Haute How-To: Maintain a Youthful Neck

While most people wish to maintain youthful skin as they grow older, very few pay attention to the areas that need the most TLC. If you’ve fallen into a routine of applying sunscreen to your face in the mornings, you’ve only attacked a sliver of the battle. Your face is important of course, but your neck is as well. In fact, it is often the first place to reveal aging!

The neck area tends to be overlooked and forgotten until it develops deep creases, wrinkles and excessive fat. But here’s the thing: None of these conditions form overnight, so you can still prevent them by applying sunscreen, eating a balanced diet, avoiding weight gain and avoiding smoking. But unfortunately, “curing” these annoying flaws might not be so easy. Nonetheless, they can still be improved with a little help from plastic surgeon and Haute Beauty expert Dr. Barry Weintraub.

Some of the primary issues many patients have with their necks, according to Weintraub, are “turkey gobble,” “double-chin” and “banding.” These conditions can be caused by excessive weight, poor diet, genetics and aging – and they can all be treated with a neck lift and sometimes a chin implant. A neck lift will lift and support the underlying tissue, remove fat, suspend the skin and recreate a sharp jawline, while a chin implant will provide proper proportion to the chin and neck area, correcting a retrusive or “weak” chin, Dr. Weintraub explains.

However, neck lifts are not recommended for patients of all ages. For younger patients, particularly in their 20s and 30s, Dr. Weintraub prefers to remove fat via liposuction. Patients in their 40s and older are the ones who benefit the most from surgery. Hanging skin in particular can only be successfully treated with surgery. While this may be disheartening to some, Dr. Weintraub says that surgery, if performed precisely and accurately, can lead to long-lasting, stunning results, and can have a much shorter recovery time.