#21

Ohhhh, the cat lady! OMGGG, I’ve never seen her photo from her younger years. My god she was stunning!

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#22

You aren’t wrong. You do get used to it. I’ve had filler dissolved for this very reason. I never had all THAT much, but it was indeed too much on my petite face.

I know some women who went grey during the pandemic and never looked back. I admire their confidence.

Just the other day my PT explained how my lifelong knee pain was started from living in heels when I was younger (how they made me stand that he is killing himself trying to fix). I said, ohhh, heels ruined my knees. He said no, society ruined your knees!

Societal pressure is a bitch :slight_smile:

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#23

It has become perhaps highly social engineering…perhaps inclusiveness has become the most desired trait?

Tell me that Germany’s Miss World’s lips are natural? Scroll down to the 2nd photo.

https://www.missworld.com/news/last-but-not-least-germany-crowns-its-miss-world-representative

Beauty is highly subjective (this year’s Miss Germany being one such example of strong reactions on both sides).

I suspect that if you took one thousand random men, and showed them photos of female breast augmentation, over half the cases the males would say: “I liked them better, before.”

Still, if you can utilize methods to make you appear 20 years younger than you did appear, if nothing else, you will find yourself less discriminated in the job market.

#24

Beth, what is ipl ??

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#25

Eric, what’s the problem with vitiligo and these kinds of treatments and dermatologists. Asking because I have what I think is a mild case.

#26
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#27

I see rapadmin shared details.

I’ve had a series of IPL done at two different times.

There is basically zero downtime and it doesn’t hurt very much (not pleasant but pain is not an obstacle). IMO, for me, it was best for dark spots and the texture pitch was a little overblown. I didn’t notice any texture difference but maybe something incredibly subtle?

I had a gazillion dark freckles on my chest from my no spf younger days, and within maybe 4 sessions, they were all gone. Well worth the money.

Years later I did some sessions on my face, and while there might have been an improvement, it was slight enough that I thought that was a waste of money. I had almost no discoloration on my face, but it didn’t really do too much for the very light marks or my slightly Oompa Loompa pink tint, either. No harm done and there is no downside to it as far as I know aside from the cost. If I had dark spots on my face pop up, I would not hesitate doing it again.

#28

Thanks, Mr. RapAdmin.

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#29

Thanks, Beth, for sharing your experiences.

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#30

Vitiligo as far as i understand is an autoimmune disease in which your immune system attacks your melanin production in your skin. You end up with peroxides which literally bleach it away. So with no melanin doctors are afraid to do anything that is light absorbing on your skin. Funny enough, there are “treatments” for vitiligo in which they use an excimer laser on your skin, or uv lamps, which is the opposite of what they preach.

So as you can probably tell, i don’t know exactly why vitiligo patients can’t have laser treatments and neither do the doctors, but it seems to be “standard of care” so if they did it and anything happened, they’d be in trouble, so they avoid it. I used to work with lasers (including excimer lasers) in scientific research laboratories so I’m personally comfortable with the concept of them on my skin, but unless I buy one myself or find a rebel dermatologist (probably more risks than reward with this) I’ll seek our other options.

My skin is very white and I’m not a huge sun/beach fan so my vitiligo is tolerable. If i had dark skin, i can imagine it would be much more noticeable. I started noticing it when i turned 40 (if i turn my bio-age back won’t this true go away again? Just kidding….) And as far as autoimmune diseases go, this one seems much more tolerable than the rest.

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#31

Thanks, Eric. I have been experimenting with at-home otc red light therapy focused on the face generally, not just a few vitiligo patches. So far no problems and maybe very slight improvements, which could be wishful thinking. Still early days.

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#32

I had an expensive and lengthy multiple laser treatment, and it supposedly can replace 75% of pigment, but didn’t work for me, took 30+ sessions, and i was told 3/4ths of the way through it that I’d need to redo it every two years. Seemed like a waste of time for a guy with light skin.

Ive read a Brazilian doctor who uses massive vitamin d supplementation has had good results, although I don’t think I’m ready for that risk. I can’t remember the doctors name but a few people on this forum know about his research. I want to say he did a six month trial giving 35k IU of vitamin d to patients (men?) and the vast majority saw 50% or better repigmentration.

I also read about some Israeli doctor who used dead sea salt and UV light to repigment vitiligo patients, but that sounded like marketing to me.

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#33

Ok, so to sum this thread up (for those of us who don’t feel like scrolling back to #1)

o. My personal skin looks pretty decent to the experts here (from the closeup pictures i submitted) so they recommended I skip Korean treatments

o. Most of the women on this thread think men look better with natural wrinkles than with “30 years younger skin with zero wrinkles” so they’d recommend no filkers or botox (for men)

o. Retinol is useful for basically everyone (I assume above a certain age) but be very very careful with sun exposure

o. Use strong sunscreen virtually all the time.

o. Higher powered laser treatments have the risk of melting away the fat under your skin which makes it look plump

Feel free to edit this like a Wikipedia page if I missed anything.

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#34

Eric, thanks for sharing all this information.

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#35

Thanks @Ericross2 and @Beth. I have decided to play it safe and do nothing for now, especially since I am on substantially more blood thinners until late this month. I’m sure that’s a no-no for at least some treatments.

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#36

Some heat devices, and I don’t know which ones, melt fat in your face… just research carefully

This article goes into detail on this (and for rf devices). Thanks for the heads up on this, as I am now treatment of laser and rf treatments.

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