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This podcast is on lip reduction. I do probably more live productions than most people in the world I do about one a day and it’s sort of weird if for people that don’t understand why to do a lip production, because most of the world wants lips to be bigger. While I say that half the world wants a bigger nose, half the world wants a smaller nose. I think the same thing, involves lips. Half the world wants a bigger lips, and half the world wants smaller lips. I think the Western hemisphere, most people want fuller bigger sensual lips. However, there are two issues. Number one is those that have done it with, for example, silicone fat grafting, Gore-Tex, Aqua plasta, Derma plasta, there’s so many different things are just fill these permanent corrections that look bad. Can’t be taken away with dissolve like Juvederm could be raised with dissolver and people are left with these very weird deformed lips that, you know, attract your eye very quickly.

So one of the big reasons that I reduced lips is to correct overdone, you know, inflated artificial lips, the most common of which is silicone injections. And silicone a lot of people think, after they’ve injected in the lifts is like a liquid. They could just puncture it and it just drains out, actually becomes fully integrated in the tissues. And when you cut on it, you don’t really see anything except a slight grayish quality to it. I do a lot of silicone micro injections for acne scars have not really had any long term issues, but with silicone, the lips, the reason why it’s problematic is people bite on the lips and the lips just typically change over a period of years. So this is why I don’t inject silicone. The lips I did for the first couple of years of my practice.

Fortunately, I’ve not had any major issues, but I’ve had to correct a couple of my own patients with that. So, lip injections with silicone has some other big reason. So the Western hemisphere people get lips that are too big and other areas such as African Hispanic, Asian, and even some whites have lips that are just, they’re just born too large. So I do lip reductions, surgical lip reductions for them. So, it’s either ethnic or artificial lips that I do this on. Now, the lip reduction technique that I do, a lot of people are very concerned. It’s gonna be painful and surprisingly, I can do it completely awake. And the patients have almost no pain. The reason for this is I use a stage anesthetic that really doesn’t burn or hurt, or you don’t feel the needles through a vibration technique.

So most people are pretty surprised that they really almost feel nothing. Even though they’re awake. So they’re all very nervous when they start and then progressively feel much more comfortable as I continue the procedure. The trick with this is I actually learned this technique about 20 years ago in Asia. And the technique I learned was erroneous. It didn’t work well. I was reducing lips from the inside of the mouth to avoid a scar. And it just led to problems because really the dry and the wet lip interface where you can see a line there. And that line is what I recreate. So people worry about a scar. It’s really just another line of wet and dry lips. So I go a little bit farther out and take a little bit of the dry lip, take a little bit of wet lip and then recreate that line.

And I find to be much more predictable, the closer you are to the problem, the better results. So if I go way inside the mouth and try to drag your lip inside, it’s not going to work. So you have to take the right proportion amount out. And I like what Michael Angelo said about David is the way he created this famous statue of David, is he just trimmed away the excess? And that’s exactly how I look at lips. I designed lips that are too large by sculpting them down to a favorable shape and size that works well. The stitches that I put in dissolve, you can fly out. I’m actually giving this during the covert time where people can wear masks. And so I said, this is the one time in history where people’s recoveries are pretty small because they can wear a mask to cover it.

But hopefully it will change the culture where if you’re wearing a mask, people are more accepting of it. But yeah, for the first one or two weeks, you’re going to see the stitches they dissolve after a couple of weeks and there’s a little bit numbness for the first one to two weeks, maybe a little residual after that. Maybe for a month or two, when you do smile, the upper lip does fold in a naturally for the first four to six weeks, but those are probably some of the key things to know about the lip production. The most patients fly in, fly out the same day. They just go home. They don’t need to stay for a long term. So it’s one of those things that fortunately is not something you need to stay in Dallas if you’re from out of town.

And 99% of my patients are from outside of Dallas of not Texas, but you can fly back home pretty much the same day. So as long as you give me enough time to do it, um, but you know, every patient of mine is very concerned and nervous when they do it. But once they’ve heard I’ve done thousands of this procedure and you know, I don’t hurt them. They actually become much more comfortable as a procedure progresses. So if you’re interested, please call my office to learn more about lip reductions and hope I can help you with that.