8 Amazing Cosmetic Surgery Myths

Cosmetic surgery has seemingly exploded in popularity over the past few decades. What used to be a once private subject that was talked about only between surgeon and patient, is now discussed openly in the media to the extent where there are entire TV programs devoted solely to the subject of plastic surgery.

However, with this explosion in popularity has come a lot of misunderstanding which has caused some people to have unrealistic expectations as to what cosmetic surgery can do for them.

In this article, we will look at some of these misunderstandings by running through eight common myths that people have about cosmetic surgery.

1 – Cosmetic Surgery Is The Key To Happiness

A lot of people do become much happier after having cosmetic surgery because their confidence and self esteem rise as a result of their new image.

This is hardly surprising though, as if you have been hating the way a part of your body looks for many years, then suddenly being able to change it and make it look more attractive is obviously going to make you feel a lot better about yourself.

Some good examples of where cosmetic surgery can make you feel better about yourself are people who have rhinoplasty to make a big nose smaller or a humped nose flatter, or women who have breast augmentation surgery to make their breasts larger and fuller.

Both rhinoplasty and breast surgery patients frequently report an increased sense of self confidence and self esteem as a result of their new and improved image.

However, this increase in happiness tends to be relatively short lived. Most people who have cosmetic surgery tend to experience an increase in happiness for one or two years, after which they return to their previous level of happiness and are about as happy as they were before they had surgery. Interestingly, the same thing also happens with lottery winners.

So whilst cosmetic surgery can make you happier, this effect is usually short lived. What does make you happy is feeling as though you have control over the direction your life is going, and completing the goals you set for yourself.

It is also worth mentioning that in some cases cosmetic surgery can actually make you less happy. Surgeons note that once a person alters one part of their body, they begin to look at flaws in other parts of their body. This can make a person feel less happy with their body than before they had any surgery.

There is also the possibility that you may get a result that you are not entirely happy with, which does happen with some people. If you don’t like your cosmetic surgery result, you may then have to pay for another surgery, called a revision surgery, to correct your last surgery to something that you are happy with.

So does plastic surgery make you happier? Well, the answer is both yes and no.

Plastic surgery can help to make you happier by giving you a more attractive body and making you feel less self conscious about your appearance.

However, this happiness won’t last forever, and unless you are using your new apperance to help you accomplish something else in life, such as attracting a partner for marriage, then you will probably end up being just as happy as you were before you had your cosmetic surgery procedure.

2 – A New Look Will Make All My Problems Go Away

Some people who are considering having cosmetic surgery identify some problems in their life and see cosmetic surgery as a way to solve those problems.

For example, a person may think that they do not have many friends or are not attractive to the opposite sex because of the way they look. But if they have cosmetic surgery, then they will become much more popular and more desirable to others.

Whilst it is true that surgery can improve the way you look, it won’t necessarily make a lasting change on how you interact with others.

It won’t for example, stop you being rude, interrupting people, talking about people behind their back, being insensitive to people or change any other aspect of your personality which people do not like.

This isn’t to say that cosmetic surgery won’t change your personality at all, as most people tend to become more confident and have higher self esteem after surgery.

But if you think that all your problems in life will go away just because you look better, you will be sadly disappointed because they won’t.

A more realistic expectation to have of plastic surgery is that rather than it making all your problems go away automatically, it will provide you with a stepping stone that will make it easier for you to solve certain problems that you are currently facing.

For example, if you feel that other people do not want to be friends with you or that people treat you with a lack of respect because you are overweight, then having weight loss surgery to get rid of your excess weight can help to stop people judging you based solely on how you look.

However, when people do approach you it will then be up to you, or more specifically your personality, to determine how that interaction turns out and consequently whether that person ends up liking you and treating you with respect.

So if you do get plastic surgery with the aim of solving a problem, please remember that it won’t provide you with a magic cure and that you will still have to work very hard to overcome whatever challenge you are currently facing.

3 – You Can Have Plastic Surgery Without Scarring

Surgery is an invasive procedure, which means that in order to carry out the surgery your skin needs to be broken in some way. How much your skin is broken depends on the type of procedure you have done.

You can for example have a very small incision that leaves a small and hardly noticeable scar. One such procedure in which this can occur can be found with breast augmentation surgery.

Depending on how your surgeon operates on you, your scars will usually be positioned underneath the fold of the breast in the breast crease. Such scars are therefore only visible when you lift up the breast and look underneath it.

There are also techniques that are designed to position scars in regions of the body that are normally hidden from view. For example, breast augmentation surgery can place implants into the breasts via incisions made in the pits of the arms.

Facelift surgery can conceal scars along the hairline so that they are not noticeable unless you lift up your hair. Furthermore, some surgeries, such as certain types of rhinoplasty, will leave no visible external scarring at all.

However, as you may have noticed, all of these procedures do leave you with permanent scarring as it is impossible to make excisions in the body and leave no trace of a scar.

Where procedures differ, is in how much scarring you will suffer from, where those scars will be and how visible they will be. For many people, if a scar can be well hidden, such as underneath the crease of the breast, that is as good as having no scarring at all.

But some procedures, such as abdominoplasty, thigh lift surgery and buttock lift surgery will leave you with much greater visible scarring that is also a lot more difficult to conceal. And with such procedures you have very little choice over where the resulting scars can be positioned.

A good cosmetic surgeon will be able to minimise the amount of scarring that you experience, but they will not be able to eliminate scarring completely.

All cosmetic procedures therefore involve making a trade off between the result you will get from a particular cosmetic procedure, and the resulting scars that will be left from having that procedure done on you.

4 – New Procedures Are Better

Cosmetic surgery does not stand still. Just like with technology there are constant advancements and improvements in the way that things are done.

In general, these changes have a positive effect on both surgeons and patients, helping to make things easier, cheaper and produce better results.

But not all new cosmetic procedures are necessarily the best option to choose, as doctors and researchers do occasionally make mistakes with medical advances.

So rather than going for the newest procedure available, it is often advisable to wait so that you can hear some long term feedback about the results it produces and any undesirable side effects it causes.

Botox for example, has become very popular with women as a way to reduce the appearance of wrinkles and prevent new wrinkles from appearing on the face by restricting the ability of the skin on the face to move.

Some researchers however, are now beginning to express concern that Botox may actually speed up the development of wrinkles and cause new wrinkles to appear.

We will only know this for certain though after many people have used it for an extended period of time. And this applies to all new medical advances, we simply do not know the long term consequences of something until a lot of people have been using it for a long time.

Also, with new cosmetic surgery techniques you are likely to find only a few cosmetic surgeons practicing it. This can make it harder to judge the effectiveness of the new technique and it also means that you have to wait longer before you are able to get any meaningful long term data on it.

One way to determine whether or not a new cosmetic surgery procedure is worth adopting, is by looking at how many other surgeons are doing it. If it becomes accepted into the mainstream medical world, then you can be fairly confident knowing that it is relatively safe and effective.

5 – The Most Famous Plastic Surgeon Is The Best

There are two things which can make a cosmetic surgeon famous. The first is that they are very good at what they do and have built their reputation on word of mouth as a result of happy patients.

The second is that they are good at public relations and at selling themselves.

When selecting a cosmetic surgeon, don’t just go to someone and accept whatever they say because you heard they were the best.

Visit several surgeons, question them and use your intuition to decide who is the best cosmetic surgeon for your individual needs.

A good way to find the best cosmetic surgeon is to listen to feedback from people who have already had plastic surgery and then see who they recommend.

This can be done by speaking with friends or relatives who have had plastic surgery, or going online and reading plastic surgery forums where people share the experiences that they had with their surgeon and the results that they got.

By carrying out this research, you will be able to draw up a short list of potential surgeons which you can then book a consultation with and speak to them in person which should then give you an idea as to who you would feel the most comfortable with having your procedure.

6 – Cheap Cosmetic Surgeons Are Just As Good

Cosmetic surgery is expensive, so it is not surprising that cost is a prime factor that people look at when considering who to have cosmetic surgery with.

Unfortunately, this can cause people to overlook other factors such as the quality of the surgeon and the quality of aftercare they will receive.

Although you may get lucky and get a good result, there is a chance that with a lower quality surgeon you get a bad result and will later require revision surgery to get the result you originally wanted. This can end up costing you far more than had you seen a more expensive surgeon initially.

Generally, you will find that cosmetic surgeons who offer low prices deal with lots of people, and as a result, you get less individual care and attention.

Surgeons who charge more tend to have less patients but will spend more time on you and give you better treatment, these surgeons will usually operate from their own private company rather than a large national firm.

Of course, it would be a mistake to judge the quality of a surgeon based on price alone, as there are many other factors which can determine what sort of a result you are likely to get.

So do as much research as you can on a surgeon, and if possible, look at examples of their previous work to get an idea of what they are capable of. Who knows, you might just get lucky and find an excellent surgeon at a very low price!

7 – Cosmetic Surgery Lasts Forever

Surprisingly, it is quite a common misconception that once you have cosmetic surgery that it will last forever. This is not true, as plastic surgery does not last forever. In fact, most cosmetic procedures have a maximum lifespan in terms of results of about 20 years.

Despite having cosmetic surgery, you will still age and be subject to the effects of gravity, both of which will make you look older.

This means that if you want to maintain the results you get through cosmetic surgery, you will need more surgery in the future.

Some procedures such as a nose job or pinning back ears which stick out too much have slightly longer lifespans than other forms of surgery, but the results you obtain from such procedures will also change over time as the nose and ears will continue to grow as you age.

A facelift will last you about 10 years before your facial skin starts to sag again, whilst breast implants can last 10-20 years before your breasts start to sag and you require breast uplift surgery in order to tighten up and firm the breasts.

However, getting results for 10 or 20 years is still quite a long time, and if you do have to have a procedure done again every once in awhile, then it is probably worth doing so especially if you get results that you are happy with and that help to keep you looking young.

Other procedures though which are classed as non surgical procedures, such as Botox, microdermabrasion, chemical peels and facial injectables, will give you much shorter term results that are usually measured in months.

Finally, a special note needs to be made for teenagers who have plastic surgery as they are likely to require surgery again sooner than adults because their body was still growing when they had their surgery and so they will eventually outgrow the results of their first surgery.

For example, a young teenage girl who has breast implants inserted at age 16 will likely require those implants to be removed and replaced by the time see reaches age 21-22 when her body stops growing as the original implants will be too small for her in her now fully grown adult body.

8 – There’s Plastic In Plastic Surgery

The plastic in plastic surgery comes from the Greek word plastiko which means to mold. Thus plastic surgery means to mold your skin and body through surgery. Plastic surgeons don’t actually use plastic when they operate on you.

It is also worth noting that there is a difference between the terms plastic surgery and cosmetic surgery. Even though most people tend to use either one to mean the same thing, they actually do have different meanings.

Plastic surgery deals with abnormalities of the body. Such abnormalities may arise as a result of a birth defect, injury or disease.

The aim of plastic surgery, is to restore normal functioning to that abnormality and allow a person to lead a relatively normal life.

Cosmetic surgery, is surgery that is carried out on a part of the body that is considered to be normal and does not restrict a persons ability to carry out everyday tasks such as eating or breathing.

This surgery is designed solely with the intention of improving someones appearance for cosmetic reasons and not because there is anything physically wrong with them.

So although you can use either plastic surgery or cosmetic surgery, it is helpful to know the difference between the two.