For Dr. Christie Prendergast, double-board certified plastic surgeon and precision medicine specialist, strategy is fundamental to aging intrinsically and extrinsically well. When it comes to aesthetics, “there’s great value in understanding the difference between the long-term and the short-term in what you’re trying to accomplish. Depending on your goals, each trajectory may present certain trade-offs. The right one for you is the one that is entirely individualized”.
Though Hollywood continues to set certain trends in motion, especially when it comes to aesthetics, Dr. Christie notes that not all members of the entertainment industry are chasing the same standards. “Almost all of the actors I work with have always been adamant about not having an overly augmented or frozen appearance, because that’s detracted from opportunities” she explains. “Whether it’s a drastic change in the way you look or not being able to fully express an emotion, you risk causing a lack of connection with the camera and the audience”.
Even for non-celebrities, this approach also bears important considerations. Dr. Christie points to the correlation between facial expressions and the parent-child bond. Research states that facial expressions are integral to child development, influencing social competence, emotional regulation, and cognitive growth [Bigelow et al., 2021]. “Perceiving the emotions of a parent or caretaker is paramount for proper child development. Excessive use of Botox, for example, will inhibit a child’s ability to understand emotions. It’s not just about happy vs. sad, but rather all the subtleties of non-verbal communication”.
Dr. Christie insists that you can look and feel your best without a frozen appearance or —worse—looking completely unrecognizable. “There’s no need to invest in band-aid fixes or surgeries that drastically alter the way you look.” The solution, she says, lies in a long-term aesthetic strategy. “The idea to create my own methodology for long-term aesthetic aging came to me during my early days in residency. I couldn’t understand why practitioners were only offering short-sighted solutions to long-term problems”, though she notes that this concept was ahead of its time. “I used to have to convince patients that we need to have a strategy. Now, they're coming to me saying, ‘I'm looking for minimally invasive enhancements and an expert to build a strategy with’. I've heard that more in the past few years than ever before. I see a growing understanding that we need to have some functionality to our aesthetics.”
The Beauty Matrix™, Dr. Christie’s personalized data-driven aesthetic aging strategy, goes far beyond natural-looking enhancements and natural ways to minimize reliance on band-aid fixes. For her, it’s about the bigger picture: “What’s the underlying mechanism, and how can we get to the root cause? How do regenerative aesthetics play a role here? This has always been the inquisition that has driven me to look for better solutions. I understand the role of band-aid fixes and the fantastic outcomes only surgery can achieve. But there are many other interventions at play in the scheme of aesthetic longevity.”
Dr. Christie also asserts that beauty needs to be redefined. “I've always felt that aesthetics needs to be much more functionally aligned with the patient’s objectives, lifestyle and resources. Almost everyone has restrictions or boundaries within these metrics, so you need to understand how and what to prioritize. That requires a strategy.”
The argument for long-term aging strategy also applies to plastic surgery, Dr. Christie argues. “It's quite easy to take someone's face and make it a new face in a single procedure, but in doing that, you take on considerable risk” she contends. “Now, you're subject to that surgeon's interpretation of what beauty is. Suddenly, there are too many things changing at once. It’s too drastic”, explaining the seismic plastic surgery transformations that can derail a celebrity’s career. “You can’t wait for aging to happen and then reverse it all in one go. That’s not the best strategy to address a range of different, yet simultaneous physiological processes we know as the continuum of aging.”
This, she concludes, underscores the importance of her algorithm and a patient-centered, personalized approach. “To me, looking young is not looking done. I'm not here to chase youth. We're here to create authenticity in the aging process and support you so that you love yourself, that you're happy with the outcomes, and that the intervention is synergistic with authentic aging.”