Yaaaayyyy! August is birthday month for me, and also the last official month of winter, so hopefully we start seeing longer days and better weather – especially after last summer essentially being another winter!
We are making the most of this quieter time of year with lots of training – almost all of our clinicians will be attending conferences this month, with some attending two, so get your appointments booked asap if you are wanting a treatment in August!
We have some of our skin team in Melbourne next week at the Australian Society of Dermal Clinicians SKINCON2023, and half of our medical team attending the top-rated Aesthetics AU conference in Sydney the following weekend. I will be in Vienna next week for Dr Joe Dispenza’s Advanced Retreat and then will be teaching at our Vampire Academy on 20/21st of August, before joining the other half of the medical team in Christchurch the 24-27th August at NZSCM Conference 2023. I will be speaking at NZSCM about EmFace, our exciting new technology where we have been getting rave reviews from those who have had the treatment. EmFace is a personal favourite treatment of mine and has been shown to improve lift in the face – especially the mouth corners and brows; softening of early jowls/sagging; definition of the jawline; and improved skin texture.
After NZSCM I will head down to Ashburton to celebrate my 49th birthday with my brother and his family – it’s still hard to believe I’ll be turning 50 next year! 🙀
It’s honestly a privilege to age, especially after my recent cancer journey, but I’ve decided I don’t have to get old – I much prefer ‘growing younger’ (hence my books of the same title!) This next year will be about not just looking and feeling great for 50, but exploring ways to actually become healthier and younger physiologically, so I can expand my healthy human life span.
I started this process in Bangkok last month when visiting Bumrungrad International Hospital’s longevity and cancer clinics, and I’m excited about my telemedicine reviews with my doctors tomorrow, where I’ll get the results of my cancer marker tests and microbiome. I’ve already received the results of my food intolerance and micronutrient tests which gave me some surprises… the tests confirmed I have both cow’s milk and gluten intolerance, but my highest intolerance was cashew nuts with my second highest being Brazil nuts – two of my favourite ‘go-to’ snacks! Then my micronutrient profile showed I’m deficient in selenium (common in NZ) along with other deficiencies – and Brazil nuts would usually be my food source for selenium! So it has been eye-opening, and now gives me the knowledge to make well-informed choices.
While in Bali I also went to the bio-hacking retreat www.theistana.com with my friend Janine. We tried hyperbaric oxygen and cryotherapy, which have both been shown to be helpful in health and longevity, and we had a marvellous time in the stunning steam room sound chamber, infrared saunas and ice baths. The cryotherapy was super cold – the coldest chamber was minus 150°C and the therapist was very impressed that we managed to stay for the full 3 minutes on our first session! Cryotherapy is believed to spark survival mechanisms, so we increase the brown fat in our body which helps us burn more calories, improve circulation and immune function in the body, reduce stress and improve mental clarity.
I’m also increasingly interested in the balance of body-mind-soul, and did another healing retreat with two of my besties before I left Bali which facilitated some major shifts in me. I’m planning to go back to Bali in October to train as a facilitator in the science-based energy modality that was used during the retreat, as it had such a powerful impact on me. Since the retreat, I have felt clearer, more energised and more ‘in flow’, with amazing synchronicities and ideas just flowing to me!
I hit the ground running in the week coming back from Bali, with a morning of training with the Teoxane filler range for the medical team, followed by team training day (TTD) that weekend, where we practised with the Teoxane/Teosyal range and played more with Profhilo Body. I treated one of my knees with Profhilo Body at one of our Profhilo workshops earlier in the year, and have been impressed with the result I’ve seen on the crinkly skin above the knee (see if you can guess which knee it is in the photo below). What I also noticed was the cellulite on the lower part of that leg had also improved, so at TTD we played with putting the product higher up on the same leg, into the cellulite area, to see if it makes a difference… watch this space! If it works, I think I’ll be bathing in it! 😹
Just a couple of days after TTD we took the whole team to a private St John’s Mental Health First Aid training day, which provided us with even more tools and resources to deal with the ‘first aid’ of mental health, allowing us to better support our patients, team, friends and family.
I loved the analogy used on the day comparing mental health and physical health – if someone had a sprained ankle, we would give them sympathy and support, but they do most of the healing themselves – in mental health the equivalent is a reactive period of emotions after a significant event, such as grief after the loss of a loved one. However, if someone had a broken ankle you would need to get them to the right medical support so they could have it assessed, and supported with either surgery or a cast, and followed up to ensure it healed well, so if someone has depression, anxiety or addiction, our role is to help them find the best medical help to support them – usually their GP in the first instance, although hotlines such as an EAP (we have one at TFP) 1737, Lifeline or Youthline can be helpful. If someone has a heart attack or stroke, we would call an ambulance, so if a person goes into a mental health crisis, we should also call an ambulance and get them supported immediately. It made the pathways for helping mental health much clearer, and the team have said how much more confident they now feel about being able to handle different scenarios. It was a very practical and fun day, and great to get the team together!
It was also very relevant for me, as I recently saw a psychiatrist who diagnosed me as having had Tamoxifen-related depression over the last couple of years, although thankfully the symptoms are subsiding and I am starting to almost feel normal again! It’s been a relief to have a diagnosis, and I’m currently doing all the lifestyle changes they would recommend for me – exercising, eating well, reducing stress, getting counselling, meditating and prioritising sleep – and my symptoms continue to improve, so I’m grateful that I don’t have to take medication. However after our learnings from St John’s Mental Health First Aid, I now recognise I could have asked for help a lot earlier, and maybe a period of medication might have helped me recover more quickly, just like having a cast for a broken bone.
I’m incredibly grateful for the wonderful team we have, who have kept the clinic humming while I’ve been on health leave. It was also incredibly gratifying to be externally assessed with our tri-annual audit, and have the auditor comment – ‘your clinic is the gold standard to which we should all aspire’. We have always focused on being a best practice clinic, so was a delight to have it validated by an external auditor who reviewed everything with a fine tooth comb!
Saying that, we are always looking at how we can provide even better service to you, and based on some recent feedback, we are formalising an annual Cosmedicine Review appointment, where we can review your treatments to date and how you are feeling about them, discuss any new areas of concern, explore new treatments that may have become available in the last year, review your budget and how to get the best results for your budget and formulate a revised treatment plan for the year ahead.
You can either book a Cosmedicine Review appointment online, or your clinician may suggest it at the same time as your annual consent update (you should have your written consent updated every year), which is the ideal timing for your review. If your clinician notices that you are due to update your consent at the next appointment, and you would like an annual review at that next appointment, they will suggest a 2 or 4-week follow-up of the current appointment, with photos so we have a more accurate assessment of what is (or isn’t) working for you. This means we can provide an even better assessment of the path ahead when we see you for your review of your annual plan. It also means that if we decide to stop some treatments and start others, we can put all the consents in place for the correct treatments!
While I’m super proud that we have been recognised as a Gold Standard clinic, we definitely are not sitting on our laurels, and continue to invest heavily in training and innovation, to provide you with the best possible service, advice and information you can trust.
We are always open to new ideas and suggestions, so please feel free to contact us directly via Instagram, email us at: info@thefaceplace.co.nz or in our post-treatment survey.
Have a magnificent August (birthday month is always one of my faves!) and we look forward to seeing you in clinic soon!
Love and hugs 😻
