Pump up the Voluma in Your Face
For most of us, keeping our wrinkles at bay is the holy grail of maintaining a natural, youthful appearance. But there’s something else that’s giving away our age: the loss of volume in our face. We can fill in our wrinkles and creases all we want, but that won’t give us back the plump, baby face of our youth. The truth is, sometimes using fillers in the nasolabial folds (the marionette lines that run from the nose to corners of the mouth) and around the eyes just isn’t enough.
That’s where Voluma (a.k.a. “the liquid facelift”) comes in. A form of Juvéderm, but thicker in consistency, Voluma is a hyaluronic acid-based filler designed to help correct volume loss in the middle part of the face. After being used to plump up countless cheeks in Europe and Canada, Voluma is now FDA approved and available at Serenity Med Spa. (Hooray!)
Get your baby face back.
While using traditional fillers can certainly make us look less wrinkled, they don’t necessarily make us look younger. Restoring volume to the face tells a different story. Adding Voluma to key areas delivers a one-two punch to aging: it plumps up the cheeks while also softening and lifting the folds around the mouth. It even reduces the hollows beneath our eyes by lifting and tightening the loose skin–all without having to inject filler directly to this area, which can sometimes cause us to look puffy and tired.
As a result, co-founder Dr. Lisa Kang is increasingly turning her attention from smoothing out wrinkles to increasing volume to achieve more natural, longer-lasting results for her patients. Using a newer Voluma injection technique, Dr. Lisa has been able to create an even greater lifting effect. “When I inject the Voluma in the midface, I can soften the nasolabial folds by lifting and plumping the cheek area,” she says. “The results are more natural than simply filling in those creases directly.”
The reason adding volume makes us look younger is that it brings us closer to what cosmetic surgeons and dermatologists call the “triangle of youth”– the triangle our faces create with widest part at our cheeks. As we age our cheeks begin to shrink, (a result of reduced collagen production) and the excess skin begins to droop. This flips the triangle so the widest point is now at the jawline making us look, in a word, old.
A little volume goes a long way.
Dr. Lisa is careful to assess her client’s skin type and specific goals for the filler. She works slowly and artfully, using only what’s needed. (No one wants “chipmunk cheeks” from too much filler.) And if by chance the Voluma needs adjusting, it can be easily dissolved with a simple enzyme solution injection.
Regaining a youthful face takes less than an hour with only temporary swelling and bruising as common side effects. Although Voluma is one of the more expensive fillers available, the good news is that because it has a thicker consistency and the cheeks are not a high-movement area, the results can last well over a year–sometimes even up to two years. Best of all, injectable fillers help stimulate the skin to produce more collagen, so the more consistent you are with your injections, the longer you’ll be able to go between treatments.
Read our interview with a Serenity MedSpa client who recently tried Voluma here.