I have just been watching the TV and noticed that there are so many adverts which are related to the way that we look. More than those aimed at selling cars, clothes or any other item. It seems that every second advertisement that you see is telling you that you need to improve some detail about your appearance and that unless you buy their product as soon as possible, you will end up a social pariah.

There are adverts to help you look and feel better about different things such as your hair, your body and your skin. When it comes to your hair, there are things such as specialised shampoos and conditioners for the various hair types. There are also serums, lotions and sprays which deal with different issues such as frizz, split ends and thinning hair.

 As for the other things which people are concerned with about their appearances, it is usually their skin and how much they weigh. Both of these issues are also dealt with by the marketing people and you will find that there is a solution advertised for almost every condition that you can think of. These include remedies for being overweight, for being underweight, for having excess folds of skin, and for stretch marks.

When it comes to your skin, there are lotions and potions for every type of skin problem, from dry patches to acne. Some of these do actually work and it is just a matter of just looking around and trying to find the product that is suitable for your skin. The problems arise when you find that none of these remedies are suitable for the problem that you have and that you need to start looking around for some alternative method of dealing with your particular problem.

This is when you can start to look at the field of cosmetic surgery, which is a very popular field of medicine these days. The was a time when cosmetic surgery was a term which was not mentioned in polite circles, but these days you will find people discussing procedures at the dinner table. There are many things which can be sorted out with these procedures including being overweight and having sagging skin. These involve surgical procedures but there are also less invasive procedures in the field of aesthetic medicine.

As far as your face is concerned, there are various procedures which can help to make you look good and therefore to feel better and more confident about yourself. Some of these procedures include having skin peels and the newer green peels. These are treatments where the top layer of the skin is removed to leave behind newer, fresh looking skin, with the use of chemicals. In the case of the green peels, the substances used are organic and made from natural ingredients. These will yield swift results and have a very short recovery time. You will experience a little discomfort, itchiness and redness for a short while.

 
It seems that with everything in life, there always seems to be either a shortage or a surplus. It is hard to find something which is balanced out well and certainly not without tweaking. Let us take the example of hair growth shall we?

Humans have hair all over their body and on their heads and faces too. All of this hair has a specific purpose and although we sometimes do not understand what that purpose is, we realise that the hair is there by design and not by accident. When it comes to the hair on our head, we know that it is there to protect the head from the elements as well as injury, but it is also a part of our looking attractive. This is why we have people getting a hair transplant when they feel that they are losing the hair on their head.

A hair transplant is a surgical procedure where the hair is removed from place and grafted onto the scalp in order to cover up a bald patch. There are two different types of hair transplant, the FUE transplant and the traditional type. Both of these involve similar techniques, with a little difference. With the FUE transplant the hair is not taken in one long strip, and so there is a quicker recovery period and there is less chance of the scars showing.

On the opposite side of the coin, we have laser hair removal of unwanted hair. There are places where we do not find the appearance of hair attractive and so we do our best to remove this hair. On the body, we tend to wax, shave or use chemicals to remove the hair and on the face we use procedures such as threading, waxing and tweezing. The alternative to these treatments is to have either electrolysis or IPL, or laser treatments. The only permanent hair removal solution is to have electrolysis but this is often not suitable for large areas, and can be painful and costly.

With the use of lasers now becoming more common in the field of aesthetic medicine and cosmetic surgery, there are new treatments being offered. Lasers heat the melanin in the hair follicle, without damaging the surrounding skin. This will reduce the rate of hair growth and will require a few treatments before the results become evident. The best results are those for people who have a light coloured skin tone and dark hair.

Laser hair removal and laser tattoo removal are faster than electrolysis and there is less pain involved, although some people find that the hair can grow back in a treated area. The main thing that you need to remember is that the shill and experience of the person performing the treatment is important. The treatments take about fifteen minutes per session and are like a small electric shock to the skin. A cooling pad is administered before the treatments, and a soothing lotion is applied after the treatment.

 
Mesotherapycomes from the Greek words “mesos” meaning “middle” and “therapy” meaning “to treat medically”. This treatment has been around for a while now but is gaining in popularity as a method of weight loss and weight control. It is a treatment which requires multiple injections of various chemicals, plant extracts and vitamins which are compiled together by your doctor, according to your needs.

These injections are put directly into the subcutaneous fat in your body to induce lipolysis and cause rupture and cell death of the fat cells. These fat deposits are then flushed out of the body so that they do not accumulate elsewhere, something which can happen with liposuction. Mesotherapy requires no hospitalization, anaesthetic or downtime, making it one of the more popular slimmingtreatments which are available.

Some of the things which this treatment is used for are acne and acne scarring, stretch marks, other scars, promote weight loss, eliminate cellulite and rejuvenate aging skin on the hands and neck. The resulting skin is smoother and plumper, leading to a more youthful appearance. Many people report seeing results after only one treatment, but generally, results are apparent after three or four treatments, depending on the problem being treated. There are also factors such as age, general health, and skin types which can affect the results.

Many people can undergo these treatments with no anaesthetic but for others, there is the option of a topical anaesthetic cream which is applied about a three quarters of an hour prior to the start of treatment. After you have decided to go ahead with the treatments, the doctor will give you an allergy test of two injections and you will have to wait for twenty four hours to see if there is any adverse reaction. If all is well then the treatments can begin the next day.

Most treatments are done on a weekly basis and if you miss one week of treatments, then that is fine. The only thing that you may have after the treatments is a little bruising, which will soon fade away. During the treatments you may experience a slight burning sensation which is only a little uncomfortable. You are advised to avoid wearing make up and using toiletries for a few hours, as well as showering.

Another thing that you may be advised of is to have a protein rich diet for a while and avoid caffeine. Mesotherapy is a safe and effective treatment, but even so, you need to make sure that you go to a fully qualified mesotherapist and that the injections are administered under the eye of a doctor. There are other slimming treatments and body contouring procedures available, but these treatments have the advantage of being affordable and not needing too much time taken out of your busy life. The results do last but then the natural aging process will occur and you will need to have top up treatments to maintain the skin.

 
The first time I heard the word epiphany was during the viewing of “HOOK” when Dustin Hoffman mentions the word. Since then I have often used it as a part of my vocabulary and have even had the chance to use it as a revelation about certain parts of my own life. the last time I had a major epiphany was a few years ago and I found it to be a turning point of sorts.

Over the years since leaving college, I had put on weight steadily and because it was not an overnight thing, the realisation took some time to sink in that I had managed to gain a considerable amount of weight. Even then it was never a major issue since my partner never said anything and the subject was never raised.

Seeing photographs of myself during that time made me think that I should go on a diet but somehow it was never made into a priority and the pounds just kept piling on. Occasionally I would start to do something about it and half heartedly make a few attempts such as trying a new diet or joining some exercise classes and at one point even joined one of the slimming clubs where you are guaranteed to lose weight if you stick to their system.

 This was the problem; the sticking to something for the duration or time it would take to achieve lasting results. I would give up far too easily and then find myself back at square one. The turning point came when I read an article in a magazine which was a man who had recently recovered from a heart attack and had decided on drastic measures to try and reduce his massive girth. He was the same age as me and had children the same age as mine. He said that he did not wish to leave his kids with only one parent and what he said struck enough of a chord with me to join the gym.

Unlike him I did not want to go for the option of cosmetic surgery procedures such as stomach banding or liposuctionto help me in the battle to lose weight. I wished to do it the old fashioned way by controlling my calorie intake and increase my activity level. This is the best method of not only losing weight but of keeping it off, which is even harder than losing it in the first place. Even a few years later on I have found it easy to maintain the routine of diet and exercise.

I worked hard and even though it took me eight months of hard work and determination, I was successful in losing forty pounds. Also because I had done it the slow way by losing just over a pound per week, the weight loss did cause the skin to sag and require the need for skin rejuvenationprocedures which come under the heading of cosmetic surgery or aesthetic medicine.

 
Like most people, I have often thought about how great it would be if I could change certain things about my appearance. I will admit that on the whole I have a lot to be grateful for in the looks department. I am not being vain, but all my separate features are very nice and even when they are all put together, the result is quite pleasant. The problem is that no one wants to be described as just pleasant, and the least that we want to be referred to as is attractive.

Even better than this would be the use of terms such as pretty, beautiful and gorgeous, but we take what we can get on the whole. In my case, I have large eyes in a light brown shade, a legacy from my father. I also have a nicely shaped mouth and my nose is small and pert, a legacy from my mother. In fact, out of all my siblings, I am the only one who has inherited our mother’s nose, with the rest of them all having the larger nose which my father has. We all have small ears and so at least that is one thing which we do not need to worry about.

However, the thing that we all really want to inherit from our mum, are her prominent cheekbones! In this case, my younger sister drew the winning ticket and she has the same lovely bone structure as our mother. The rest of us, well I at least, all have to work hard with make up to make our cheekbones noticed. This got me thinking about how we can alter some things about our appearance very easily, and some other things with a lot more work, but there are certain things which we have to accept.

We can alter our flesh and the amount of it we have on our bodies, but there is not a lot that we can do about the shape of our face and the bone structure which we have inherited. Here we have to be grateful for whatever small mercies we have been blessed with. In some cases we can alter the shape of the bones on our face but not without considerable cost to our pockets and to our comfort. The main way to change your appearance on a permanent basis is to have cosmetic surgery procedures done to alter certain things. There are also laser treatments available which are not as invasive and have a shorter recovery period. One of the most common laser treatments is laser tattoo removal.

The most common cosmetic surgery procedures are eyelid surgery, nose surgery, or rhinoplasty to give its proper name. This is where you can have the shape and the length of your nose altered to make it more to your preference. There are of course limitations to what can be achieved and there is a slow and painful recovery period but it is all worthwhile when you are happy with the way you look.

 
If you are the type of person who has never had to try and lose weight, then you will not be able to understand the kind of desperation that some people feel when they think about losing weight. Some people are lucky enough to be able to eat whatever they wish to and not have it appear on their bodies. These people are in the minority and for most of us; it seems that we only have to partake in the slightest indulgence for it to show immediately.

Gaining weight is very easy to do and we need to be careful about this from an early age. When we are children, our eating and exercise is controlled in part by our parents and it is their responsibility to teach us healthy eating habits. As we gain more independence and have access to more junk food and unhealthy snacks, we tend to develop bad eating habits. It is at this stage that a lot of us will start to gain weight and if we are not monitored by parents or other people, the problem can get out of hand.

The weight gain is not an instant thing and it creeps up on you slowly, sometimes so slowly that you do not even notice it until it is too late. At this point you need to take action in order to try and lose the extra pounds which have piled on. This can be the start of a life long struggle for some people, who will find that their weight will go up and down at different times in their lives, and it can often be a source of frustration and despair for those who struggle with controlling it.

This is when we will start to try different ways of losing weight. At the beginning we will try and control our diet and ensure that we only eat healthy things which will not cause us to gain any more weight. Then we will start to cut down on the amount that we eat, even of the healthy things, if we do not see results. Along with this we will start up an exercise regime and try to stick to it. The next stage is to get obsessed with trying to lose weight and this will lead on to the final step which is the road of cosmetic surgery, in various different procedures.

The term shedding a few pounds refers to losing a little weight but at this stage we are also talking about losing the financial pounds, since most cosmetic surgery procedures have to be paid for privately. The most common procedures for losing weight and looking slimmer are the gastric band surgeries, liposuction and the tummy tuck. All of these come under the broader heading of body contouring and this is just a fancy way of saying re-shaping your body to the way you wish it to appear. All of these procedures are now very popular worldwide.