comes to that particular thing, as far as skincare goes, I just did a video. on what to look for as far as active ingredients.
So that should be something you should definitely watch after this. But here's the bonus call 21 is a huge mistake that people make when it comes to either choosing a surgeon or a practitioner or a product. There's a misalignment between expectations and what the product or procedure can achieve. I cannot stress the importance of setting the right expectations.
As a doctor, that's paramount. As a skincare, you know, founder, paramount. I mean, we work really hard on both areas to set you up for success by telling you exactly what to expect on the skincare side, what your changes are you're going to see in your skin, what the effects of these particular products are. And on the surgical side, expectation setting is so important.
On the surgical side for us, it's like, hey, you're going to get a significant improvement in your aging related changes. You're going to look younger. You're going to look a lot better, but you're going to look completely natural. That's my surgical expectation that I said, you're going to look a lot better and you're going to look completely natural, like you haven't had any surgery done.
I mean, that's a big mark to set. I mean, obviously, you know, very uncommon for people to have surgery and look natural and to be improved at the same time. I mean, that's like, what can you ask for?
What more can you ask for? But I know I can deliver on those two things, right? Can I deliver on every single line being gone? No.
Can I deliver on somebody who's 70 and has got like a super crepey neck and really inelastic skin? Can I make their neck? Look like a 20 or 30 year old?
Absolutely not. Like I can't make a neck look like a 20, 30 year old neck. I can make it a ton better. I can make the person look a lot, you know, all around better and look natural at the same time, but I can't make them look 20 when they're 70 and they've, you know, their skin has been worked and they're all that. So bottom line is expectation saying this is all communication.
Product wise, I believe, you know, products should basically, you know, for the most part, you want to have them be clinically tested. So you know what type of things to expect. In the case of the trifecta, clinically tested, we know it helps with fine lines and wrinkles.
I mean, when I say help, I mean like blowing the studies out of the water. It makes a huge difference. Pigmentation, discoloration, tone, all that kind of stuff makes an improvement, pores, all that. So we can make claims and comments based on our own studies that we put.
Otherwise, if you go out there and your expectations are basically the marketing fodder and you expect the world of it and it can't deliver that, you're going to be disappointed, right? So that's the whole idea. It's like expectation. leads to happy people.
And if something can deliver on an expectation, then there's going to be a beautiful relationship forming between you and the company that provides the products and or the surgeon and doctor who provides the care. So that's the bonus mistake is people who don't try very hard to align their expectations the right way and just take the word of whatever at the surface level. Please keep that in mind. That will keep you out of so much trouble along the way.
Folks, that was a lot. That was a lot to talk. My God, I got to go get some water and a hot tea, I think, after that. But that was a lot of very, very useful information that I hope you find very beneficial. I hope you share this with some friends and family.
Get this out there. Let people benefit from, again, mistakes that I've made, mistakes my patients made, and ultimately empowering ourselves to avoid making those mistakes. Because we've got one face.
We're not... you know, infinitely, you know, money and time. And we all want the same thing, which is to look as young as we feel. It's a natural feeling for that to happen. And we aging that gap is getting wider and we want to make good decisions to close that gap as much as possible.
And that's really what this is about. So if you haven't already subscribed to the channel, if you enjoyed this video and you want to see more of it, subscribe to our Karam MD journal, which is our newsletter. delivered to your inbox once a week. I write that myself, as well as making sure that any question you have, you drop them below. You probably have a bunch after all of this.
And if you enjoyed the video, hit like. Folks, that's it. That's all I've got.
21 major mistakes that people make on the path to facial rejuvenation that need to be avoided. All right, folks. Thanks so much. Until next time, Dr. Amir Karam.