Faces get a lot of attention, whether it’s through social media, personal interactions or celebrity sightings. It’s understandable; your face shows who you are and what you’re thinking. But there are a lot of other areas on your body beside your face that can generate attention.
One area of your body that doesn’t usually get much focus is your neck. This might seem reasonable, too; your neck doesn’t do anything besides hold up your head, right? In fact, your neck can contribute a great deal to your appearance. If you’re considering changing something about your face, you may also want to consider looking at your neck.
Why Your Neck Matters
Your appearance is a result of proportion and balance. Everything about you contributes to your overall appearance. Your features play off of each other, especially when you’re considering features that are close together. For example, if your eyes are baggy or lined when the rest of your face is not, you might look older or tired. Your neck is in close proximity to your face, so it plays a part in how your face appears.
How the Neck Ages
Faces get a lot of attention when it comes to aging, but the rest of your body is also affected by time. Your neck experiences aging in three major ways – loose skin, loose muscles, and fat accumulation. Your skin begins to lose collagen and other important structural components as you get older, which is why your skin starts to sag and pull downward. This leads to wrinkles around your neck, extra skin under your chin (known as a gobbler or turkey neck), or jowls around your jaw.
The muscles in your neck become less tight with age, especially the platysma muscles. These run from your jaw to your neck and begin to descend over time. This causes those muscle lines that you see under your chin when you look at your neck from the side.
When your skin gets looser, the fat deposits under your skin also begin to loosen. Gravity pulls on your fat cells so they move down on your face and neck. This can lead to double chins, enhanced jowls, or a pouchy neck. Fat can’t be specifically targeted when you exercise, and fat around your neck is particularly difficult to remove.
Having loose skin and extra fat deposits around your neck can contribute to an aged or heavier appearance. Even if you have a facelift or a similar procedure to improve your face, your neck can still have this effect on how you look. A neck lift procedure will help remove signs of aging from your neck so it has a positive effect on your appearance
The Neck Lift Procedure
A neck lift can treat sagging or loose skin around your neck and remove unnecessary fat deposits. To tighten loose skin, an incision is made behind your ear and along your hairline. If you have extra skin tissue, this can be removed. Any loose muscles around the sides of your neck can also be repaired or tightened. The remaining tissue is then lifted back to the incision site and sutured into place. This smooths and tightens the skin around your neck so it doesn’t sag so much. Another incision is made underneath your chin to tighten the platysma muscles and remove extra fat deposits with liposuction.
After the procedure, the incisions are closed with sutures and bandaged. Most patients only experience mild pain and discomfort during the recovery period, which can be managed with pain medication. Your head should be kept elevated as much as possible to prevent swelling and fluid build-up. The total amount of recovery time will vary from person to person. In general, however, patients are able to return to work within seven to ten days and resume more vigorous activities within three weeks. The bandages are usually removed the day after the procedure, stitches under the chin are removed after about five days, and stitches behind the ears are removed after about ten days.
What Getting a Neck Lift Means For You
Like other facial procedures, a neck lift can be combined with other plastic surgeries to give you the best results. Earlier we discussed how your features balance and play off of each other to create your overall appearance. A neck lift, along with other procedures, can create a new type of balance in your face. This will help combat signs of aging and make you look years younger. A neck lift is most often combined with a facelift, but that doesn’t have to be the case. There are a variety of surgical and nonsurgical options for you to consider as a facial plastic surgery patient.
Neck Lift Surgery From Dr. Bustillo
If you are interested in a neck lift procedure, consider getting your procedure from Dr. Andres Bustillo. Dr. Bustillo is considered one of the foremost facial plastic surgeons in Miami. He received his medical training from the University of Miami and completed a fellowship through the combined New York University-Weill Cornell Medical College program. Dr. Bustillo has over a decade of experience in treating patients from all over the world with surgical and nonsurgical procedures for the face, head, and neck, including the neck lift.
To schedule a patient consultation for neck lift surgery with Dr. Bustillo, contact his office in Miami at (305) 663-3380.
