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Big Butts No Lies Plastic Surgery Podcast
Big Butts No Lies is a plastic surgery podcast created to help women feel informed, confident, and prepared when navigating the world of cosmetic surgery.
Hosted by plastic surgery consultant and former patient coordinator Mavi Rodriguez, the show offers a rare behind-the-scenes perspective into how the plastic surgery industry really works. With more than 18 years of experience working inside top plastic surgery practices, Mavi understands how surgeons evaluate patients, how procedures are planned, and what recovery truly looks like after surgery.
Each episode features conversations with board certified plastic surgeons, recovery specialists and industry professionals who share their experiences with procedures such as breast augmentation, liposuction, BBL, tummy tuck and other aesthetic treatments.
Whether you are researching plastic surgery, preparing for a procedure, or want to understand the process better, Big Butts No Lies offers honest conversations, recovery guidance, and expert insight to help women make smarter and safer decisions.
Big Butts No Lies Plastic Surgery Podcast
Everything You Need To Know About Breast Reduction ft. Dr. Regina Nouhan
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In this episode, our host & plastic surgery consultant Mavi Rodriguez is joined by Dr. Regina Nouhan, a retired board-certified plastic surgeon, current consultant, and fellow podcaster. They delve into an in-depth discussion on breast surgeries, revealing insights and personal experiences to help listeners understand the realities of plastic surgery. Together, they discuss the following topics:
1. Can weight gain affect breast size after breast reduction surgery?
2. What are some common complications of breast reduction, and how can patients best recover from a breast reduction?
3. How does breast reduction impact breastfeeding, and what are the considerations for teenagers seeking this surgery?
4. What trends are we currently seeing in plastic surgery, and how does social media influence these trends?
Join Mavi and Dr. Regina Nouhan as they share their passion for educating individuals about plastic surgery, discuss the myths and truths of breast reduction, and talk about how to age gracefully in a world focused on maintaining youthful appearances. The episode provides a blend of professional insights and personal experiences to inform and guide anyone considering plastic surgery.
Plastic Surgery Decoded (@plastic.surgery.decoded) • Instagram-Fotos und -Videos
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Hey, guys. My name is Mavi, and I've spent the last 14 years in the plastic surgery and beauty industry working alongside some of the best plastic surgeons in the country. Now I don't work for anybody, so I have unbiased opinions about 100 of surgeons from across the world, and I can help you achieve the body of your dream. Hey, guys. Do I have the show for you today? I am so excited to have a fellow podcaster and very amazing, plastic surgeon, doctor Regina Nohan. She is from the show Plastic Surgery Decoded. Thank you for being on the show, doctor Johan.
Gosh. My pleasure. Thank you, Mavi, and congratulations again on all you've accomplished. I'm, very proud of you.
Oh, thank you so much.
Podcaster in this profession of plastic surgery. So kudos to you.
Thank you so much. I'm I feel very proud, and I feel very honored to have you on the show. It when I launched my show, you already had your show out. So I would love to hear a little bit more about you and your experience and how you got into podcasting. Absolutely. Tell me all about you.
You bet. Yeah. Well, I am a plastic surgeon, retired now from practice, but serving as a consultant and doing all sorts of great projects. I do have a couple of podcasts, and I'll tell you about that in a minute. One's about plastic surgery. One's about visual art, which is fun. And then I do a lot of volunteering in the community, just a little give back kind of stuff and, teaching med students and all sorts of other fun things too. So the podcasting, you know, I guess it was about the time that COVID hit that I retired.
That wasn't the reason, but it just coincided. And I had all these years of knowledge and information stored away in my brain, and I didn't wanna just, you know, dump that and not do anything with it. And over the years, I had volunteered for public radio, and I would be on air occasionally asking people to give money. And people would say, hey. You have a good radio voice. And I'm thinking, ah, what if I combine my knowledge with my voice, and then that is a way that I can contribute continue to contribute even after retiring from practice? So that's what I did. I started a podcast, to educate the public about plastic surgery, much like you do. And, you know, this was during COVID, so I couldn't just go to a studio or anything like that.
I had to kinda teach myself how to record, how to edit, and, you know, all that stuff that I'm sure you've had to learn how to do. 4 years later, here we are. And Here
we are.
It's just been a delight. I've got about, over 80 episodes now, and it's just been so much fun. The first I'll just explain. The first 40 episodes were just me talking about a topic and trying to impart my knowledge, and then I was running out of topics. And so, from around the country, and we'll just, you know, chew the fat, and from around the country, and we'll just, you know, chew the fat and talk about plastic surgery. So that's it.
Isn't it amazing how when you start talking about something that you love, the conversation just flows?
It is so true. It really is. And, you know, much like you do, we try to, bring it to the public through layman's terms and and terms that people would understand, and, that seems to be very helpful for people as well. Many people tell me that it's made a difference. If nothing else, when you go to see a plastic surgeon for a consultation, if you've been able to listen to a podcast that is oriented to the topic you're interested in, then you have more knowledge. You can ask better questions. You'll be able to understand things a little bit better that the surgeon might be telling you, and so I I think it's a benefit.
Absolutely. I love it. I love what you're doing, and I just feel so honored to be able to be right right there with you, helping us educate and really bring all of this information that we know to the ears of the women who are looking for it. That was something whenever I launched my show, I thought, you know, we have such awesome conversations. I would have great conversations with my surgeons, with my coworkers, with different reps, with learning about different things. And I'm like, I wish I could just like I have y'all hear everything that I'm hearing or everything that I'm learning while I'm in the office. And I spent so many years in the consultation rooms learning from my surgeons different ways and why you can't do this and why you have to do it this way and all of these really interesting things that I thought, man, if you guys could just hear everything that I will
fly on the wall. You know what else you learned, though? You learned how to communicate with people and how to do it in a manner that is comforting to people and helps them understand what it is they're considering embarking on. So that puts you in a great position to do what you're doing now.
So good job. Thank you. I really appreciate it. I Yeah. My passion kind of lit a It kind of lit a little fire under my booty. I had seen so many women go through their journey and have amazing, wonderful life transformations. And then I started to see women who were having procedures that were leaving them permanently scarred in a negative way, emotionally and physically. How can I prevent more women from getting hurt? And I thought, well, I can show them what a good plastic surgeon sounds like.
I can help them have more better questions, more understanding about the procedures before they go into it. In that way, maybe they'll be able to be like, hey. That's a red flag. I should probably not go there. Mhmm.
Yes. I I think that's wonderful, and that's a great service to people. So good job.
Thank you. So I thought for our episode today, we could talk about breast reductions.
A very popular procedure.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about how a breast reduction works? And, one common misconception that I always hear is, does the reduction always come with a lift? Can you do a lift without reducing? Yeah. And can you do yeah. That's a really good question that I always get. Like, can I get a lift without reducing my size?
Yeah. Well, let me just answer that question first because that is pretty crucial to it. The breast reduction does reduce the size of the breast, but it also lifts the breast into a better position, more proportional in terms of the, position on the chest wall. But, yes, you can have a breast lift without a reduction, and that just repositions the same breast in a higher position on the chest wall because it's settled where we don't want it. But if you think about it this way, a breast lift, it's also called a mastopexy, a breast lift just reduces the skin envelope, if you will, that your breast would sit in. So you've got all this extra skin and basically it tightens up that skin envelope so the breast has to sit higher on the chest well positioned where you want it to be and look the way you want it to look. A little bit of skin is removed during that procedure and so you might lose just a hair of volume, but it's very, very little. Whereas the breast reduction, the main goal is to reduce the volume and reduce the size because of too much.
But along with that, you do get a lift. So as you think about breast reduction, who would get a breast reduction? It's usually people who feel the breast is too large of a size for their body, and it may be creating some back pain, some neck pain, shoulder pain from the pull of the bra straps. It can create headaches, it can create shooting pains down the arms, I mean, there's just so many things that it can do physically, not to mention socially and mentally in terms of the way a woman feels about herself. She might be stared at. She might be talked about. You know, those are all uncomfortable things, and not just for, you know, everyday women, but even younger women who are still learning about their bodies and trying to figure out who they are and to be defined by your breasts because that's what people see when you walk in the room can be just so uncomfortable. So those are the people who choose to have a breast reduction in particular, although I will say there are some people who just over time with age and, you know, handle weight, this and that, the breasts do become a little too heavy or disproportionate, and then they are interested in a in a breast reduction.
Would you agree that the breast reduction patients are usually so happy?
Oh my god. They were the happiest patients I had typically. You know, you can you can't generalize everything, but absolutely talk about life changing. I mean, that's what's fantastic about a breast reduction. You know, you have taken someone who's been potentially hindered from doing the physical activity they wanna do, workout, run, you know, play tennis, whatever it is, if you've got, you know, so much stuff, you know, pulling on your chest, you just can't accomplish those things. Then you talk about clothing, just being able to I have patients tell me just being able to go to a regular shop and be able to pull a blouse off the rack and have it fit me, you know, and not have it gaping in the front or have to get a special size that then doesn't fit your hips because, you know, you're just your your proportions are off. You know, those little things really make a difference in terms of people's psyche and how they look at themselves and their outlook, you know, on the world too. So so these were very much, for the most part, happy happy people, and it was a treat to be a surgeon who could help accomplish that.
Absolutely. I know my girls, they love getting the real the juice. They like to know the details.
We'll talk all about it.
So I have a couple of questions. Let's see. So the first one is, how many grams is usually a cup size? Well, that is a great question because it is, the wrong way to
think about it. The cup size, the wrong way to think about it. The cup size is determined by the difference between the circumference around the rib cage and the circumference around the breasts themselves and that ratio is what determines the cup size. So a cup size like a c cup on me versus you versus another woman will be 3 different breasts because our rib cages are different, basically. In addition to that, that is just a measurement of length, if you will, or circumference like we talked about. The grams have to do with volume or weight, and different women have different density of their breast tissue. So some women have very dense breast tissue, so a small amount of breast tissue weighs a lot and other women, especially as we get older, have less dense breast tissue and that same volume of breast tissue will weigh less, and so the grams are a measurement of weight. And so you can't really say a certain number of grams will change a cup size.
It is different for each person. But I will say that sometimes insurance will cover this procedure and sometimes they don't, but if they do, they usually base it on the weight of the tissue that was removed, how many grams. And I think that might be where some of that question comes from. And, again, it's based on the insurance company will look on a little chart, basically. They'll look at height and weight of the patient, and then they'll determine how many grams need to come off before they consider it medically necessary, which is not the greatest way to do it, but it you know, we're stuck with that system. So the weight of the breast tissue removed during reduction cannot accurately predict the new cup size, but your surgeon is very skilled at looking at what you're starting with and getting a ballpark idea of about how much weight of the breast in grams needs to come off to get to that desired cup size, if that makes sense.
And that is a great response. That's a question that I get asked all the time. How many grams like, how do I know what cup size I'm gonna be based on how many grams I have to get removed? Yeah. All the time.
It really comes down to your surgeon being very experienced and and being able to guide you, because that answer will be different for every single patient, and you can't just look at a chart for that one, well, people of breastfeeding age are often worried about this. There are 2 ways that breastfeeding might be impacted. The first has to do with the nipple, basically. For a typical breast reduction procedure, the nipple is intentionally kept intact, so you're preserving the ability first of all, preserving blood supply to the nipple to keep it alive, and then you're also preserving those milk ducts, those lactating ducts that will go from the breast tissue or the breast glands out through the nipple to the baby. So you're wanting to preserve those. There can be some problems during the surgery where the nipple doesn't survive or the nipple has to be detached and put back on because the breast is so enormous you just can't keep it attached, and that's rare. But those things do occur. And then the other thing is the second thing is how much breast tissue is left, how much milk can be produced to sustain a baby.
You might have enough breast tissue left to produce milk, but will it be enough for a baby? Now most times it is, I'll tell you, because people who have large breasts can produce an overabundance of milk. But, but it is something that people worry about. And I do recall a study years ago that tried to look at what percentage of women could still breastfeed after breast reduction, and it was the vast majority of women who could still breastfeed. But again, you can't count on it and you really have to be cognizant of the fact that that could become a problem, though it is on the lower side of the risks?
You know, I always saw in the office young girls who were coming in for breast reductions.
Yes.
And I think a lot of my audience is very young. They're probably, my my age range is from, like, 23 to 56 is what my stats are. So why don't we give our younger audience who are considering a breast reduction a little information on maybe when should they start considering a breast reduction if they're not of age yet? Should they wait? When do they know they're gonna stop growing? Can the breast tissue grow back after a breast reduction?
These are great questions. Absolutely. Yes. We would actually when when I was practicing, we would get teenagers who would come in sometimes because they're, again, as we're talking about, their breasts are so heavy, they can't do the sports they wanna do, getting stared at or teased by boys or, you know, etcetera, etcetera, and their parents would bring them in for consultation. I usually preferred to wait until they were 18 and could sign their own consent form. However, in certain cases where the parents were really on board and it was clear that it was indicated, and really needed for this person, then we would do that a little bit early, and as long as their pediatrician was good with it. But the concept of when you when you know you're safe in terms of have I stopped breast growth, because you don't wanna do a reduction and then find that the breasts are still growing and then you feel like you need a second reduction. So I would tell patients when your bra size has been stable for 2 years, you're pretty good.
The likelihood of increasing from that point is pretty low. Now if you do gain weight at some point, your breasts are gonna get larger as well. And even after doing a breast reduction, you may feel after you've gained weight, oh gosh. I could use the touch up here because I've just gotten fuller. You know, it really is something that is pretty stable once you're at that same bra size for 2 years. The other thing I will mention is that occasionally some women are placed on hormonal treatment at some point in their lives and that can impact breast growth, it can start breast growth again at that point. Is it can be enough they feel like they need a revision? Probably not, but you never know, but certainly could have an effect.
That's a wonderful answer. Well, thank you. So the next question I have are is going back to the nipples
Mhmm.
Nipple sensitivity. And what can a patient usually expect when they not just with reductions, but also with lifts as far as nipple sensitivity?
Well, with a lift, again, because we're just removing excess skin, which is pretty superficial, they may have some temporary numbness, but it really will not be because there is a nerve like the the deeper nerves impacted because it is a more superficial procedure. Your risks are there always, but not high. With a reduction, we do have to cut into the breast tissue to remove some of it and it's done very strategically to shape the breast just the way you want it to be. Even with that, it is not common to have permanent sensory deficits or sensory loss, but it can happen on occasion. Now it is not uncommon for people to come back in after surgery and especially those 1st few months or 1st few weeks even, feel like, you know, this part of my breast is still numb after surgery, but usually the area that's numb will gradually decrease in size until it goes away, but every once in a while there can be somebody who does lose the sensation of a significant portion of the breast or the nipple, like that, but it's it's not it's not a high risk.
I love to hear that. I love to hear the answer. Yeah. So what are the most common complications that you see after a breast reduction?
Just like any procedure, any surgical procedure, you know, there are risks of infection or bleeding. Those aren't big risks, but there are things that we do worry about, and we do try to take precautions against them. If there was a significant bleeding problem in one breast, that would be called a hematoma, and that would be something we'd have to go back to the operating room for. Generally within, you know, the first 24 hours or so that it's noticed. The risk of that is is low, but it's there. And it and those two procedures, bleeding and infection, are probably the more common complications of breast reduction even though they're not common among themselves. Other complications we worry about I alluded to this a little bit before with blood supply to the nipple. We're trying to do this procedure by keeping the nipple intact and trying to preserve its blood supply, but on occasion, that's not gonna cut it, and it's not enough blood supply for the nipple, and worst case scenario could lose, heaven forbid, but could lose part or all of the nipple, and it does happen on occasion.
The good thing is if it's just a small area, the body will heal it in and over time, several months, it generally will look fine or else there can be a small little procedure done to make it look better. If the entire nipple was lost, we can reconstruct a nipple. Much like women who have had breast cancer and they have had breast reconstruction, those women get nipple reconstruction done and it's a pretty cool procedure. So you can actually reconstruct a nipple if it's absolutely necessary. Now the only problem is it would not have the sensation of a nipple, but it would look pretty darn good. So other potential risks would be what we call wound dehiscence or wound trying to separate because, you know, we we try to pull things together pretty snug to really give nice shape to the new breast and its new position, but sometimes that skin, while it's trying to heal, can get overwhelmed a bit, and it may try to separate and open up a little bit. And if that happens, we can if it's just a small small area, we can let it heal in. But if it was a sizable area, we may have to do a little procedure in the office to kinda reclose that.
And then other, you know, weird stuff can happen from having a procedure. You could have a blood clot that forms in your legs that could break off and go to your lungs called a pulmonary embolism and, God forbid, could even kill you in the worst case scenario, but we take precautions against that. So every little, you know, potential risk that is out there is thought about and generally precautions, great precautions are taken against it. You can never say never, but it really does reduce the risk of significant bad things happening.
Absolutely. So with that in mind, let's talk about some of the best recovery tips that you have for patients who have just had a breast reduction. One of my notes that I have right here is I have a few. Bras with no wire for how long do you usually recommend? Well,
first of all, let's talk about wearing a bra after surgery. There is a nice support bra that you can wear after surgery. It we don't want it too tight because that can create blood supply problems. It can create too much pressure on a wound, make something, you know, try to open up or not heal well. But you do need some support there because without the support then there is too much pressure on that incision line. So a sports bra is very helpful after surgery. There are some great ones that your surgeon will recommend for you and, I tell patients, you know, wear that most of the time for the at least the first 2 to 4 weeks, and then you can start, you know, easing into your own bras as you wish. The underwears, I would wait at least 6 weeks, and it really depends on how that particular patient is doing.
If someone is having a problem with, you know, a wound healing issue or something like that, we don't want the underwear pressing on that, and so they might have to stay out of an underwear for a little bit longer. But someone who is healing up really nicely and not having any trouble, you know, those patients we can tell them to, you know, switch out and and play play with their new bras, you know, have some fun, you know, a lot earlier. But generally, that's a good time frame.
And how exciting is it? I had a breast reduction. I was so excited to get into a cute bra.
Yes, I know. And to be able to buy one just off the rack, you know, and not have to specialise it. Yeah.
It was I was so excited because I had been wearing, I don't wanna say, like, old grandma bras, but kind of. They weren't beautiful. They weren't, like, cute and sexy, like, how I wanted to wear them until I had my breast reduction, and I was like, ah, I'm so excited. I can wear
2 bras now. Yeah. Well, yeah, you know, I think there are some companies that are starting to catch on and make some cuter, larger size bras, but even then, you just don't have the same variety. And, there's there you're right. There is something exciting to be able to walk into, you know, whatever cute little boutique, lingerie boutique and just say, oh, I'm gonna try this, and it's gonna fit.
And it's gonna fit, and I'm gonna love it. And I still have cleavage, and I still have some volume, but I'm not overwhelmed with my shoulder straps. That was my major my biggest complaint. The shoulder straps, just having shoulder grooving and hunched over just from having such large breasts.
Some people would get, skin breakdown, blistering, and things like that, you know, under the bra straps. And even on their chest wall underneath the breast, they would have, you know, rashes and blisters and skin breakdown, just just really difficult. So
Something that's really funny that I like to tell my girls because I saw it happen while I was in the office. I saw an infection from a husband putting his mouth on a nipple too soon after surgery.
Oh. So yeah. That's a no no. Yeah. You know, we humans, we have a lot of bad bacteria in our in our mouths, in our saliva, and, you know, there is bacteria that's just on the skin itself that the body has to fight. But when you start introducing new bacteria to the area, you can really create some problems. So, you know, I would say avoid that until probably, frankly, 4 weeks, in in my opinion. I that maybe sound a little conservative, but you really don't want to introduce a problem.
And even at that point, if there's a little bit of wound healing that still has to occur or something has broken down a little bit, then you wanna wait even longer. Absolutely. Safe.
Once I I tell them, once everything's closed, once everything's closed, your incisions are completely closed, then you can start having fun. But until then
Yeah.
Tell us no.
Yes. Yes. Keep your
hands off.
Exactly. And your mouth. And your mouth. Yeah. Right.
I love that. So okay. These other, notes that I have here are for protecting their incisions while they're in these bras.
Mhmm.
And what do you usually recommend for patients to use to protect their incisions during those 1st few weeks?
Well, you know, there are lots of different things available to people these days. In my practice, I would just use seri strips, you know, because they're occlusive and they're protective. They also take a little bit of the tension off of the wound edges, and so you can heal, you know, the wound edges can heal a little easier and maybe have a little less scarring. But there are all sorts of silicone sheeting and hydrocolloid, dressings and and various things that are available. And the interesting thing is that you've talked to 10 different plastic surgeons, and they will each recommend a different product. And so that's why I hate to be specific about a certain product, but, do trust your surgeon because they're dealing with wounds every day, and they know what's working best in their hands. But, generally, something that does cover it and takes a little bit of the tension off of the wound edges, takes the pressure off, that is really what's gonna be best, not only for healing, but like I said, for scarring too because we know that scarring can be increased and more problematic if there is a lot of pull or a lot of tension on the wound edges. And so if we can do something to reduce that, to ease that up, then we end up with a little bit less problematic scarring.
And of course scarring is not always in the control of the surgeon, you know, it has to do with the genetics of the patient as well and just the way they're preprogrammed to heal. Some people will form and lay down thicker scar than others, but there are things that we can do to help encourage better scarring, if you
will. Absolutely. I like to recommend I don't do I don't talk about what's on their incisions as much as what they can do to protect their incisions from the bra. So I have here in my notes, get yourself some ABD pads and maybe some gauze to keep over your incisions between your incisions and your bra. Because sometimes, like for me, I had my nipples were hypersensitive Oh, they are. Yeah. My recovery. Yeah.
So any little touch would be like, oh, no.
Just drive you crazy. Yeah.
Drive me crazy. So I used, like, a thick thick just, stack of gauze and would cover each side and would have had my incisions just to give them an extra little bit of protection from my sports bra. And in the sports bra, I like to recommend you guys to get something that zips in the front. Very easy to zip and has Easy access, has thick straps, not any of those, like, skinny straps
Mhmm.
Bras. You want some thick straps on the top on your shoulders and also on the bottom, a thicker thicker band.
Band. Yeah.
The skin the skinny bands, they can kind kind of dig into your if you wear them and you're moving around, they kind of dig in. But the ones that are thicker band, they stay put, and you put them underneath. I don't let me think. If you're looking at yourself breast reduction, you want your band to sit on your ribs, like, on your actual rib cage, not underneath, pushing your incision. Yeah. Underneath curled under. Yeah. Not curled under, but sitting right on your chest and right on your ribs.
So those are my 2 recommendations that I have for my girls who are going through a breast reduction. These tips helped me to during my recovery. And, let me tell y'all what happened. I had my son. He was little. He was probably probably about 2 years old. At this point, he was sleeping in my bed with me. And at night, I was in my little pillow fort with all of these pillows protecting me, and he still managed to throw a foot over and, boom, land right on my right chest.
And I ended up with a very small little area of, it wasn't a full hematoma. It just bruised a little bit more Mhmm. Right on there. And I had to I ended up on another week of antibiotics just to make sure that no infection came about. But I want to say that so you guys can be cautious if you have small kids, if they're coming and they're sitting on your lap, or if you're sleeping with them in your bed, or they're around you, just be extra careful with your breasts because they don't know and they don't care.
That's right. Oh gosh. That's that's really good advice. And, you know, speaking of bruising, a little arnica gel can help that go away a little faster too. People might wanna take note of that. And then back when you were talking about padding inside the bra, we would do that too. Those ABD pads that you were talking about, they're they're very thick, cushy gauze. They're wonderful.
We use them all the time. They're kinda like diaper material material in a way. But I wanted to mention that if you do have sensitive nipples and even putting a pad over that nipple would be very uncomfortable. What I would tell people to do is get a stack of 4 by 4 gauze and then cut a hole in the middle. And how do you do that? Well, you can fold them in half and do a little semi circle like when you used to cut out, you know, snowflakes from paper, and then open them up and then stack those up about, you know, 5 or 6 high. You can lay that over the top of the breast, The nipple then has room. And then when you put an ABG pad on top of that, then it's not compressing the nipple itself. So that's a nice little trick too.
I love that. Did y'all hear that? I hope you're taking notes. Yeah. So, doctor Nohan, I wanted to talk about a little bit something that you put on your form on your podcast form, which was the different trends that we're seeing in plastic surgery. And I want to tap into your experience and you having been in the industry for so long and retiring from the industry, what kind of things did you see that have changed and things that you are excited about, but also things that you wanna caution towards. Yeah.
You know, in terms of the trends, gosh, we see a little of everything. When I was first in practice let's talk about breast to begin with. When I was first in practice, for years, everyone was wanting big, bigger, bigger, and it wasn't just that. It was, I want the fake look. I want the bubble look. I want, you know, just over the top. Anderson. Yeah.
Exactly. Exactly. And then towards the later years of my practice and what's going on now is you know, everybody wants a little of everything, so there's always gonna be somebody wants this and wants that, but the trend is a more natural look and not quite so big. And even some of those women who had larger implants were coming in, you know, I still need an implant, but I want something smaller, and I I don't wanna be so full, at this point. So that's an interesting thing. There are other trends. You know, one of the things I I do wanna caution people about is that we're so aware of trends now just because of social media. You know, the ramping up of social media over the last decade or 2 has really been incredible.
And it's a great tool, but it is also something that you have to take with a grain of salt. There are so many things out there that catch on and people get the idea that, oh, that's what I'm supposed to do because that's what everyone else is doing or that's what someone I admire on social media is doing, then do I feel like I'm not good enough if I haven't done that. And I really wanna caution people to just take everything with a grain of salt and, first of all, recognize that no matter what, you have your own beauty and you don't have to ascribe to some, frankly, arbitrary level of what someone else thinks is beautiful or what many people think is beautiful. That doesn't mean it's it's right for you. And so I do caution people to be careful about that just for your own personal health to not feel like you have to go out and do this because it's the hot thing. Now I will say on the converse of that, if you have decided that, you know what? I do really want to do this procedure. I think this will be great for me. I'm gonna enjoy it, and I I wanna pursue it.
Then that is the beauty of plastic surgery these days. The technology and the advances that have come about and continue to come about are just amazing, and it's a lot of fun. There's just so many cool things we can do, but you wanna do it carefully, you wanna be cautious, and you wanna do it safely. Some of that is going to a board certified plastic surgeon, you know, etcetera, etcetera. I'm sure that's been drilled into people time and time again, but it is important. And, just be careful what you're getting into and make sure you're doing it for the right reasons. One other thing I'll say is that because there is kind of there's more to choose from that is nonsurgical, and that's lovely, but it can also lead some people to become so called overdone. And we've all seen those, whether it's celebrities or influencers or whoever, you know, you just take one look, you should think, oh, that doesn't look natural.
That face just doesn't look like, you know, what's going on there. So, how does that happen? Well, I can tell you it happens gradually. It doesn't happen by someone going in and just say, do all this stuff for me all at once and blah blah blah blah and then, oh my gosh, you know, it's too much. No. It happens because someone wants correction or improvement in their appearance, and they go, they get a little filler, they get this or that, and then it's not quite enough. It hasn't made the change they're looking for. They might actually need a surgical procedure, but they don't want a surgical procedure, And they're trying to find a way around that, how to avoid a facelift or this or that. So they keep going back and they add more and they add more, and then it becomes a real problem.
They no longer look natural. You know, the other factor is there's a difference between a static appearance and a dynamic appearance, and what do I mean by that? Well, static is just looking at a picture on social media thinking, oh, I want to look like that. Well, that person might look great in the static setting, meaning they don't move, but once they get into the dynamic setting, they start moving their faces, strike hard to talk and communicate, then things just look really off. And so beauty in the static does not mean beauty in the dynamic, so you do have to be careful about that as well.
That is such a good tip to point out. I had not we hadn't talked about that on the show, and I think it's something that's very important. I would notice whenever I was in the office that patients were bringing in photos or wish pics of people where I'm like, this is very clearly face tuned. This is not how they actually look. There's different filters that are that this girl has on or that this. Let's look at a video of her. And we have looked at videos, and I'm like, see, this is not how she actually looks. That's just a filter on a picture.
Yeah. And you are absolutely right about social media and how it's influencing how we think we should look or how, the ideal beauty look is. And something that I think it's very important for all of us to think about is everybody is beautiful in their own different way.
Absolutely.
And having your own look and being just wanting to be the best version of yourself. Yeah. I think is the best way to stay true to yourself, stay true to aging, aging gracefully. I think that's something that we should, as a society, take in aging gracefully and not trying to look like somebody else because they're famous or because they are a celebrity or an influencer and just wanting to look more like you.
Yeah.
Younger you, maybe. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, as you say, you know, aging gracefully, you know, it's okay to have a little help. You know? It's the key to look as good as you as you can for your age. Just accept that you have beauty at every single age in your life, and so enjoy that. And it's okay to enhance and embellish and, you know, tweak a little bit here and there, but enjoy that beauty that you have and that you have earned after all those years of living. And, if I can impart that on people, I think I've done some good.
Yeah. Absolutely. There's a story I was actually watching in the headlines, and they were talking about a celebrity who was aging gracefully. And, thinking, like, she's had work done. They think that she hasn't had any work done. That just means the work she's had has been an amazing, amazing work. Right. Somebody did a really good job on her because you guys think that this is completely natural.
Yeah. Oh my gosh.
It's easy to get fooled too. But, but, you know, it's and it's okay to have work done, of course. You know? This is the business we're in. But, yeah, I just I want to impart on people not to feel pressured and feel that you are inadequate if you don't do something. So but once you do decide to do something, gosh, there's just a plethora of choices out there, and a good, well trained, experienced plastic surgeon will help guide you. Sometimes it is something surgical. Sometimes it can be handled with less invasive or nonsurgical techniques, and sometimes it's a combination of both. You know, as an example, you know, when I would see patients for facial consultation, I would tell them that, you know, we have 3 layers that we have to look at or 3 issues.
We've got the underneath volume that we have to make sure you have restored, build things up. We've got the skin that you may have too much skin. We may have to reduce that with a facelift or something. And then we have the skin texture, the external. Well, there are nonsurgical things that can be done to treat that, and the treatment for each of those three layers will not really necessarily affect the others, and so you have to look at the full picture. And sometimes combination treatments are the
best. Absolutely. I had a surgeon here, and he said, if you think about your face like your bed, you have the mattress, and then you have your sheet, and then you have your comforter on top. And that's the different layers that we have to look at when we're doing facial procedures.
So true. It's a good analogy.
Let me make sure I have all of my questions asked before I let you go. But we did answer how long does the numbness usually last. I think you did answer that question.
I mean, it just varies from person to person. Most people, if they have some numbness, it's gonna be temporary, and that can be anywhere from a few days or it can be a few weeks to a few months. There are some patients who will have longer periods of numbness but still recover, but, you know, on rare occasion, that can take even up to a year or so. And then there are some people who will have certain small areas of permanent numbness. But, again, that's not very common, which is nice.
When you touched on board certification and going to a board certified plastic surgeon, I'm very curious to know if you when you were in practice, even in your earlier practice, did you still see back then the amount of other specialty surgeons or doctors stepping into cosmetic procedures, or is that something that has grown?
It was going on even back then, many decades ago, but it is much more common now than it used to be because I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that cosmetic surgery, as we're talking about, is in itself more popular. It's lucrative. And if you happen to be in a specialty where you're limited what you can do in terms of financial reimbursement, then there is that temptation to want to get into a realm of surgery that is typically, you know, cash pay or fee for service and plus, people just like the concept of doing something aesthetic. And so I think there has been more drive for other specialties to try to, you know, enter into that realm. It's a little more common now than it used to be, but it was still going on back then. Mhmm. So Darn.
That's what I wanted to know. So it was still a it was still a problem back then. It just maybe wasn't as much as it is now. And that's why we I aim to educate our listeners to know what to look for in a skilled board certified plastic surgeon.
Yeah.
Because I think even when you are looking for plastic surgeons, finding a surgeon who does this procedure that you're interested in very often, not just every once in a while, is key to getting the result that you're looking for or being happy with the result that you're looking for.
Yeah. Absolutely. And it's interesting because a lot of people hear the phrase board certified, and they think, oh, that's all you need. But it's what specialty you're board certified in. So you can be board certified in OBGYN or orthopedic surgery, you know, whatever it is, and we're talking about being board certified in plastic surgery. So
So that actually goes into wordplay that I we've talked about on the show where they say, oh, this guy is double board certified, and it's actually a board certification in
gynecology and then the cosmetic surgery board, which we've talked about
on the show, the board, plastic surgery board certification Yeah. Versus the cosmetic surgeon, board certification. We actually just had, a couple of episodes. We had the president of the Aesthetic Society, and he went into great detail about the difference of the 2 boards.
Excellent. That's so good. So, so good.
Yeah. He's great, by
the way.
He he is great. Yeah. He was great. Such a pleasure to have you on the show with me, doctor Nuhan. I am so proud and so happy to be able to share an episode with you and to continue to watch you, share your knowledge, and share everything that you've experienced in your practice and interviewing other surgeons. And hopefully, we can have you back on soon. Oh my gosh. I would love it.
It's just been a delight, Mavi. I've I've enjoyed doing my podcast, Plastic Surgery Decoded, and I'm excited to see what you continue to do your podcast. And, it was a treat. Thank you for having me on.
