If you think a little lift here and a little volume there could enhance your look, look no further than Sculptra at Artful Aesthetics in Oakland, CA. This versatile injectable can be used to lift and tighten your sagging buttocks skin while adding volume without the need for incisions, scalpels, sutures, or scars. You may want to consider another treatment and be surprise with sculptra results.
We get a lot of questions about this treatment. But today, we’re addressing one of our most common – how long will the results last. Keep reading to find out how long the results of this treatment should last for you. And, as an added bonus, learn what you can do to extend the results of treatment.
How Long Sculptra Results Last
On average, the results of Sculptra will last between three and five years. However, results vary on a case-by-case basis.
Factors affecting the durability of the results include overall health, lifestyle, skin health, and environmental factors, like exposure to vehicle emissions and other irritants.
Some things, like pollution, are unavoidable. But if you make a point to take good care of your skin, it is reasonable to expect that your results will last at least three years.
How to Extend the Results of Treatment
As stated previously, to extend the results of your treatment, you need to take excellent care of your skin health and overall health. To achieve this, there are things you should do and things you should not do, and both types of actions are equally important. Here’s a brief overview of the lifestyle you will need to lead to have the longest-lasting Sculptra results:
Get Enough Vitamin E
Vitamin E gets an unfortunately bad reputation among people who are considering an invasive cosmetic or medical procedure. This chemical compound is made up of four fat-soluble tocopherols and four fat-soluble tocotrienols. While many people know this micronutrient for its potential to thin the blood, it’s not dangerous unless you already have thin blood or low blood pressure.
According to the National Institute of Health, you should be getting at least 15 mg of vitamin E daily for optimal skin health. Vitamin E can be found in dark, leafy green vegetables, cruciferous vegetables, seafood, poultry, and red organ meat, just to name a few sources. This nutrient helps to keep your skin smooth, hydrated, and protected from damage.
Get Enough Hydration
Speaking of hydration, keeping your body is another important part of extending the results of your skin tightening treatment. Think of water as the 91 octane fuel that your bike needs to operate at optimal efficiency. The power pack won’t shut down if you give it 87 octane fuel. But it will be less efficient and need maintenance sooner.
You may be able to get water from soda and processed juice, but it’s not ideal. Give yourself exactly what you need and limit your beverage consumption to water, black coffee, and plain tea. Unless you use honey or unpasteurized milk, anything you put in your tea is processed and less than ideal for your body and your skin. Drink at least half a gallon of water and tea daily.
Eat Less Processed Foods and Beverages
To keep your skin tight and lifted for as long as possible, your collagen needs to be strong and healthy for as long as possible. Think of collagen as a lacrosse backstop net. The fibers in your skin are evenly spaced and excellent at keeping your skin elastic. When you eat too much sugar, chemical compounds called AGEs come into play.
These AGEs get caught between the perfectly spaced fibers and stick. Unfortunately, when they get stuck, the result is a tangled mess of fibers that are extremely inelastic. This results in loose, sagging, wrinkled skin. To cut sugar from your diet easily, shop around the outside of the grocery store where the natural foods can be found. Processed foods are very high in sugar.
Stop Drinking Alcohol
If you drink alcohol and want your Sculptra results to last at least three years, stop drinking alcohol. Alcohol is among the worst things you can do for the health of your skin. Remember, staying hydrated is a crucial part of keeping your skin looking and feeling young and healthy. Unfortunately, even if you are drinking half a gallon of water daily, alcohol can undo all your effort.
Alcohol is made up of a chemical compound called ethanol that is toxic to the body. When you consume alcohol, your body responds to the toxin introduced by flushing it, and an inordinate amount of water, out of your body. Since so much water floods into your kidneys, pancreas, and liver to flush out the ethanol, your skin becomes dehydrated, and it sags prematurely.
Stop Smoking
Tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, and many of them destroy both collagen and elastin. While collagen is the most important fibrous substance that keeps your skin tight, elastin plays a significant supporting role. It’s bad enough when one of these is weak and damaged. Damage both of them and you have a recipe for disaster.
If you smoke, now is the time to stop. The only way to reverse the damage done is by receiving professional skincare treatments, such as Sculptra, to encourage your body to make more collagen and elastin. But if you smoke after treatment, you are just shortening the duration of your results. If you need help quitting, ask your primary care physician for a referral to a specialist.
Wear Sunscreen
Walking down Toll Plaza Beach, it’s easy to think that darker is better when it comes to skin tone. After all, you can’t count a dozen beachgoers who aren’t perfectly bronzed and beautiful. But even if you think you have to be tan to look your best, unprotected sun exposure is not the way to go if you want to stay looking young and healthy.
The sun emits three types of ultraviolet light rays, UVA, UVB, and UVC. Each of these damages the collagen and elastin holding your skin in place and giving it volume beneath the surface. What remains of the atmosphere’s ozone layer protects you from UVC rays and skin cancer. Most sunscreen protects you from UVB rays. A broad-spectrum sunscreen will protect you from UVAs.
Eat Yogurt and Fish
Contrary to popular belief, cereal is not the breakfast of champions. People used to say that you should spend at least 10 minutes a day in the sun to soak up vitamin D. But health specialists now know that there is a better way to get your daily dose of vitamin D. To ensure you hit your RDA (recommended daily allowance of vitamin D), eat a breakfast high in it.
You can get vitamin D from milk and fortified cereal. But both pasteurized milk and fortified cereals tend to be heavily processed. Unless you make your own cereal, it probably has a lot of added sugar that will prematurely age your skin. Instead, try a smoked salmon sandwich with yogurt instead of cream cheese. Also, make a point to eat an orange during the day.
Eat at Least One Citrus Fruit Daily
Oranges aren’t just high in vitamin D. They’re also high in vitamin C, another nutrient that plays a critical role in keeping your skin tight, smooth and beautiful. If you consume at least a gram of the micronutrient daily, your sunscreen will be more effective and cellular regeneration will occur more frequently.
While vitamin C can be found in such foods as broccoli, strawberries, and spinach, it is found in the highest quantities in citrus fruits. These include lemons, limes, oranges, tangerines, nectarines, and clementines. To extend the results of your skin tightening treatment, make an effort to eat one citrus fruit that is currently in season and add a lime slice to your tea or water.
Eat More Vitamin K
Vitamin K is a micronutrient often found in anti-aging creams. But you don’t have to spend a ton of money on creams that aren’t absorbed by your skin effectively You can just eat more foods that are high in vitamin K to keep your skin smooth and healthy. According to the National Institute of Health, you should eat between 90 and 120 micrograms daily from sources like:
- Kale
- Cabbage
- Green beans
- Lettuce
- Spinach
How Else to Extend the Results of Treatment
While the Sculptra butt lift tightens and lifts sagging buttocks skin, that’s not all it does. Remember, one of the roles of collagen is to add volume to your skin. There are many reasons why someone may choose a non-invasive butt lift over a Brazilian butt lift. But one of them is not having enough fat to be harvested and injected into the buttocks.
Keeping your collagen strong and healthy will go a long way in keeping your butt round and full-looking. But some of the volume in your buttocks comes from fat. To keep your butt looking perfectly contoured for as long as possible, make an effort to maintain your current body fat percentage. Or, build muscle while maintaining your current fat mass.
How to Build Muscle While Maintaining Fat
Bodybuilders go through phases of bulking and cutting between and during competition seasons. They put on fat and muscle at the same time. Then, they burn the fat and maintain the muscle. But if you can accurately count your calories in and out, there is no need to add fat while building muscle. Simply eat a gram of protein per pound of body weight per day.
This is an adequate amount of protein for your muscles to metabolize to grow bigger and stronger. It is also enough protein for your skin to keep producing collagen and keeping your skin tight and voluminous. To build butt muscles, focus on squats, deadlifts, power cleans, snatches, and lunges.
How to Build Butt Muscles Without a Gym
If you don’t have a gym membership, you don’t need one to build your glutes and extend the results of your Sculptra treatment. You don’t even need a pair of running shoes.
Walking, running, bicycling and indoor rowing are all great ways to build your glutes. And if you don’t have proper footwear, work out barefoot. The human race has been running for over a million years and only with shoes for around 10,000 years. Just make sure you’re pushing your glutes to failure and you will build muscle, even without a gym.
The Bottom Line
If you’re looking for a non-invasive way to tighten and lift sagging skin, smooth wrinkles or add volume to your skin, Sculptra may be the right aesthetic treatment for you. While nothing in life is permanent, you can expect the results of treatment to last for at least two years with no effort on your part.
To learn more about this life-changing treatment, or how to stretch the sculptra results out even further, contact us today at Artful Aesthetics in Oakland, CA to schedule your initial consultation. We can’t wait to meet you and craft a tailored, artful aesthetic plan to help you achieve your ideal look.