Cosmetic Surgery Center

Women in their 20s are the fastest-growing group of breast augmentation patients, comprising nearly a third of all breast augmentation patients. These women, most of them in college, decide to get their breast augmentation for many reasons. The most commonly listed ones were:

Improve self esteem
Look better in clothes, including swimsuits
Feel more feminine
More attention from men was not generally listed as a reason for seeking breast augmentation, but was more likely to be considered a fringe benefit, and among this group of women was not generally seen to be untoward or undesirable.

College-aged women also found that the adjustment period following their breast augmentation surgery was a little difficult. Some people thought that the new size was "just not them." The women also discussed not feeling natural at first, but said this passed fairly quickly. For women of this age, family opinion is also important. For some women, families are supportive, and will even pay for implants as graduation presents, but for others the family may be reluctant, and even question why the student can't pay for tuition if she can pay for her breast implants. To head off problems of this type, women are encouraged to discuss their plans with close family members beforehand.

If you are considering breast augmentation, please contact Dr. Rai at the Cosmetic Surgical Center in Dallas, Texas, to set up a consultation, and he will help you talk through your reasons for wanting the surgery and how to help those around you accept your decision.

You may be considering getting a tummy tuck to help you look your best for the summer swimsuit season, but have hesitated because you were afraid that you would have scars that would keep you from wearing your bikini anyway. If this has been holding you back, do not wait any more. If you understand the tummy tuck procedure, you'll see that it can help your abdomen look great and will not prevent you from wearing most swimsuits.

In an abdominoplasty, the main incision is just above the pubic area, which allows access to the abdominal muscles to be tightened and fat deposits that may be removed with liposuction or other means. In a full tummy tuck, a second incision is made around the navel, which allows you to keep your own navel following the procedure, as opposed to previous practices in which either the navel was removed or reconstructed. Once the muscles have been tightened and the fat removed, skin is also removed. However, it is always removed adjacent to the main incision so that when your skin is repositioned you still have only one incision site, just above the pubic area.

Although the exact position of your incision depends on subtleties of your anatomy, for most people the incision site and therefore any scar from the procedure will be in an area concealed by most bikini bottoms and swimming trunks. To see examples of likely incision sites, have a look at our tummy tuck before and after gallery. Most of these women would never be able to wear a bikini before the operation, but afterward could wear many bikinis without ever giving away their tummy tucks.

If you are considering a tummy tuck operation to get in shape for summer, time is running short. Please contact the Cosmetic Surgical Center today to set up a consultation with Dr. Rai.

Whether you are a man or a woman, your look is not complete as long as your arms and legs are flabby and unattractive. It may seem that the arms and legs should be easiest places to sculpt with exercise. After all, there are so many exercises available for those areas. Weight lifting, pull-ups, and pushups for the arms; running, jogging, even squats for the legs. All these exercises can build up muscle in our arms and legs, but they will not necessarily give them the proper contours.

Fat distribution is determined more by genetics than by lifestyle, according to recent research. While diet and exercise are often successful at reducing the overall level of body fat, they are not necessarily successful at removing undesirable fat deposits. Women, in particular, may find they are losing fat from their breasts and buttocks before losing the fat from their flabby arms.

Then, even if a person is able to get rid of fat from the arms, he or she is often left not with taut, muscular arms, but with loose-hanging skin around the muscles.

Body contouring can provide relief for excess skin and fat in the arms and legs, however. If you have stubborn fat deposits in your arms that are not responding to your exercise, liposuction can reduce them. If you suffer from skin laxity as well, an arm lift can make your skin tight and give definition to the muscles you have worked hard on building up.

To learn how body contouring can complete your look by taking care of the fat and excess skin that you cannot change yourself, please contact the Cosmetic Surgical Center in Dallas, Texas, today to set up a consultation.

A woman's body is supposed to be defined by its curves, but the ideal for a man's body often bespeaks the opposite. Many of the features are positively described as "chiseled," or square. However, the goal is never to get rid of curves, but to reshape them. The difference between a beer gut and six-pack abs is not that one is curved while the other is straight, but that one is defined by fat and the other by muscle. The chief difference between men's and women's bodies is that in women a certain amount of fat is desirable to give shape to the breasts, buttocks, and thighs, men's bodies are supposed to be shaped completely by muscle and bone.

Of course, body contouring cannot completely eliminate fat from your body, but it can help you get the body you've always wanted. Many men stay away from the gym because they're embarrassed by their bodies. It's not just a question of a beer gut or love handles that a man can explain away. Some men suffer from Gynecomastia, a condition in which their breasts grow similar to women's breasts, and which can be very embarrassing. Although these men may attempt to exercise from home to remove the breast tissue, Gynecomastia does not generally respond to exercise, and can be a glandular condition. However, Dr. Rai can correct Gynecomastia, allowing you to feel sufficiently comfortable with your body that you can actually show your face in the gym. In addition, he can use an abdominoplasty to reduce fat and tighten the muscles in the gut, and liposuction to target some areas of the body that are difficult to sculpt with exercise, such as the gut and the love handles, giving you a head start on your new, chiseled features.

To learn more about how body contouring can work for men, please contact Dr. Rai to set up a consultation.

The common adage is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the adage fails to add that human eyes are all pretty similar. In fact, in terms of beauty it turns out they are remarkably similar when it comes to their opinion of beauty, according to a scholar at the University of Texas. Dr. Devendra Singh has long been studying the depiction of "attractive women" in various cultures and media. His earlier studies had been looking at sculpture, measuring their waist-to-hip ratio and other variables, contributing to the evidence of the significance of the 0.7 figure.

In his most recent study, Dr. Singh looked at 345,000 written texts from contemporary and 16th and 17th century Western texts, as well as Chinese, Japanese, and Indian literature, including the Mahabarata and The Tale of Genji. He found that although the breasts were the most commonly mentioned feature of female characters, the description of a woman as being narrow-waisted had the strongest correlation with attributions of beauty. Although not included in Dr. Singh's study, it correlates with descriptions in Mesopotamian literature, the Biblical "Song of Solomon," and medieval Arab love poetry.

In essence, this means that although modern people may be more obsessed with actual thinness, in terms of dieting and exercise, the ideal of a slender waist seems universal. Unfortunately, it is a hard characteristic to achieve and maintain. But modern body contouring can help you if you find your waist is wider than you'd prefer. If you have excess fat in your "love handles" area, contributing to the presence of a "muffin top," liposuction may be able to help. If, however, you also have skin laxity and a looseness of your abdominal muscles, then an abdominoplasty (tummy tuck) would be the best solution.

To learn more about how body contouring can help you achieve the ancient and eternal ideals of beauty, contact Dr. Rai at the Cosmetic Surgical Center today to set up an initial consultation.

In looking at the representation and appreciation of the feminine form across many cultures and over the ages, researchers have long focused on a single variable, the waist-to-hip ratio. Researchers have found significant evidence that although the form of the ideal woman's body has changed, the ratio between the waist and the hips has remained relatively constant at about 0.7. Although I'm not interested in arguing for this specific ratio or for its universality in art, I do believe it tells us something important about what makes a person, man or woman, attractive. Attractiveness of one feature cannot be separated from the context of the other features.

Like the ideal nose, the ideal breasts, stomach, legs, or arms do not exist in isolation, but only in relation to one another. The key is proportionality and balance. Here are some tips for women looking to fix their proportions.

Breast Augmentation: What Makes Breasts Seem Small? How Big Is too Big?

The goal of breast augmentation is to give a woman breasts that look proportional on her body. Breasts are considered small if they do not register in one of three characteristics: roundness, fullness, or projection. Curvaceous is one of the most common words used to describe the ideal feminine form, and breasts are crucial to conveying the curviness of a woman's body. If the breasts do not exhibit noticeable curving, either above or below, they are often considered too small. Fullness describes the distribution of a woman's breasts across her chest. Breasts that are considered too small generally occupy less than three-quarters of the diameter of a woman' chest. Projection is the characteristic of the breasts to protrude forward from a woman's body. In African art, the projection of a woman's breasts is often exaggerated, but nearly all representations agree that the breasts should protrude significantly in comparison to the stomach, and that this protrusion should ideally be outward, not downward, except in the case of nursing mothers. If your breasts sag, a breast lift is indicated.

In contrast, breasts are too big if they exhibit an excess of one or more of these characteristics. Thus, if a woman has breast implants that overly dominate her breast tissue and make her breasts appear almost spherical, the breasts would be considered too big. Similarly, breasts that occupy the whole of the chest or protrude significantly from the side of the chest would be considered too big. How much projection is too much is not as easily determined, as it depends on a number of factors, including the thickness of her body, her height, and the size of her buttocks.

And, of course, many women desire to find an ideal compromise between aesthetics and their active lifestyles.

In deciding on what breast augmentation proportions would best fit your body, Dr. Rai will consider all these factors and more, including your personal ideal, which intersects with these factors as well. To set up your initial consultation, please contact the Cosmetic Surgical Center in Dallas, Texas, today.

If you want to look your best for a special occasion, you might consider cosmetic surgery. Whether for your wedding (or even a special anniversary), a class reunion, or a tropical vacation, cosmetic procedures can help you achieve the best possible look. However, you have to make sure and do it right, because many cosmetic procedures have a lag time during which the results are not complete. As an example, facelifts can leave your face bruised and swollen in the short term before you completely heal to your new smoother, younger-looking appearance. If you want to make sure you get the best results from your procedure, here's how far in advance you should schedule it:

• Chemical peel--2 weeks
• Botox or facial fillers--3 weeks
• Facelift--2 to 3 months
• Breast augmentation--3 to 4 months
• Liposuction--4 months
• Abdominoplasty--4 months

In general, the more dramatic the results, the longer in advance you need to plan the procedure. If you are interested in procedures not listed here, the best thing is to plan as far in advance as possible to make sure you are ready. Even facial fillers or Botox, which can be done quickly before the event, can benefit from a "trial run" ahead of time.

If you want to put your best face forward for an upcoming special occasion, please contact the Cosmetic Surgical Center in Dallas, Texas, today for an initial consultation.

In the 1990s, a number of sociobiologists (or evolutionary anthropologists) proposed that the most average face would be considered the most attractive, and to prove it, they had test subjects rate digitally averaged faces against real faces, and determined that in virtually every case the average face was chosen over the non-average faces. Although subsequent research has shown that the attractiveness of the average face is dependent on the attractiveness of the source faces, the research demonstrates a powerful truth: symmetry and an even skin tone are two of the most important features in making a face attractive.

In addition, research shows that the following characteristics are important for making a face attractive:

• Narrower face, and, for men, a narrower lower half of the face than upper
• Proper distribution of fat allowing good definition of chin, neck, and cheek
• Fuller lips
• Higher cheek bones
• Narrower nose (for women)
• Prominent lower jaw and chin (for men)
• No receding brow (for men)
• Thinner eyelids
• No bags beneath the eyes (for women)

If you feel that your face is unattractive, it may be due to one, some, or all of these features. However, it is crucial to keep all these features in mind when undergoing cosmetic surgery, and try to harmonize the overall effect. Thus, for a woman considering facial implants to make her cheekbones higher and slightly more prominent, Dr. Rai will ensure that the implants do not accidentally make her face seem too wide.

During your consultation, you can talk about the features of your face that you feel make your face unattractive, and Dr. Rai can recommend a combination of procedures that will address as many of these issues as possible. Please contact the Cosmtetic Surgical Center today to set up your consultation.