Disclaimer: The discussions on this podcast do not constitute medical advice, an evaluation, or a consultation. Nothing in the podcast episodes should be considered a replacement or substitute for a formal in-office evaluation by Dr. Hall or his associates. Explanation of off-label services and/or products do not constitute promotion and/or endorsement. Information and opinions presented here do not create a formal doctor-patient relationship. Discuss any potential medical procedures or interventions with your physician or surgeon first.
In this episode of The Trillium Show, the tables are turned...instead of the interviewer and presenter, I'm switch chairs with Liz Durham on her podcast, Being Different. We delve deep into the topic of mommy makeovers, discussing everything from the emotional struggles and physical changes after childbirth to the technicalities of cosmetic surgery. If you've ever had questions about mommy makeovers or cosmetic surgery, this is the episode for you.Check out Liz's profile here: https://www.lizdurham.com/
Dr. Hall: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Trillium Show. I'm your host, Dr. Jason Hall. Today's show, we are going to do something a little bit different. Um, we're going to turn the tables a little bit. And this one, I am actually in the role of the interviewee instead of the interviewer or talker.
Dr. Hall: Um, I was recently on Liz Durham's podcast, Being Different. And We had a really wide ranging discussion about mommy makeover. So if you've ever had any questions about mommy makeover surgery or want to hear some of the questions that you may have answered, this is the show for you. So take a listen. I hope you enjoy it.
Liz Durham: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of being different today. I have Dr Jason Hall and I am super excited to talk to you. Uh, he's a plastic surgeon in town. He has an excellent reputation and I don't know you personally, but I have followed you on Instagram and listen to your podcast and stuff.
Liz Durham: So I am really excited that you're here. Thanks for coming.
Dr. Hall: Well, thanks for having me on. I'm looking forward to this should be fun.
Liz Durham: Okay. So he reached out to me, um, after I did my whining episode about the postpartum body where I, I don't know what I said. I basically said my body is a disaster after baby number three and whined about it for an hour after that.
Liz Durham: So, um, I think he was like, Oh, this girl needs help. So I'm glad you're here.
Dr. Hall: Well, thank you. It actually was more like, I hear this every day.
Liz Durham: Yeah.
Dr. Hall: So
Liz Durham: it's probably a common theme I would think. And especially at least for me, like the more babies that I've had, the worse it's gotten and just age in general.
Liz Durham: So it's just the hard fact of aging in life. It sucks, especially for women.
Dr. Hall: It really does. And you know, I, I jokingly just a minute ago said, I hear it every day. It really is. You know, my practice is our demographic and a couple of decades ahead of us. And so I do that. The struggles of aging is something I talk about almost with every single person that walks through the door.
Liz Durham: Yeah, it's tough. And I feel like it's getting worse now that we have social media because we are seeing pictures. Constantly like we didn't used to like look in mirrors all the time and look at cameras like selfies all the time And now we just see these images and of course the youthful images are what are being portrayed to us And they're a lot of times false because it's filters on them and Photoshop and all this crap and so it's like I think it makes it even more on top of mind, maybe for men too, but for women, especially when you're not feeling good about yourself after having a baby, it seems like, especially in your face, everywhere you look.
Dr. Hall: Well, it does. And we, it's funny that you bring up the filters. We were, my wife and I were talking the other day and you know, our daughters are, we have a teenager and an almost teenager. And. She works in the office. She's in the, she's in the cosmetic business day in and day out. And some of our more youthful staff were, were going through Instagram and showed us these filters and we were taken side by side pictures and they look like different people.
Dr. Hall: Totally. A picture, a normal picture with your phone taken side by, you compare it side by side with a filter picture, which is what you see on social media. It looks like two different people
Liz Durham: because it actually what I've noticed on these filters and maybe like the AI is just getting so good, but it's even changing.
Liz Durham: Um, it's not just adding like the makeup and smoothing the skin and stuff. It's changing like the face shape, but just in a slight enough manner to make it like slightly more beautiful or appealing. Um, but a lot of them are not enough that you can tell like, oh, that's fake. You know what I mean? It's just like a very slight.
Liz Durham: Let's blur out the skin. Let's make the jawline more pronounced. Let's make the eyes look, I don't know if they're up or down, whatever makes the eyes look more attractive, like that kind of stuff. And I'm like, if I saw the two pictures next to each other, I would know which one is real. But if I only see the fake one, I'm like, well, it could be real.
Liz Durham: Is that good?
Dr. Hall: Right. It is. And hours and hours of seeing those images on your phone, every time you open your phone, Has got to do something to our psyches.
Liz Durham: Oh, I
Dr. Hall: mean, you can't, it's unavoidable.
Liz Durham: Yeah, totally. Okay. So my first question for you, what is a mommy makeover? Now that I am a mom and my body is screwed, I have questions.
Dr. Hall: It is, that is a, that is a question that comes up a lot. And what is it is really what you want it to be. Um, I think in the most, most standard definition is some form of breast rejuvenation, whether that is an implant, whether that is a breast lift, whether that is a combination of a lift with an implant, um, plus some form of body contouring, usually an abdominoplasty plus or minus liposuction.
Dr. Hall: That is kind of the most basic standard common, you know, mommy makeover, whatever. Definition that's out there.
Liz Durham: So when people do this, do they do it all at one time usually? Or do they come in for multiple surgeries? Or what do you typically see with your clients?
Dr. Hall: Most of my patients end up wanting to do it all at once.
Dr. Hall: Um, because you're a mom, you've got three kids, you've got a job, you've got a husband, you're busy and taking the time to recover and finding the time to recover with all of that arranging for child care. taking downtime, having somebody to help you during the recovery process is hard. And so instead of breaking those up into multiple procedures, we batch them all together, do it at once and kind of get everything done at one time.
Liz Durham: And how long is the recovery on something like that? Obviously I know it depends on what you get done, but just give me like an average range of if you're doing the boob and the stomach and all that.
Dr. Hall: So most of the time I'll tell people the standard answer is that if you have a computer job, if you can, you know, work remotely, you're back working remotely in about a week.
Dr. Hall: If you have a job that requires, if you're a nurse, If you do anything that is physical where you're on your feet a lot, you're carrying things. I typically tell people to budget about two weeks to recover from that. Now exercise, getting back to the gym. That's about a six week pause. Um, you just, you just don't feel like it.
Dr. Hall: And you want to let things heal before you start getting back to do an elective physical activity.
Liz Durham: What about if you're a mom? Like I have, okay. Toddlers and they're heavy, actually, toddlers that I lift a lot of times every day in and out of cars and
Dr. Hall: yeah, and that's it. That's another. You can't stop being a mom.
Liz Durham: Yeah,
Dr. Hall: you know, that's a, that's one of those things. One of those jobs you can't delegate. And so what I'll tell the moms is the big thing is picking kids up from standing. Is you want to avoid stressing your core after a tummy tuck. You want to avoid using your chest muscles a lot after breast surgery.
Dr. Hall: And so, sit down, let the kids climb into your lap and stand up with them. Is, you know, to keep from picking them up. And then if, you know, if they need to be picked up into a crib, Have your husband, your significant other help with that. But you want to avoid that taking a 20 pound kid and lifting them off the ground into the air.
Liz Durham: My husband just had an emergency appendectomy done. And, um, which is a minor surgery, like it's laparoscopic. It's not like a huge deal, but still he was not supposed to lift more than 10 pounds. And after about like two days of that, I was like, I don't care what the doctor said, it's gonna rip open. And I'm like, I know that if I ever got anything done, it'd be the exact same treatment to me.
Liz Durham: Like, I'm gonna pick them up. But like, if you're trying not to rip apart everything that you're doing to make it look better, it seems like you should do it. probably not to pick them up.
Dr. Hall: And that's, and that's one of the things that we talk about during consultations is that the surgery is one part of it.
Dr. Hall: The recovery is another part. This is all, all of the stuff that I do. I mean, I, I make a living doing unnecessary surgery on healthy people. And so it has got to work with your schedule. Otherwise we have to kind of find a time that works.
Liz Durham: Yeah, I think about it and I, I don't even know if I'll, I probably will get my breasts done at some point just because if you breastfeed, can you explain what happens when you breastfeed to why your boobs go from looking one way to a totally different way?
Liz Durham: Is it just gravity or does it actually like, Take the, uh, fat tissue out or something. What happens
Dr. Hall: in a word? Hormones. Um, it is. So your, your breasts, the, the female breast is designed to support a little kid. And so what happens is that that dense breast tissue. that you have when you're 18, 20, 24, before kids, as you, your breast change with the hormonal changes of pregnancy and breastfeeding, that breast tissue loses its density.
Dr. Hall: So it's not as firm and then gravity takes hold. And some of that breast tissue gets replaced with fatty tissue over time. Plus the skin gets stretched out. You've got ligaments. I mean, this is getting all nerdy
Liz Durham: anatomy.
Dr. Hall: Um, But you've got ligaments in your breast that support your breast. Those get stretched out.
Dr. Hall: And so, the, all of the architecture on the inside that keeps your breast high in your chest gets stretched out and isn't as strong. And so, you see drooping.
Liz Durham: Yeah.
Dr. Hall: For lack of a better term.
Liz Durham: And it just sucks if what you once had, you were like, Oh, and it looks totally different and it's, You're also like, well, this is cool.
Liz Durham: I'm feeding my baby and I know it's healthy for them. So you're trying to be happy, but you're also not happy at the same time.
Dr. Hall: Yeah, and especially once you get, you know, what a lot of moms will relate a year, two years, five years down the road is that is exactly what you said. It was great. while it was going on, but now what you're left with isn't great anymore.
Liz Durham: Right. And it's, uh, I don't, for me, I feel like I'm a confident person. And then when I start thinking about that, I'm like, maybe I'm really insecure. Cause like, why do I care so much? Like, why can I not just be okay with like, I fed my babies and stuff, but is it because I'm comparing myself to these images of people that are younger than me and that haven't breastfed kids yet?
Liz Durham: And that. Have a bunch of fake tits, or is it because, I don't know, like, why can I not just be like, okay, I'm fine.
Dr. Hall: It's a good question. I don't have a great answer for that, but I think one of the things that our generation is dealing with is that we're having kids a little bit later.
Liz Durham: Yeah.
Dr. Hall: And then we still. are acting young and healthy into our forties, fifties and beyond. And so you want to look young and healthy.
Dr. Hall: You don't want to look like your grandmother.
Liz Durham: I also, I have a few hypotheses that I've been thinking about as women. have adapted to this feminist world that we live in where they've got to be the boss bitch and go work. Mothering has greatly been devalued and people don't place as much, um, I don't know what I want to say, emphasis, but maybe emphasis on motherhood.
Liz Durham: And so I feel that before it could have been, well, the technology wasn't there. So people didn't have the opportunity to get their boobs done, but also. they were moms and I feel like there was a lot more value and weight given to that. And so they didn't care as much about their bodies. Also, my other hypothesis is that as divorce rates have increased women in the back of their mind think, well, what if my husband dies?
Liz Durham: What if I get divorced and I have to go back onto the mating market? And so then they have to compete with younger females. And I think that then they know that. with evolutionary psychology or biology, whatever you want to think about it. Having younger breasts indicates to the male the age, fertility, able to reproduce all those types of things.
Liz Durham: And I'm like, so maybe that's why we think like, Oh, well I could get divorced. People didn't really used to think about that quite as much. Like I might have to present myself for mate attraction at some point again. Have you ever thought about that? Yeah.
Dr. Hall: It's interesting. Um, and I think it's a little bit disheartening.
Liz Durham: It's a
Dr. Hall: little bit disheartening to think that, you know, women at this point are thinking, Oh, I got to compete. If and when something happens, I think there may be some validity to it. Um, I haven't really thought about it that way, but you know, we do, I do see a lot of women who have been married and are no longer married and are, you know, that's the one of the driving forces is that I'm back out on the market.
Dr. Hall: I haven't dated in 20 years and I need to compete with younger women who haven't had three kids.
Liz Durham: And it's interesting because when you, you know, we all make fun of this, but it's not really funny when you think about it. If you see it, like, Whether it's a divorce or a breakup or whatever when somebody starts getting hot and you look at them on Instagram They're posting all these pictures of them working out.
Liz Durham: They maybe got some Botox and filler in their tits done. You're like, oh Well things might not be great on the front home front. So they're trying to like present a certain way again. And I don't know, I've just thought about that. Like is that kind of in the back of our minds now where it didn't used to be that way as much?
Dr. Hall: Yeah. I think that, you know, we were talking before we got started about social media and what that does to kids. There's no way it can't do the same thing to us.
Liz Durham: Oh, totally. We just, we're like so arrogant. We think it doesn't, but it totally does.
Dr. Hall: Yeah.
Liz Durham: Okay. So if your daughter came to you and said, Dad. I have really small breasts.
Liz Durham: I'm really insecure about it. I want to get them done. What would you tell her?
Dr. Hall: Well, at 14 and 11, I would say absolutely not. No way. What
Liz Durham: about 18?
Dr. Hall: 18 is still from, for my kids. This is my, my wife and I feel the same way about this. 18 is still young. They're still, their brains aren't fully developed yet.
Dr. Hall: Um, We would encourage, I would encourage them to wait until they're adults out of college, and then we would, you know, we would sit and talk about it, and I would help her make a decision that's right for her. If she wants an augmentation, then we would find the best person to do that augmentation for her and make sure she's realistic about her goals.
Dr. Hall: So I'm not opposed to it for my own girls. provided their adults making adult decisions.
Liz Durham: Okay. Fair enough. If someone comes in to your office for a consultation, do you talk to them about the reasons why they're getting it? Like, Is it because you're insecure? Are you doing it for someone else? Like, are you doing it to compete with your friends?
Liz Durham: Do you ever talk to them about that kind of stuff? Or do you just see that as, that's not my job. I'm just here to supply the.
Dr. Hall: Every, every single console. We do that with every single person that walks through the door. That is a fundamental part of the consult process. And in your episode where you were talking about your kind of, it was a postpartum woes.
Dr. Hall: Um, there are some of the things that you brought up in that show were very, um, were the very things that, that I and my coordinators look for because
Liz Durham: like, what did I say? I don't even know.
Dr. Hall: Um, you were talking about being, being hormonal and easily irritated and wanting to kill your husband. Um, those types of things, you know, there's a lot going on hormonally after having babies and not only anatomically, but psychologically.
Dr. Hall: And there are, if we go into a cosmetic procedure and somebody's mind is thinking that they are going to somehow be a different person, that they are going to be happier, more successful in their relationship, they're going to, dating is going to be easier because of a physical change. We're all going to be disappointed.
Dr. Hall: And that sets everybody up for failure. So we, we have to make sure that people are in the right head space.
Liz Durham: What is the right head space in your opinion?
Dr. Hall: The right head space for cosmetic surgery. So stuff you don't need is that you have an anatomic problem. Breasts that aren't as full, they're droopy, a stomach that is a little pooched out, extra skin, what have you, jowling, neck, eyelids, whatever.
Dr. Hall: You've got a problem that you don't like the way it looks or that, that looking in the mirror, it makes you feel a certain way, tired, sad, old, that then I can say, okay, there is this and this procedure that we can do to, to change those things, to eliminate what you're seeing in the mirror. That's the kind of the ideal candidate for, for cosmetic surgery.
Dr. Hall: The person that I worry about is the person that comes in and says, well, I'm, I'm going through a divorce. I want my breast done. Like that's, there's a lot of emotional stuff going on in the background that I'm not going to fix with an implant or with a surgery that's still going to be there when the surgery is over.
Liz Durham: Do you tell them that?
Dr. Hall: Yeah.
Liz Durham: So what if I came in and you're like, well, you just had a baby. Would you say you need to calm down and come back in a year? Or what would you say to someone like me?
Dr. Hall: So for, and it, and it happens a lot. We, we get, we get your podcast four months out. You're not the only mom who says that I probably almost every mom has felt that way at one point in time as they're getting over having a baby.
Dr. Hall: And so I have women wait at least six months after Delivery to let those, let your hormones kind of come back down to a baseline, let your body change to kind of what the new normal is before we decide to intervene.
Liz Durham: For me too. Personally, I'm like. I'm so upset right now because I'm not sleeping for one.
Liz Durham: That's a huge thing. I'm taking care of three kids. Like, holy crap, that's a lot too when they're little. But also I, um, I've had, since I'm breastfeeding, I've just had a lot harder time losing the weight this time than I, I lost it very quickly with my first two. Um, and so I told my husband, I was like, I'm not going to do anything until I know that I'm, I'm working out as hard as I can and I'm eating correctly.
Liz Durham: And then I want to see like. What am I actually like now? Because right now I feel that it's unfair to go in and try to fix something when I'm like, Well, actually, have I not tried to fix it? The healthy ways first if that makes sense Um, and I understand like the skin issue like you're stretched out skin That's probably never going to go away no matter how hard I work out just because it's been stretched three times now like the first two maybe but Third one you're probably getting kind of screwed on the skin issue, you know um, but as far as like the weight loss stuff I probably will lose the weight once I quit breastfeeding.
Liz Durham: And, you know, I might have to be more restrictive on food than I was before, but like there would be absolutely no reason for me to go in and get liposuction right now. That'd be stupid, right?
Dr. Hall: I wouldn't recommend it. Right. But with, so with exactly what you're talking about, I think one of the, one of the places, one of the more common things that I see Moms who are done having kids come in and they're really frustrated with is the shape of their abdomen.
Liz Durham: Yeah, it's terrible. That
Dr. Hall: they've worked out and worked out and worked out and they just can't get a flat stomach anymore. And I think the reason, well, I know from experience, the reason is You see the skin, you see the stretch marks, you see a little bit of laxity. What you don't really appreciate is that that same stretching happens to all the muscles that give you a flat stomach.
Dr. Hall: And you can work out until you're blue in the face, and a lot of women have come in and complained about this. Those muscles aren't getting tightened again.
Liz Durham: Not like they were before.
Dr. Hall: Without surgery. It is, it's not happening. Yeah. You can do sit ups and crunches and planks and all until you're in till the cows come home.
Dr. Hall: It didn't
Liz Durham: happen. I, for me personally, this is probably TMI for everybody listening. Turn it off. I'll never get my stomach done because I'm like, it's I had kids like that's life and Luke doesn't like me cause my skin stretched out. Like, uh, screw you. You didn't have three kids, you know. Um, but I do understand.
Liz Durham: And also I had my kids naturally for women that have had C sections. I feel like they have even more stomach issues and I feel very bad because that's like if it's, if it's sewn up incorrectly, like the scarring is bad and that pooch is bad. Like that's rough. And I would probably be hurt. with that. Um, the breast stuff, like I feel like if you started with small breasts and you breastfed and then you're like bigger and it's fine, like whatever.
Liz Durham: If you started with big breasts and then it's like out of control after you breastfed, you're like, Oh, this is so bad. I would hope in my mind I could get to a point where I'm confident enough to not want anything done. But right now I don't feel that way. Maybe I will. I don't know.
Dr. Hall: It takes, it's a journey.
Dr. Hall: It takes time. It takes time.
Liz Durham: Yeah. I also struggle with though. I want to be a good example to my daughter and
Liz Durham: I don't know how I can tell her you are perfect the way that God made you don't do anything to yourself and then me turn around and go do it. I feel like that's like, do as I say, not as I do. And um, I really, really struggle with that because I have no issue with plastic surgery if somebody has like a cleft lip or they get a wreck or something like that, obviously.
Liz Durham: But when we're just going in and we're starting to tweak things because we don't like how we look in the mirror, I feel like with a lot of people, maybe the first thing they do, you know, I get a little Botox, I do this or that or whatever, like they look pretty good. But then they're like, well, what's another thing I can tweak?
Liz Durham: And so like they go on this like curve where it's like looking good, looking good. And then it starts going down really fast. And you can tell that they've had way too much shit done to their face and their bodies. And it's like, clearly what you were saying, they're expecting the procedure to change some outcome in their life.
Liz Durham: And it's not. So it's like a drug addict. They're just chasing something that the surgery is not going to fix. Yeah. And
Dr. Hall: you know whose fault that is? It's our fault.
Liz Durham: You think so?
Dr. Hall: It's our fault.
Liz Durham: I disagree.
Dr. Hall: Because the, there is, there is a lot of, a lot of the aesthetic industry that treats cosmetic surgery And, and even, even, and I'd say especially the non surgical stuff.
Dr. Hall: You mentioned Botox fillers, all the non surgical stuff. It treats it like a Burger King.
Liz Durham: It does. You
Dr. Hall: get it your way right away. And that is not the way we need to be approaching any cosmetic improvement. You want to go color your hair, your hairstyle is going to go, Oh, blonde may not be the best color for you, but you want it.
Dr. Hall: Sure. And when you're dealing with surgery and things that are permanent changes, we've got to be a little bit more discerning and keep people, identify the people who are using cosmetic changes to try and change something that has nothing to do with anatomy and everything to do with their psyche.
Dr. Hall: We've got to identify those and say, Hey, listen, this, I understand where you're, what you're feeling. another syringe of filler, a facelift may not be the thing that you need right now. Let's, let's hit the pause button.
Liz Durham: So do you take any, um, psychology or therapy classes in school?
Dr. Hall: No. Um, no is the short answer.
Dr. Hall: The, but for me, the psychology and the behavioral aspect of what we do is something that I find fascinating.
Liz Durham: Oh, me too. The evolutionary psychology stuff. Like, what do we actually think beauty is and why do we think that? It's really, really interesting.
Dr. Hall: Yeah. But even, even more so, that's an interesting part of it.
Dr. Hall: And you kind of alluded to that earlier about the, you know, the looking attractive to attract a mate part of it. But then the behavioral part of it is, is relating to each other that way is really fascinating. And there's a lot of, um, a lot of that that we do with every day.
Liz Durham: So the people that you're seeing, um, and this might not be the plastic surgery stuff, but like the fill, what is the fillers?
Liz Durham: What's all that actually called?
Dr. Hall: I just refer to it as just non surgical aesthetics.
Liz Durham: Um, do you see that that is being driven by the groups that women are running with? Like, if all their friends are doing it, they're doing it, or do you think it really is? Like, I, like Kylie Jenner, like, I got the tiniest lips in the world and it's gonna make me feel more confident if I have filler in my lips.
Liz Durham: Like, what do you actually see happening there?
Dr. Hall: I think, first of all, there's a lot of marketing. Behind all that, um, both from industry marketing, industry dollars, and then every med spa in the country is pushing the stuff on social media. And it's, they, they, it's sold as the Holy grail, quick, relatively inexpensive, painless, you know, no recovery time.
Dr. Hall: Burger King, I'm going to choose
Liz Durham: that, that's a
Dr. Hall: good one. It's, but that's kind of the Holy grail of, any cosmetic treatment, something that's fast, cheap with no recovery. And, you know, I do a lot of dis, I have a lot of discussions with patients that come in and say, I just want some Botox for this. I'm like, well, Botox doesn't do that.
Dr. Hall: Botox doesn't fix, you know, a saggy neck or your jowls or, you know, the wrinkles that you don't like are not lines that Botox is going to fix. It doesn't do that. And so. we have, there's a lot of education about what we can do. And I find myself to my. staff and to anybody that listens this is still medicine.
Dr. Hall: This is, we are still doctors and the basic underlying principle of medicine is that you have to have the right diagnosis before you start recommending treatments. And what we see in aesthetics a lot of times is that that is reversed. And we have a patient coming and telling us what treatment they want without having You diagnosis even established.
Liz Durham: I feel like that's what happens in med spas a hundred percent. And are those even doctors? That are administering stuff in med spas?
Dr. Hall: A lot of times. Yeah. No.
Liz Durham: Like, do you have to be like a nurse practitioner or something to do Botox or?
Dr. Hall: In the, so in the, it's state dependent in the state of Tennessee where we are.
Dr. Hall: Um, anybody can administer an aesthetic treatment if a doctor tells them that they're okay to do it. So.
Liz Durham: That's terrifying. Yeah.
Dr. Hall: Oh my gosh. Um, and I'll tell you. There are, in this town, there are non nurse injectors that are pretty good,
Liz Durham: that
Dr. Hall: do a good job.
Liz Durham: Yeah.
Dr. Hall: Um, there are nurses and physicians that don't have the diagnostic part quite right.
Dr. Hall: And, and you see things, you see things that are un anatomic.
Liz Durham: Uh huh.
Dr. Hall: And those are the things that you, you, you see when you're walking through the grocery store, you're like, Ooh, Ooh, that doesn't look good. I don't know what that's, what's going on there, but that doesn't look, cause it doesn't look natural.
Dr. Hall: Right.
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Liz Durham: Then they make it look really natural. Like you can't tell that anything's been done. However, that simultaneously pisses me off to no end because I have no problem with plastic surgery and all the cosmetic whatever stuff. But, when someone like me, and let's be honest, all women, are struggling mentally, which we all do, and men do too, I guess, they just don't really talk about it or focus on it like women do.
Liz Durham: Um, And we are comparing ourselves to people that are having these things done, that are passing it off as saying, Oh no, I've never had anything done, or I just have medical grade skincare. Bullshit, you don't have medical grade skincare, you got a facelift, bitch. And so it's an unfair comparison. And then you're like dogging yourself, and it's just annoying.
Liz Durham: Like, I wish that women would be like, Yeah, I've had this, this, this, this. Like there's this girl that I follow and I love. Um, she's so, do you know who Jordan Harper is? She owns this company called Barefaced. It's like, um, a skincare line or whatever. I've heard her name. She is strikingly beautiful. She's gorgeous.
Liz Durham: But she is on social media saying, This is the filler I've had. This is the Botox I've had. And she shows like what she's had done. And she even has like, um, videos of like her getting this stuff done and saying like, this is who I get it done by. This is who I wouldn't get it done by. And I appreciate that so much because I'm like, she could very easily go on there and be like, look, if you use my skincare line, you'll look as beautiful as me, which wouldn't be a lie.
Liz Durham: Like she does not have to disclose what she's done to her face to augment it. But I really appreciate that. She says. I have my skincare line, but I've also done this other stuff too. I have so much respect for that. Like I just, women, women would like have a little blurb, like this is what I've had done.
Liz Durham: And you too can look like this for a nominal fee. I don't know if that's just me bitching.
Dr. Hall: Well, but I think you, it's, it's a good point. And I think that what we're seeing now, and we're, we're in a little bit of a different market. Other markets, people are much more open about what they've had done. In East Tennessee, it's still a kind of hush hush dinner party with your friends kind of conversation.
Liz Durham: Why do you think that is? It's just like a cultural thing in the South?
Dr. Hall: Demographics.
Liz Durham: Really? Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Hall: Do you think
Liz Durham: it has to do with money or just we're still trying to present perfection like this Southern Belle thing? That doesn't really exist. What do you think it is?
Dr. Hall: Having, so I've lived in Texas for a long time, Northern California for a while.
Dr. Hall: Um, we're still in the Bible belt. We're still, yeah, this is still, there's still some element of, you know, we call it antebellum South that, you know, you, it's just good genes and, you know, oil voli.
Liz Durham: That pisses me off.
Dr. Hall: But it, but it is. I mean, like, like your friend you were referring to, people are being more open about it.
Liz Durham: Yeah.
Dr. Hall: And so, and I think that's a good thing because it's that openness that for people who feel like you do, that you say, okay, you know, she's gorgeous, but she's kind of, you know, kept things up over time.
Liz Durham: Right. Well, and it's just, I feel like it's just being honest. Yeah. Like if you're like walking around and you're 62 and your boobs are up here and you're like, I just have good genes.
Liz Durham: No, you don't. You have a good surgeon.
Dr. Hall: Yeah. Come on. Yeah.
Liz Durham: Let's just be honest about it.
Dr. Hall: Dolly Parton is not genetics. Exactly.
Liz Durham: I don't know. It's, it's interesting. Okay. Speaking of all the fillers and all that stuff, can you explain how they actually work? what damage you see they're doing, what they're not doing.
Liz Durham: The reason why I'm curious about this. So I've never had any plastic surgery, but I have had Botox and I have had dysport. Um, I had Botox done from a med spa when I lived in Nashville and I was single. I was doing it for the wrong reasons. One of my friends was like, come on, this is what we're all doing.
Liz Durham: Like, this is what the hot girls do in Nashville. Let's go do this. I went and got it. Um, And I actually, I think I was allergic to it, because I had like flu like symptoms for over two months, like I had a fever every single day. And finally it went away, and I went back to the med school, how stupid can you be?
Liz Durham: Back to the same place that makes you sick for two months. And she's like, oh, you're just not a Botox girl, you're a Dysport girl. And I was like, what? I don't know any of this. I didn't ask any questions. And she, I just let her load me up again. Well, the Dysport did not make me sick. And so I had the Botox done once, the one time, and then the Dysport.
Liz Durham: And then, after having one of my kids, before I got pregnant again, Um, actually I could have been and didn't know it, so that was not great, you know. Um, I got Botox one time at Gallaher and the girl, I don't know what she did. I got it in my 11s and she like nicked something and it looked like I had been punched in the forehead.
Liz Durham: And I went back in and I was like, uh, what's going on here? I look like a domestic abuse victim. And she was like, oh, it'll go away. I was like, no, it's been like two weeks of looking like this. And it looked like that for a month. I had to take on so much makeup. It was ridiculous. So I'm like, You know what?
Liz Durham: Maybe this, uh, cosmetic plastic surgery life is not for me. I haven't had a great go at any of these rounds, you know?
Dr. Hall: Well, the, the, the flu like stuff I'll tell you is unusual. Really, really unusual. Yeah. The complication profile for the column neuromodulators, Dysport, Botox, Xeom and Juvo that are, that, that act by weakening the muscles that create the lines is the complication profile for that is very, very low.
Dr. Hall: Where the, the, and when, what I tell people about and fillers are the same way, the complications from the, and these are high aoranic acid, the gel fillers that most people know about and get the complication profiles for those very, very favorable. The problems come. Not with you, the patient, but with the person on the other end of the needle.
Dr. Hall: They're, they're most often technical problems. Um, and it really goes back to the concept of diagnosis and treatment. You've got to have the right diagnosis. You've got to pick the right tool to, to treat that problem appropriately. But then there's a technical component. You have to be, You have to know the anatomy that you're treating and then you have to treat it appropriately.
Dr. Hall: Your needle has to be in the right location at the right depth with the right dose of the drug. I mean, this is not, people, people assume that a syringe of filler, an injection of Botox or Juve or Dysport is all the same like taking an aspirin. It's not, it's, it's more equivalent to having surgery and that it depends on the technical ability of the person who's doing the treatment.
Dr. Hall: And so that's something that, again, that's something we preach in my office is, you know, we talk about anatomy. We talk about technique. And because it is fundamentally important to getting good outcomes with that stuff.
Liz Durham: So do you see people, it really hasn't been a long around for that long, which is kind of worrisome to me about like, do we really know what we're doing to ourselves?
Liz Durham: When do people, when they start getting that like concrete looking face, is it cause they're putting too many fillers in it? They've done too much Botox. Like what's causing that
Dr. Hall: concrete looking that what I think of when I hear that is paralyzed and not moving.
Liz Durham: Yeah,
Dr. Hall: is
Liz Durham: but also some of them look like heavy.
Liz Durham: Yes. You know what I mean? Like it just looks weird.
Dr. Hall: Yeah, it's it's weird. It's it is injectors listening to industry that they're injectable fillers are going to somehow lift and reposition. tissue that falls over time, which happens to everybody. And they start loading up the face with filler to try and lift things.
Dr. Hall: Well, filler doesn't let me, it's a filler. It is, does not lift anything. It can give you the illusion of lift if it's early on in the aging process, but it's not lifting anything. And all they, all you end up getting is that kind of square heavy face that looks worse and older. Then you did before. You just never should
Liz Durham: have started.
Liz Durham: Well,
Dr. Hall: it, it, it takes, it takes your, and this is why the diagnosis part is so important. It takes your injector knowing anatomy. It takes your injector knowing how the face ages to then be able to recommend a treatment that's going to correct the problem that you've got, that you're coming in with. And a lot of times what you need is surgical lifting, not trying to reinflate a face.
Dr. Hall: You don't need a lot of volume. So that, and that's where, that's where you start seeing the really weird kind of alien look.
Liz Durham: The Kim Kardashian, like her face is like morphed into this. I don't, I don't even know what that's called. Is it like a heart? It looks like an alien shape to me. Yeah. And that's what like all these girls are chasing now.
Liz Durham: But it's not like a real face shape. Like if you look at like faces over the years and so I'm like, are we chasing something that she has done so much crap to her face that it's not even a real shape anymore or is it just some trend because of AI and all these filters that we're looking at? Like I don't even know what's happened to her face to where it doesn't, she doesn't look real to me anymore.
Liz Durham: She looks like this. Do you know what I'm talking about? I don't know what that's called.
Dr. Hall: I wish, actually I don't wish I was on social media more. Um, but so I don't know exactly what you're talking about, but the alien look.
Liz Durham: Yeah, I gets like the high cheekbones and like the, uh, their chins or like, or maybe their jawlines.
Liz Durham: I don't know. It just looks like, like an alien to me.
Dr. Hall: And it's, it is, it is overfilling. It is accentuating cheekbones out too far to try and get lift in the jawline. It's trying to build out the jawline to try and eliminate jowls. And you end up being too wide and too square. And it looks weird.
Liz Durham: It does look strange.
Liz Durham: And to me also, so I grew up in the era of, um, you know, when everybody like plucked their eyebrows to where they were like no eyebrows at all, like, and so, but now it's like, we're back to these huge fluffy eyebrows are the thing. Well, all of my generation that plucked the crap out of our eyebrows, like we're screwed because they're gone.
Liz Durham: We plucked them too much. And so I'm like, I don't want to ever do anything to my face that like. You can't come back from because the trends are going to change to about like what's actually beautiful. And it kind of makes me think like, God, I should just learn how to age gracefully. But what is that?
Liz Durham: Like aging just sucks. Like there's no way to do it gracefully. That looks good. I don't know. It's just awful.
Dr. Hall: Well, now that now the plastic surgery surgeon in me is going to argue with you a little bit. Um, I think there is a way to age gracefully without
Liz Durham: doing anything. .
Dr. Hall: Well, there's, yes. So there's two ways to age gracefully.
Liz Durham: Okay.
Dr. Hall: One way is to accept the inevitability of aging uhhuh , and be at one with that . Um, and if you fig, if you figure that out, tell me how , okay. Um, and then the, the, the other way is to start slowly. You know, we, one of the things that we talk about a lot is that you don't need to come in. And the first thing that you do is a facelift and eyelids and neck and eyebrows and the whole works.
Dr. Hall: You don't need the full Monty is your first foray into this. It's basic stuff that gets overlooked. Take care of your skin. You know, you mentioned medical grade skin care, that is the best first place to start. Have somebody who knows what they're talking about, who knows what your skin needs, help you, because that's the first thing anybody sees, is take care of your skin.
Dr. Hall: Then we start looking at, okay, we all start getting some lines around our eyes, your 11 lines, the forehead lines. Let's start a little bit of light. To help with relax. Some of those, we lose a little bit of volume under our eyes, teeny bits of filler to kind of fill out the cheekbones and replace some of the volume that you lose there.
Dr. Hall: And you can do these things really over time without it looking like you're doing anything. It's just that you slow that change that you see over time. so that it's not a shock. You don't wake up one morning at 45 and go, God, what happened to me?
Liz Durham: Yeah, it is shocking. Okay, so how many of your clients come in and only ever get one thing done?
Liz Durham: I feel like that's got to be rare. Don't most of them come back. It's got to be like some addictive component. There are.
Dr. Hall: You are. You are on the, uh, on the, uh,
Dr. Hall: There's a, there's a closet conspiracy to get every woman in the planet hooked on cosmetic surgery.
Liz Durham: No, I'm not.
Dr. Hall: No, one of the great things about, you know, people look at cosmetic surgery, what I do, as a one off transactional relationship. And I hate that because. It really, how many patients come, come back for other procedures?
Dr. Hall: It's quite a few because we build relationships with people over time. And we have the mom that comes in after having kids and wants her breasts and her stomach done. That's great. We do that. Then she says, you know, my, I feel like my face is looking old. So we start with skincare. We do some toxin and filler over time.
Dr. Hall: 15 years later, she said, okay. It's time to do my eyes. It's time to do a facelift. Great. We, but it's, it's addressing those things as they come up and helping people to age gracefully over time. It's not a, you know, I want a facelift. Okay. Well, we're here. That's not what we're looking for. So it really, we're, we're looking, you know, I'm looking to build a long term relationship with patience and I think we, my practice largely has, I mean, we've got a great group of patients that we see.
Dr. Hall: We have an open house every year and it's awesome to see everybody come back. You get to know their family, you get to know their kids, you get to know their grandparents. It's a, it's awesome. It's a lot of fun.
Liz Durham: I think that the way you do it is right because it's like selling anything. It should be relationship based and you should not just try to sell something to them.
Liz Durham: Without selling it for someone who has a problem and you've got a solution, that's the right fit for the problem. Um, and so I think it's also good that you do the consultation side of it where you want to know why, and there's got to be like a diagnosis first before the solution is found. I feel like most of our country, at least.
Liz Durham: You say I'm a conspiracy theorist. I'm not, because what you're saying is actually happening in those med spas. You go in and somebody says, uh, I don't want my lipstick, I don't want this, that, and they'll just give it to you. And they don't ask you why, they're just like, oh, cha ching, cha ching, like, here's a way to make money.
Liz Durham: And so, I think the way that you're doing it is really the right way to do it, and a good way. I guess where I'm coming at that question from is, If people are doing it for the right reasons, which like this is something I look in the mirror I'm really upset about it. If I change it, I'll feel better about myself more confident And they're not actually trying to change it for the quote unquote wrong reasons Then why do they keep going back for more stuff?
Liz Durham: You see what where I'm coming from with that question Like if I if I said to you What really bothers me is my breasts don't look the same because I breastfed all these kids. I'm gonna come in I'm gonna get them done. And then I get them done. I'm like, oh, well I can change these other things too that like weren't that I had never even like thought about changing before You know what?
Liz Durham: I mean? it just seems like for a lot of people it does become like a slippery slope and the only reason I say that is because I have a lot of friends that started down that path and And they looked better before they started all this stuff. Do you know what I mean? Like people like, just, it seems like once they get going on it, it's hard to know when enough is enough.
Liz Durham: Does that make sense? It
Dr. Hall: does. And I, and I, I'll go back to and kind of echo what I said earlier that they looked better beforehand is our fault.
Liz Durham: Yeah.
Dr. Hall: That's, that's, that's our fault.
Dr. Hall: We are doing something that is unnatural if, if people look better beforehand than they did afterwards. That's a failure in treatment. That's probably a failure in diagnosis. Um, you know, we, we change over time. Our, our, what we find, attractive changes over time, what we want changes over time, and we age.
Dr. Hall: You know, for the mom who has, you know, just gotten finished having multiple children who had breasts or a stomach that she was happy with when she was newly married. Her stomach and breasts may be her biggest, the thing that sets her off when she looks in the mirror. Well, that gets fixed. And then Six months, a year down the road, she's putting her makeup on and she says, gosh, I look tired.
Dr. Hall: And I look tired all the time. And my friends, somebody at work asked me if I was exhausted and I'd gotten nine hours of sleep the night before. What's the deal? Well, you know, you're seeing early aging changes around your eyes. We can take care of that. And it's that, you know, what I would hope is that the patients that came in for surgery would say, I had a great experience.
Dr. Hall: The problem that we identified was fixed. It looks exactly like what I was hoping, which is I look great in a dress at church and nobody goes, you Gosh, I wonder who did her boobs. Um, and so she says, I want to go back to that place because I know I'm not going to look crazy. I know it's going to, they're going to address the problem.
Dr. Hall: I'm going to be happy with the outcome and go on with my life. That's kind of what we're looking for
Liz Durham: is your approach. Do you try to give the customer what they come in? They're asking for, or do you try to steer them towards back what is going to be the most natural looking thing? Like if somebody comes in and says, I want a BBL and I want to look like Kim Kardashian.
Liz Durham: Do you say, okay, I'll give it to you because that's what you want and you're in the right head space. Or do you say, eh, she looks like an ant. You know, I told you that. Her body doesn't look normal. That's not a normal shaped body. We should probably not do that because the trend's probably going to change in five to 10 years.
Liz Durham: What do you usually say on those kinds of things? Or do you just keep your opinion to yourself on the trends?
Dr. Hall: I think it's more education. I look at it as those instances and for a lot of patients, pictures are important. You know, I'll say, bring in a picture of what you like to make sure that we're speaking the same language.
Dr. Hall: And if they come in with something that looks crazy, we'll say, listen, that's not natural. And that we, we may be able to do that and it looked great for six months. That's not going to age well. And you're going to look weird. And we don't do weird here, so if that's really what you're looking for, I don't think we can help you.
Dr. Hall: But if you're open to being educated as to what's natural, natural, normal, beautiful is, we can, and a lot of, a lot of times, what it is, is that the patients who have been Google searching and on Instagram don't know what they don't know. And once we can go through that educational process, they go. Oh yeah, you're right.
Dr. Hall: Like a bubble butt doesn't look good. That does look weird. That wouldn't look right. Let's yeah, I like what you're saying better.
Liz Durham: That's cool that you try to do that. I feel like there's a lot of the doctors are out there right now just like giving them and I'm like, Oh my gosh, these bodies, like the hip to waist ratio is like absurd.
Liz Durham: Yeah. Uh, it also, it's interesting to me, like what we think is beautiful and natural. Like how did we come to that idea? Um, like for instance, if you are in a society where people have to labor in the fields, the women try to present more, um, Light skin because they want to indicate that they're wealthy and that they're not working in the field.
Liz Durham: So like beautiful is going to be like pale there. Um, also like if you go to somewhere like Africa, fatter women are considered to be more beautiful, but it's because food is scarce there, you know? And so like in America, it used to be. Well, women would like try to make their faces darker because the tan indicated that you had more time and wealth, time to travel, lay in the sun to look beautiful.
Liz Durham: But now it seems like in America, it's kind of slowly going back to, well, actually, uh, you've got to have the pale skin because you want to indicate that you've taken care of your skin. You have the money to do the Botox and the skincare and all that stuff. I even thought this was really interesting.
Liz Durham: There's some studies that have been done that show that centerfolds, um, are heavier when the economy is worse on average than when the economy is better, they're thinner. And I was like, how interesting is that? So it's just how like the ideas of beauty evolve and change, like what we actually think is beautiful.
Liz Durham: Um, obviously I think that you and I agree on this, like the more natural thing that you see. It's probably what we should stick to than the more trendy thing, just because the trendy things come and go so much, but it is funny what people gravitate towards, like, and I also do think that pornography has had a huge impact on what people think is deeming to be beautiful right now.
Liz Durham: And I, like, when I look at these, uh, people with the huge implants and a huge butts walking around, I can't think that that hasn't had some impact on it too. Yeah.
Dr. Hall: Yeah. I think that's, that's, it's an interesting theory. I don't know how many women watch porn.
Liz Durham: I don't, I think that they're, what I was talking about with the mate stuff, they think that's what the men want.
Dr. Hall: Yeah. I think
Liz Durham: you see the men going out with the hot blondes with the huge boobs. I don't know. That's just what we think that they want.
Dr. Hall: Yeah. I think that the, a healthy way to view beauty is through the lens of balance and proportion.
Liz Durham: So you think symmetry and things like that are very important? Or what do you mean by balance and proportion?
Dr. Hall: Balance. If, if you've got a narrow, you know, you're a woman done having kids, you've got narrow shoulders, you've got a small band width, well, huge implants don't fit. It looks odd. It
Liz Durham: doesn't make sense.
Dr. Hall: Yeah. If you've got a really narrow waist, a big butt isn't attractive. It doesn't look like it fits. It looks out of, out of balance, out of proportion.
Dr. Hall: Similarly, rhinoplasty gets a, you know, I do a lot of rhinoplasty. It gets a bad rap. A rhinoplasty should make your nose vanish. It should be a feature on your face that isn't noticeable.
Liz Durham: Uh, so make it just look very average.
Dr. Hall: It looks, you want the focus drawn to your mouth and your eyes. You want your nose to be totally forgettable.
Dr. Hall: I've
Liz Durham: never even thought about drawn to your mouth.
Dr. Hall: Yeah. Lips and eyes. Um, and so those conversations are a lot of the conversations that we have during the consult to bring people, bring patients who are looking for surgery back down to reality and to what is natural, what is best. naturally beautiful because these trends, you're right.
Dr. Hall: Trends will come and go. Yeah. Natural beauty never goes out of style. I
Liz Durham: agree.
Dr. Hall: It's like a Brooks brothers suit. Never goes out of style.
Liz Durham: Yeah. I like it. Okay. Um, Oh, one other weird question I thought of, um, how many men are you seeing do like augmentations and things themselves? I had never even heard of this, but apparently there's like, um, Some sort of leg lengthening surgery now to like make guys taller.
Liz Durham: You heard of this?
Dr. Hall: So very few, very few guys see very few guys. Um, there are, there are men that come to the practice. There are men that come in and get routine Botox filler skincare. Um, we see a couple of guys every once in a while for surgery, for eyelids, mostly eyelids and necklace, stuff like that. Um, um, The leg lengthening stuff has been around.
Dr. Hall: I don't know exactly what you're referring to. Leg lengthening stuff has been around since the eighties. Um, and. I think like gym bros
Liz Durham: are doing it now to like make themselves taller.
Dr. Hall: Yeah. I don't know exactly what that is. The leg lengthening I'm talking about is not something you're going to want to do for aesthetics.
Dr. Hall: It is incredibly painful. It is a huge undertaking. Yeah.
Liz Durham: No, I think like in LA, these guys are like, and they're getting like calf implants and like pec implants. And I'm like, Oh my God. Yeah.
Dr. Hall: Yeah. I don't do any of that stuff. So I don't have to, don't have to worry about that much
Liz Durham: yet. Hasn't
Dr. Hall: gotten to East Tennessee in any, any significant mass yet.
Liz Durham: Interesting. Okay, this has been super informative for me. Thank you for taking the time to do this. If people want to come check you out, is it your office, the best place or online? What do you recommend?
Dr. Hall: So yeah, you can, um, you can find me on Instagram is at Dr. Jason Hall. Dr. Jason hall. com on the internet.
Dr. Hall: It's my website. Um, on YouTube. Really my podcast called Trillium show. Um, you can find it on my YouTube channel. Um, or any place you get podcasts is a, we're 50 something episodes and it's a lot of this kind of information.
Liz Durham: Yeah, cool.
Dr. Hall: So,
Liz Durham: and if you see me walking around and I don't look like a breastfed three kids anymore, you'll know what happened.
Dr. Hall: No ant bot though, right?
Liz Durham: You will not see any ant bots over here. Have you seen that meme on Instagram? It's like a Chihuahua dog and it has bandages all over the face and the body. And it's like, if I won the lottery, you won't know, but there will be signs.
Dr. Hall: I love it. Yeah,
Liz Durham: it's good. Well, thank you so much for doing this. I really, really appreciate it. I think a lot of women. Actually, I know a lot of women struggle with the things that I struggle with. And so I think just talking about it and for me, people being honest about it and like telling you the upsides and downsides and why you should and shouldn't do it.
Liz Durham: It's, it's helpful so that you just don't feel like alone, like you're the only one going through it, you know?
Dr. Hall: Yeah. And I, I, I think, uh, your, your podcast where you talked about that, I think will resonate a lot with a lot of women. So I think your, what you're doing is a good thing. And I, I appreciate the invitation.
Dr. Hall: Thanks for listening to the Trillium show. You can keep up with the latest on the podcast at J hall md. com. Be sure to follow us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
KNOXVILLE, TN
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