How to Combat “Ozempic Face” After Major Weight Loss
Posted April 16, 2024 in Ozempic Face
This blog discusses how losing significant weight in a short time can affect your face and what surgical and nonsurgical options you might choose to counteract those effects
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While you’re celebrating your recent weight loss, you may also be noticing that your face looks different in a gaunt way you hadn’t anticipated. Suddenly, you notice a few more wrinkles here, some drooping there, and your skin isn’t as bright as it was. With the increasing popularity of weight loss drugs allowing people to lose significant amounts of weight, more patients may find themselves looking older because of the changes that weight loss brings to their faces. This blog addresses how losing a large amount of weight in a short time can affect the skin on your face and what surgical and nonsurgical procedures you might choose to counteract those effects.
What Is Ozempic Face?
Ozempic face is a term coined by a dermatologist to describe a widespread side effect of rapid weight loss, which is what Ozempic, Wegovy, and other similar drugs provide for many. That side effect? Drawn, sagging skin and gauntness in your face may cause you to look much older. However, these effects are nothing new and are only tangentially connected to the drugs themselves. Any significant weight loss, whether achieved quickly or not, can cause the same facial issues.
How Does Rapid Weight Loss Affect Your Face?
Losing weight quickly changes several areas of your body but is often most noticeable in your face. What exactly changes in your face depends on several factors, like your age, genetics, how much weight you’ve lost, and how quickly you lost it. Some specific changes include:
Loss of Facial Volume
You’ve heard of people undergoing cosmetic procedures to remove the buccal fat pads of their faces to add definition to their cheekbones. Rapid weight loss can have the same effect, leaving you with a thinner face but also making you look older or gaunt.
Sagging Skin
Rapid weight loss doesn’t give your skin time to adjust to the sudden loss of volume, so you may notice that your skin sags more than before. Skin is elastic, so it may “snap back,” given time. However, whether it does or not depends on factors like your age, how long you were overweight, and the overall condition of your skin.
Skin Changes
Rapid weight loss is often achieved by calorie restriction. But if you’ve deprived your body of vital nutrients, it can have an adverse effect on the look and feel of your skin. Your collagen and elastin production is disrupted, making your complexion look sallow or dull. A sudden drop in essential fatty acids can make your skin thinner and less luminous.
Visible Fine Lines and Wrinkles
Losing weight means losing fat, so when you lose fat in your face, the skin that was supported becomes less taut. This results in sagging and also makes fine lines and wrinkles more noticeable.
How to Mitigate the Effects of Ozempic Face
You’ve achieved your goal of better health by losing weight, but now it’s time to give some love to your face. Dr. Mark Chin offers several options, both surgical and nonsurgical, to get you glowing again.
Injectable Treatments
Whether you want to address a few forehead wrinkles or bring volume back to your cheeks, injectable treatments are the answer. BOTOX® Cosmetic can treat dynamic wrinkles on your forehead and around your eyes and mouth. JUVÉDERM® and JUVÉDERM VOLUMA® XC use hyaluronic acid to correct nasolabial folds and smile lines and restore volume to your midface.
Facial Fat Transfer
If you’re ready for an all-natural, permanent alternative to injectable fillers, facial fat transfer is the answer. While it is most known for being the best way to boost your behind, it can also be used to replace volume lost in your face. Fat transfer uses fat cells harvested from other spots on your body via liposuction and strategically injected into your face to give you back the facial volume you lost.
Facelift Surgery
For more severe cases of Ozempic face, or if you’ve reached an age where you want to fully rejuvenate your face, Dr. Chin offers facelift surgery. A facelift addresses fine lines, wrinkles, and sagging skin, improving your facial contours and giving you an overall more youthful appearance.
Learn More About Face Procedures in Fresno
If you’re ready to take the next step in your self-care journey, Dr. Mark Chin and Valley Institute of Plastic Surgery offers a wide range of facial procedures to address any and all of your concerns, whether due to Ozempic face or simple aging. To schedule a consultation, call today at (559) 382-9654 or complete the online contact form.