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I did a similar podcast a just a moment ago for hair transplants. I’m going to do one for facial plastic surgery. I think one of the biggest concerns people have, and rightly so, is they want to look natural. After a procedure with me, whether it’s injectable fillers, Botox therapy or surgical therapies. So the one thing that I always tell my patients is that their standard is far lower than mine. So if you walk to a cocktail party and you see some women, you probably will see three women that look absolutely fake and you’re bothered by them. Of course I’ll see those three, but I’ll see another seven. You’ll never see, so a lot of women, I had one lady during consultation, she said, please, whatever you do, don’t make me look fake. And I said, you know what? I hate to say your lips don’t look natural and your Botox looks unnatural.

She goes, what? Because she was peaking in her brows. If I were at a cocktail party, I would clearly see she had Botox and her lips did not look natural at all. So, you know, these are things. And he said, well, why are you so rude, Dr. Lam? Why are you so blunt with your patients? And here’s the thing I am, and you know, I’m going to tell you what I do or don’t like about what I see from your prior work. And if it’s good, I’m going to tell you. I’m not here to bad mouth another doctor and even if it’s my work is out, say oftentimes, Hey, this is something I did 10 years ago that I don’t like and let’s do some corrective work on it. So there is an evolution of understanding evolution. So for example, for me in the past, you know, when I started doing fat graft, I would put a small amount of fat into the cheek, probably one and a half milliliters.

That’s so little. That’s one fifth of a teaspoon per side. That’s being generous. Oftentimes I put half milliliter or one, but now a decade later, I look at it. I think the cheeks are slightly overfilled. So even my own patients from 15 years ago, I see some of the things I don’t like. And that’s an evolution of thinking. That’s why you hear my lectures of the last decades warning about putting fillers in the anterior cheek. And I never put a lot in there, but even that small amount may not look right. So my standard is oftentimes much higher than your standard of what you would consider a natural. Like I had a lady for a rhinoplasty, sorry for a facial consult. And I said, you know, if we had a choice of what to fix, I can tell you’ve had a rhinoplasty. There are things that don’t look right.

In your situation, I really need to do a surgical correction. I cannot do it. Nonsurgically I have to do it surgically. So I would highly encourage you to let me correct it. But if you’re not ready, that’s okay. But I always try to give my patients priorities. So, you know, so the bottom line here is even though you’re deathly afraid to look unnatural, I always tell my patients, your standard is actually far lower than mine because I’ve been doing this eight hours a day. It’s sort of like if you go to, you know, go to a shoe shop, the first thing they look at at your shoes, okay. And they’re going to tell is that a high end brand? Is it a cheap brand? Is that one that’s, well, have you kept maintained it? Well, have you shined it? Are the seams falling apart?

Is it, are you walking weird because the shoe doesn’t fit you correctly. They see all this because they do it for eight hours a day for 10, 15, 20 years. So it’s the same for me. It’s not meant to be offensive, but if I don’t tell you something doesn’t look right, you know, and I just sort of ignore it and just give you some, you know, nice plots or, or nice compliments that are inappropriate in my opinion, then it’s not helping you. I’d rather be appropriate in the sense of telling you something doesn’t look right or here are the things that we can do to avoid the issues. So I think that can help you understand that better.