Good Neighbor Podcast South Charlotte
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of South Charlotte.
Good Neighbor Podcast South Charlotte
Ep. # 107 Understanding the Art and Science of Plastic Surgery
Uncover the transformative world of plastic surgery with Dr. Joel Beck in our latest podcast episode. As the owner of Beck Aesthetic Surgery, Dr. Beck dives deeply into his journey, sharing compelling stories that shaped his vision for a patient-focused practice. The episode discusses the nuances distinguishing board-certified plastic surgeons from other cosmetic practices, emphasizing the importance of rigorous training and ongoing education. Dr. Beck believes in fostering meaningful relationships with his patients, dedicating ample time to consultations to ensure their desires and expectations align with achievable outcomes.
Listeners will gain valuable insights into the latest trends in aesthetics, including the shift towards natural results, pre and post-procedure care, and emerging technologies like 3D imaging for patient consultations. Dr. Beck also sheds light on his innovative med spa services, targeting not only cosmetic enhancement but also wellness and lifestyle support.
Join us as we explore the evolving landscape of aesthetic medicine, addressing common myths, trending procedures, and the importance of safety in surgical practices. Whether you’re considering a procedure for yourself or are just curious about the world of aesthetics, this episode is packed with information that will surely engage and inform. Subscribe, share, and leave a review to help us continue these conversations!
Beck Aesthetic Surgery
Dr. Joel Beck
11210 Golf Links Drive North STE 100 Charlotte, NC 28277
(704) 800-4642
info@becksurgery.com
beckaestheticsurgery.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Regina League.
Speaker 2:Well, hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast, based here in South Charlotte, and I'm super excited to chat with Dr Joel Beck today. He is a board-certified plastic surgeon and the owner of Beck Aesthetic Surgery. Hey, dr Beck, how are you?
Speaker 3:Hey Regina, how are you? Thank you for having me on your podcast today.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm remembering, was it about a year ago when you opened your own surgical center.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's been about a year ago. Actually, it was almost exactly a year ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I attended your ribbon cutting and my mouth dropped when I walked into that facility. It is stunning.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much, and it's a beautiful place it's something that I wanted to build for years and years and I think that all of the different features that I wanted patients to feel we brought to the South Charlotte market and serenity, comfort, warmth all those go a long way when you get nervous to come in for a consultation or something else. So we've really tried to hit it right on the head as far as that.
Speaker 2:Well, it's amazing, very sophisticated too, and I know you have state-of-the-art equipment and your staff is truly amazing. So I have so many things to talk about, but why don't we start with what got you into this industry? How did you decide you wanted to be a plastic surgeon? A little bit about your background.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'm from Southern California originally and I remember my dad was a dentist growing up and I used to go to dental conventions and I remember one time I was walking down one of the aisles over at the convention center in Anaheim and my mom oh, I stopped off over at a, at a taped. It was a videotaped oral surgery that has some blood associated with it and I thought it was just fascinating and my mom's like Joel, she's like doesn't that make you feel, doesn't that gross you out? Or something like that, and I'm like, no, I think that's really cool and that, I think, was the start of my interest in wanting to become a doctor.
Speaker 2:How old were you then?
Speaker 3:I was like seven years old.
Speaker 2:Oh, no way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and from that age I mean, I always kind of thought I wanted to be a doctor and so that's what I kind of set my goals towards and finally did that. And I went through a lot of training. I spent seven years in training after medical school and started a practice in Northern California in the Bay Area, which I built it out really nice. It was a real successful practice. But I was just kind of getting tired of being in the Bay Area and the congestion, just the cost of living and everything. So we decided to come out to North Carolina where I have family. We moved my parents out here from Palm Desert, so we're all here now and I'll tell you it's been such an amazing journey. I'm so thankful for my wife, heather, who supported me in this, because she's like you're not getting any younger. We better do something pretty soon if you want to do it.
Speaker 3:So yeah, I made it over here and we started off in a small little office over in Matthews at the Matthews Medical Center, the Novant Medical Center, and we were there for like five years and center, the Novant Medical Center, and we were there for like five years and finally after took about three years of planning and building for this location, and so now we have a beautiful, larger clinic med spa built into it. We have a ambulatory surgery center that has two rooms. It has overnight capabilities, two rooms with a large screen TVs and space for significant others or friends to spend the night with the patient. So you know, we're always focusing on patient experience and safety and one of the safety things from my standpoint on longer cases is to keep people overnight and have a nurse observe them overnight and take care of patients. So it's been a journey, but it's been a really rewarding journey.
Speaker 2:Well, I noticed when I'm there you have a separate entrance for that side of the business where you're taking care of the patients overnight. So I love that. It's kind of over to the side. There's a lot of privacy then.
Speaker 3:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So I'm curious I noticed you are board certified plastic surgeon. Tell me what that means exactly?
Speaker 3:So a board certified plastic surgeon is. It's different than a board certified or board certified cosmetic surgeon? You know we have strict training. Usually it's a combination actually it's changed over the years but it used to be going through general surgery and then sometimes you would do a fellowship. So I did three going through general surgery and then sometimes you would do a fellowship. So I did three years of general surgery, then I did a fellowship in burns surgery, research and then craniofacial surgery and then the official plastic surgery residency.
Speaker 3:So after residency you have to take a written board exam and then, once you pass that, then you have to take an oral board exam. So and then once you pass that, then you're considered board certified and then you have to do maintenance of certification over the years and get re board certified or maintain your certification. So that encompasses, you know, making sure you have a certain amount of continuing medical education units and going to conferences, taking tests online. So it's not like you just finish and then you're done. You constantly have to improve yourself, your experiences, your training, and so that's what board certification means.
Speaker 2:I did not know there was a difference between a board certified plastic surgeon and a cosmetic surgeon.
Speaker 3:Cosmetic surgeons. From what I understand, it could be a general surgeon, it could be an OBGYN, it could be an orthopedic surgeon, it could be a cardiovascular surgeon. It could be surgeons other than board-certified plastic surgeons, who then take courses in cosmetics and aesthetic surgery to then get a board cosmetic surgeon degree, so and so how they do that, how long they have to do that, I'm not exactly sure, but it's, it is definitely different than a board certified plastic surgeon. Gotcha.
Speaker 2:So what is your personal philosophy when it comes to working with your patients? I saw online you strive for natural looking results, so what did talk to us about that?
Speaker 3:Well, you repeat that one more time. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Can you repeat that one more time? I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was just. What is your philosophy when it comes to way medicine is these days? But I really think it's important to make a bond with the patient and for them to feel like you're listening to them and that there's a back and forth discussion on why they're here, what they're looking to achieve, if I can take care of them, if they're a good candidate. So I think that having a real patient-doctor relationship is important and when I have consultations, they're not like five or 10 minute consultations. I mean, we spend typically about an hour for a consultation, so that way we can learn about each other and there's no rush, so it's not like going to a I don't know. It could be like a primary care doctor or it could be insurance-based medicine where you have to get in and out in six minutes or 15 minutes.
Speaker 2:It's a totally different experience so.
Speaker 3:I think, that my philosophy is being there for the patient and trying to come up with the right decisions based on where they are at their life at that moment, with whatever medical issues they may have.
Speaker 2:Do you find that a lot of?
Speaker 3:I think some people do. I think that there's a lot of people who have really realistic expectations and I think that's probably the majority of people Okay, maybe get caught up in Instagram or Twitter or you know something where social media basically, where they want to look a certain way when they already don't have any issues from a surgical standpoint and when I say surgical standpoint also it's I mean we do a lot more than just surgeries here. So I mean we have the whole med spa. We have a lot of non-surgery things.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of the trending stuff that we'll talk about, I suspect. Yeah Well, yeah, there are a lot of trends out there. So I imagine you have to kind of reel people in sometime and you know, maybe do you say no sometimes.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, Absolutely, and sometimes it's not a no, it's like you may be a good candidate. You may not be a good candidate today, but if we change these few things, then you may be a good candidate down the line. And that's one of the things that we've really tried to do in our office is kind of diversify and have offer more, more services, including weight loss.
Speaker 3:So I would consider us a center of excellence for weight management, because we have medical management of weight loss, we have a surgeon, bariatric surgeon, who does gastric sleeves out of our facility, and then I do a lot of skin loss, so that, in essence, is like a center of excellence for weight loss, and so we really pride ourselves on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, with these new meds out there and people are losing tremendous amount of weight, I'm sure there's been an uptick in people wanting to know what to do with all that extra skin. Absolutely Definitely, what are your favorite procedures that you do?
Speaker 3:You know I like to keep it broad. I like to do an assortment of procedures. I do everything from the face to the breast and body. I would say probably the thing I really love the most is working with doing facelifts. I just think that they're challenging, but I think that they're also one of the most rewarding things. And performing a deep plane facelift with upper eyelid surgery, lower eyelid surgery, a brow lift, maybe fat transfer to the face, all these things, neck lift, that's all what I love doing. But all I mean I love doing breasts. I like doing tummy tacks, rhinopl, I mean, you name it. I love doing those things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you mentioned your med spa. I am one of the patients there and you have a phenomenal team, great products. Talk a little bit about the med spa. Head.
Speaker 3:Spa is led by our esthetician. Her name's Marissa and she's fantastic. We also have Heather Ripien, who is a leading nurse injector in the country. She trains other offices and other trainers how to train other people. So she's traveling a lot doing that, but we really pride ourselves on having her and welcome her, and so she's all about safety, she's all about natural appearance, she's all about choosing the right candidates. So we don't have any problems or other patients have problems. We have Megan who, alexander, as she is heading the bioidentical hormone replacement aspect of the practice. We're going to be bringing on potentially peptides when we can. We have a whole assortment of medical skin care products, skincare products, and we can do some of the best machines, from radiofrequency microneedling to laser resurfacing. We just got this device called the Helix, which is the newest, latest and greatest of the CO2 lasers, that has different features on it that give a better result. Different features on it that give a better result, I don't know. We just try to cover all of our bases. We also do hair restoration.
Speaker 3:So there's a number of different things that we do in the med spa, but what Megan is doing with bringing the bioidentical hormones, the weight management side of things, it's probably some of our newest services things.
Speaker 2:It's probably some of our newest services. That's amazing.
Speaker 3:So for your male, the male listeners what kind of procedures do you do for men? I'd say that some of the most popular things for men well, one is weight loss. Bioidentical hormones or hormone replacement therapy is very important and sought after, and gynecomastia is one of those things that also affects men and it's an embarrassing thing, and so that's basically where men develop breast tissue that affects their self-confidence and that they want that fixed, and there's different ways that we do that, but that's a very popular procedure. Here. We see it all the time. Liposuction and body contouring are some other things, and now with the, we have different medical devices, and one of them is called Renuvion, and Renuvion is a device that we use in conjunction with liposuction to help tighten the skin, and so men really like that, and then, of course, they like their Botox and they like their. You know, some people like fillers and and skincare and and even microneedling, and especially for like acne scars, things like that. So men are beginning to turn the corner some, and we're there to try to help them out.
Speaker 2:Well, I love that. So, dr, Beck, you are one busy man in you and Heather. So when you're not working and being a plastic surgeon, what do y'all like to do for fun?
Speaker 3:Well, we love going out for fine food if we can Love trying new restaurants and wine tasting and things like that. We also like playing golf or, quite honestly, a lot of time. We just stay home and we spend time with our dogs and take them for walks and let them run around and I mean they were a little baby, so we have a great time with them and then so those are some of the things that we we do together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what are? Name a couple of your favorite restaurants, especially South Charlotte one.
Speaker 3:Oh boy, let's see.
Speaker 1:I think that the usual places are like.
Speaker 3:Via Roma is awesome. Porter's House is great. I love going to Little Mama's.
Speaker 2:We are loving this area. It has exploded with fabulous restaurants.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, now with the Valentine Bowl, that's awesome Going there and I haven't seen a concert out there yet, but I've gone to the restaurants the Roosters I think that's a great place and the Flower Child.
Speaker 2:So there's some great places around here. Yeah, well, I agree with you. Well, it has been a pleasure chatting and I want to have you back so we can dive into some of the procedures and, you know, really explain them, cause I think there's a lot of you do so much and we don't even know what they are, so that would be fun. What are, well before, before I let you go, what are some of the trending procedures?
Speaker 3:you know, um, I say that some of the trending things out there right now, um, first, I think people around here especially like the real natural results not everybody, but people really like natural results and, rather than using some of these fillers that may give you potentially too much volume, that using like platelet-rich fibrin gel is one of the things that we have here that uses only your own blood and we can divide it into platelet-rich fibrin, which like growth factors, and create a gel out of the remaining part. We mix them together and we can actually add volume to your cheeks and around your eyes, I think, the tear trough. So I think that's really worked well and it also helps with the skin. Minimally invasive procedures, things that reduce recovery time, like brazilian butt lifts, but using potentially sculptra of one of the products and I know that heather's really done well with that at our office avali avali is a, a cellulite treatment which helps with with cellulite, and you can do that under local. And then I talked about that Renuvion, that skin tightening that we use in conjunction with liposuction. So if you have arms that are affecting you and you just don't want to wear short sleeves coming up in the summertime, this is a procedure that would not only help remove fat but tighten the skin so potentially you won't have a loose skin problem.
Speaker 3:I would say fat grafting to the face, combining procedures. So, especially with the advent of Ozempic you know these weight loss drugs Terzapatide you know weight loss drugs, terzopatide you know if you can combat some of the volume loss by adding your own fat, that may work. And sometimes we even combine that with other procedures like a broadband light treatment for like sun damage or brown spots or even little capillaries spots or even little capillaries. And then I think that there is a trend now especially. It seems like, let's say, an overdone Brazilian butt lift. Some people want to decrease the size of that. It's not, I mean, some people really want that but some people don't. So they're looking at that. I say that sometimes people want us to dissolve the fillers in their face because they may be too full, and again, that's something that either Megan or Heather can do.
Speaker 3:It depends on the type of filler, but that you can do that If it's a hyaluronic acid filler, let's say Juvederm, or if it's restylane products. Some people want us to either downsize or remove their implants altogether.
Speaker 3:breast implants yeah and then I say the other thing that's really cool is that we institute three-dimensional technologies, like it's called vectra or visia, so if you come in for to see the esthetician, she can put your face in, basically a camera that takes a picture of your face like a three-dimensional photo, and she can show you what it would look like if she were to treat you with medical-grade skin care or what it would look like if you didn't treat with medical grade skincare or all these other ancillary procedures. So that's something that gives the patient objective data on their progress with their treatments. And then I do a lot of the vector analysis using for breast augmentation, breast lifts. You can even do it for breast reductions and I'd use it a lot for, like, rhinoplasty. So if somebody comes in and wanting that, I can show them what their nose potentially can look like.
Speaker 2:Yes, For us visual people that's a game changer. I didn't even think of that. So when you're how about a facelift, Can you kind of do it that way as well?
Speaker 3:I think you can. It's not going to be as accurate. There is some distortions on some of the things, but when you can do like a profile view of a nose, you really can. You know it's more accurate that way.
Speaker 2:I love it. Love it Great information. So tell our listeners where you're located and how to reach out to you guys.
Speaker 3:So, we are located right off of right off the freeway, right off of Providence Road in South Charlotte. So really it's right across the street from Waverly Shopping Center. It's not far from. It's right adjacent to the SECU Bank on the west side of Providence. If you just look over as you're going south on Providence, you look over, you'll see the SECU Bank and then a building behind it and that's us. So we're literally like 30 seconds off the freeway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's in the rear section of Ray Farms.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's like north portion of Ray Farms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly farms, basically, yeah, it's like north portion of ray farms, yeah, exactly. Well, uh, beck aesthetic surgery as uh just, you guys are amazing, your reviews are fantastic and, like I said, your facility is like nothing I've ever seen. So you brought a little slice of california, for sure, when you designed your surgery center.
Speaker 3:I appreciate it, Ben, and I appreciate you having me on the podcast today.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPSouthCharlotte. com. That's GNPSouthCharlotte. com. That's GNPSouthCharlotte. com, or call 980-351-5719.