The trend used to be if you had a wrinkle, indentation or a sag in your skin, especially excess skin, pull it taut or take it off. Those procedures were just as invasive as they sound. The newest treatment is a lot easier on the face and the wallet: Simply fill it. Call it recession chic. Then call The Filler Guy, Dr. Jeffrey Raval, an expert on injectable fillers and a facial plastic surgeon.

“We all go from a grape to a raisin as we age,” says Jeffrey Raval, MD, FACS, who practices in Cherry Creek North in Denver, CO. “That’s where the fillers are coming in. Instead of pulling and cutting, the newest approach is to replenish the loss of volume with injections of non-invasive fillers. There are so many filler products on the market today that the friendly competition between manufacturers has led to a reduction in price, a reduction we’re passing along to the patient.”

Competition drives down pricing in any product-technology to housing. Until recently, there were not as many players with products in the cosmetic industry, keeping prices high.

Some of the recent price cuts mean beauty comes at a reduced cost. Radiesse now comes in a larger syringe-up to 1.5 cc from 1.3 cc in size. The larger size syringe is sold to surgeons at the same price as the smaller syringe. The size of a Restylane syringe has doubled, from 1 mm to 2 mm and the price of each syringe sold to doctors only increased 70% vs. 100%. The cost savings on materials (in this case filler materials) allows Dr. Raval to pass that savings along to the patient.

The Filler Guy, Dr. Raval, is the top doc in Denver who specializes in this type of cosmetic enhancement.
He first consults with you to put together a tailored solution based on your desired results and your particular skin’s needs. Your skin is unique to you, explains Dr. Raval, which is why a cookie-cutter treatment just won’t work. It is important to carefully select the right product for your face. The Filler Guy, Dr. Raval, uses multiple types of filler injectables to achieve the most natural rejuvenation treatment possible.

Juvederm is the injectable best for the mid-to-deep dermis of the face. This is the layer that contains nerve endings, sweat and oil glands and blood vessels, so it is a product you would like to have injected by a double-board certified doctor like Dr. Raval instead of at your local spa. Results can last up to one year and it can treat nasolabial folds (also known as parentheses lines or smile lines) in the lower portion of the face. Juvederm is also used to fill the back of the hands, restoring the hands, a dead-giveaway of age, to a younger look.

The benefit in Juvederm is its hyper-tenacity. The product, once injected, tends to draw in water creating a nice plumping effect, explains The Filler Guy, Dr. Raval. “That’s particularly nice for the lips and folds in the face. But we don’t use Juvederm around the eyes because can make eyes look puffy. The eye area is where we use Restylane.”

Restylane restores volume and elasticity to the face. It can be used to treat wrinkles, fill lips, shape cheeks and smooth the glabellar lines between the eyebrows. Pumping up your pout or contouring facial features with filler will not only take years off your face, it will safely be absorbed into your skin the way your body’s natural hyaluronic acid would. It is long lasting, but not permanent.

Perlane is similar to Restylane but gives a patient a more robust correction, says Dr. Raval. Perlane is made up of larger particles which take longer than Restylane to naturally absorb into the skin. Perlane can be implanted to add facial volume to wrinkles and folds in any area of the face as well as to the lips. “Each syringe of Perlane contains a little more correction than does a syringe of Restylane,” notes Dr. Raval. It lasts about the same length of time as Restylane, one year.

Radiesse is the best product for volumizing. “It’s great for treating jaw lines, cheeks and under the cheek,” says The Filler Guy, Dr. Raval. Radiesse stimulates your body’s natural production of collagen so it not only creates a younger you, it prompts your body’s natural collagen-producing function to generate more collagen, enhancing the facial fullness even more. Radiesse is a calcium-based product and the injections require little or no downtime.

Denver’s Filler Doc, The Filler Guy, Dr. Raval is the expert of enhancement. Call Dr. Raval at 303-985-8520 for an appointment.

DENVER, CO—One of the standard features of any physician’s office in the last half of the last century as a waiting room.  Yet waiting at all anymore isn’t what patients expect –even when it comes to the results from their treatment.

A lot of that has to with the rejuvenating cosmetic treatments that doctors like Dr. Jeffrey Raval are able to perform that make an immediate improvement—and require no downtime.

At the office of triple board certified Dr. Raval, some of those immediate treatments include the liquid facelift. Using filler materials, like Juvederm and Restylane plus BOTOX, Perlane and Restylane in different combinations, Dr. Raval is able to concoct a customized and immediate facelift of sorts for patients. Within 45 minutes to one hour, the patient leaves the doctor’s office looking years young. In most cases, Dr. Raval, a facial plastic surgeon who concentrates on the head and neck exclusively, doesn’t even have to numb the patient first, saving even more of the patient’s time. (When anesthesia is used on a patient, the patient is required to come early to the appointment to allow the numbing effect to take hold, that’s true even of topical numbing ointments.)

No two people receive exactly the same amount of filler in the same location in the same quantity. But two rules generally apply: BOTOX is used only in the top half of the face including the forehead, between the eyebrows and around the eyes; while fillers are generally used in the lower half of the face.

“It’s the grape to raisin theory,” explains Dr. Raval of the newly popular liquid facelift. “The face starts out on a young person as full and firm. Over time, the face loses its elasticity and its ability to produce collagen. The skin becomes lax and droops and wrinkles and creases begin to form as the jowl or jaw line drops too.

Instead of going under the knife, more patients are opting for non-invasive procedures like fillers and BOTOX to extend the years before a facelift would be the optimum recommendation that Dr. Raval would make.

In a recent liquid facelift performed in 45 minutes or less in the office, Dr. Raval used one syringe of Restylane around the eyes to and in the cheekbone area to plump up the area under the cheekbones that had become sunken. He used one syringe of Radiesse in the lower face along the jaw line to fill in where gravity had begun to pull downward on the face, making the jaw line uneven and aged looking. And he used 45 units of BOTOX around the eyes, forehead and frown area (10 units to the forehead, 10 around the eyes and 15 in the frown area) to smooth away wrinkles. In some cases, Dr. Raval says, these kind of frown wrinkles especially can leave a person looking angry; just a small amount of BOTOX smoothes away the years and the negative expression.

Immediately after a liquid facelift, the patient can reapply makeup and resume routine activities. “No waiting for results and no downtime make this a treatment that renders immediate gratification,” adds Dr. Raval, who has performed hundreds upon hundreds of liquid facelifts since fillers and BOTOX were approved by the FDA.

Patients are scheduled for a recall visit with the doctor two weeks after a liquid facelift at which time Dr. Raval touches up any areas that require more filler or BOTOX.

Dr. Raval finds that the fillers are optimum over a fat transfer which was the superior treatment only years ago. “Fillers have come such a long way in recent years plus they last longer than natural fat transferred from one area of the body to another. There is very little if any discomfort and the results are so impressive that patients leave their appointment looking refreshed and feeling younger.”

Q. Lately I have noticed that the lines around my mouth are deepening. My friend told me that they’re called marionette lines. It’s making me feel old, worn and extremely self-conscious. I have heard about Restylane®. Is this something that would give me a “lift”?
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