Sagging jowls: What can you really do to lift your lower face? – Get The Gloss

Sagging jowls: What can you really do to lift your lower face?

Get The Gloss

April 2021

Beauty journalist Melanie McLeod from Get The Gloss asks a crucial question that many of us have faced during the UK-wide lockdown; how can we treat sagging jowls and lift our faces? After spending months “scrutinising our faces on endless video calls,” she focuses on the top jowl treatments that “the pros recommend,” including our very own Dr Tracy Mountford.

Video call phenomenon

It is perhaps no surprise to learn that “clinics have seen an uptick in interest in treatments from hooded eyes and creased necks and now especially for sagging jowls.” With video calls becoming an everyday reality for most of us, they have worked to inadvertently highlight areas of our lower faces that may benefit from cosmetic improvement.

The journalist explains: “Video calls are particularly unflattering for the lower face as the wide-angle lenses on our laptops and smartphones create distortion, making the bits of us closer to the screen, such as our jaw, look bigger (our ears, on the other hand, look tiny!).”

This ‘Zoom face phenomenon’ has subsequently sparked an increase in calls to cosmetic surgeons, doctors and comedic medical practitioners, as patients seek non-surgical ways to lift and refresh their lower face, including targeting the jowls.

Why jowls form

Dr Mountford explains in the article that jowls form over time as our skin becomes less elastic. A drop in our collagen and elastin levels results in a loss of volume around the cheeks, resulting in sagging skin that forms into jowls.

Dr Mountford comments: “Jowls start to appear in our forties and fifties. The extent to which we have them can be genetic, though lifestyle factors such as extreme weight loss, chronic stress, or smoking can speed up the arrival of jowls.”

Best non-surgical tweakments for jowls

Non-surgical facelifts are “considered the gold standard for ridding yourself of jowls,” along with innovative treatments like Ultherapy. Ultherapy uses “micro-focused ultrasound (MFU) beams” to deeply stimulate collagen and elastin renewal in the skin without any need for surgery, invasive injections or needles.

The journalist comments: “Ultherapy shows impressive results with one session takes less than an hour and has zero downtime. Some patients see an initial lift after their first treatment but real results become more apparent over three to six months as new collagen builds, which gradually lifts the skin, lasting a year or more.”

Dr Tracy Mountford is a UK leader in delivering Ultherapy treatments and recommends that patients have replenishing top-up treatments to maximise their jowl-reduction results:

“I recommend maintenance treatments performed every year to eighteen months depending on your age and lifestyle.” With continued treatments and a strategic approach to everyday skincare maintenance, patients can dramatically reduce the appearance of their jowls without any side effects, hassle or downtime.

To find out more about Ultherapy treatments at The Cosmetic Skin Clinic, complete our online enquiry form. You can also contact our London and Buckinghamshire clinics on 0343 253 8240.