Here we are exploring an area that is commonly overlooked in facial aesthetics, but they’re actually vital areas when it comes to achieving a youthful and refreshed look.
Temple filler plays an essential role in creating a harmonious, balanced facial appearance, especially as we age. Over time, the temples naturally lose volume, which can lead to a hollowed, concave appearance that affects the overall structure of the face.
Anatomy and Aging of the Temples
The temples are bordered by the brow bone, zygomatic arch, and the forehead. Underlying this region are structures such as the temporalis muscle, the temporal fat pad, and the superficial temporal artery, amongst other structures. With age, there’s a reduction in the fat and soft tissue in the temple region, which is due to the loss of both deep and superficial fat pads. This leads to visible hollowing, and often, a noticeable concavity of the temples. Additionally, the bone itself undergoes resorption with age, which exaggerates the effect.
The resulting volume loss affects more than just the temples. It can create an imbalance by making the upper part of the face appear narrower, which in turn can make the mid-face and lower face seem broader. This imbalance disrupts facial harmony and can contribute to an older appearance. Hollow temples can also make the brows appear more droopy and the eyelid area more shadowed, adding to a tired look.
Benefits of Temple Filler
1. Restoring Volume and Fullness: Temple filler can effectively replace lost volume, making the temples look fuller and more youthful. By addressing this hollowed area, fillers can restore a soft, convex contour that creates a balanced facial shape.
2. Supporting the Eyebrows: Volume loss in the temples also contributes to a deflated brow and can cause the brows to sag over time. Temple filler provides underlying support to the outer brows, giving them a gentle lift. This can help open up the eye area, making the face look more alert and refreshed.
3. Enhancing Overall Facial Harmony: Since the temples play a key role in framing the face, restoring volume here creates a more balanced transition between the forehead, brow, and cheek areas. This helps achieve a well-rounded, harmonious appearance.
4. Contributing to a Youthful Look: The subtle lift and restored fullness from temple filler can have a significant impact on the overall youthfulness of the face. By smoothing out hollowed temples, fillers create a softer look that’s associated with a younger face shape.
What to expect after temple treatments?
1. Immediate Fullness: The temples will appear fuller right away, though some mild swelling or redness is common and should subside within a few days.
2. Minor Tenderness or Bruising: Due to the vascular nature of the temple area, some patients may experience slight bruising or tenderness. These effects are generally mild and temporary, usually resolving within a week.
3. Gradual Enhancement Over Time: While initial results are visible instantly, dermal fillers often settle and integrate into the surrounding tissue over the first two weeks, giving a natural, balanced look as they do. In more severe tissue loss we may need more than 1 session for more optimal results.
4. Long-Lasting Results: Temple fillers can last anywhere from 9 to 18 months, depending on the product used and the individual’s metabolic rate. This long duration makes them a popular choice for maintaining facial harmony with minimal upkeep.
5. Little to No Downtime: Most patients can return to their normal activities immediately after treatment, although they should avoid intense exercise, alcohol, and excessive sun exposure for the first 24 hours to reduce swelling and promote optimal healing.
Medical Device. Class III
Dermal filler is a classed a Medical Device, Class III is intended for the treatment of restoring lost volume to the face. All medicines, medical devices and treatments carry risks and benefits. Individual results will vary. Speak to one of our qualified Cosmedicine Nurses or Doctors to see what might be right for you and to explain the possible side effects.
As the year draws to a close, I want to take a moment to reflect on the incredible journey we’ve had providing training and professional development to our learners. This year has been a truly amazing experience, filled with growth, learning, and the privilege of watching our practitioners develop their skills and confidence.
One of the highlights of this year was the opportunity to create training modules from scratch, especially designed for our learners. This is one of our biggest advantages as a training academy. We provide a well-structured theoretical foundation that is meticulously crafted to ensure every practitioner leaves with a solid understanding of both the principles and the practice. Developing these modules from the ground up has been a rewarding and enriching experience.
A particularly memorable moment for me was an incredible opportunity to run the Vampire Academy training this year alongside Dr. Catherine Stone. She has taught me so much about becoming a confident trainer, and I will always look up to her for her guidance and expertise. Her mentorship has pushed me to continually improve so I can offer the best possible experience for our learners.
Dr Cat is a phenomenal trainer and she’s always been a huge inspiration to me. Initially I aspired to be like her, then I came to realise that while Dr Cat is an amazing educator and always will be, I’ve come to embrace my own unique teaching style. She’s always been a constant source of my inspiration, but I understand that everyone has their own way of delivering content, and I’m proud of the approach I bring and the impact it has on our leaners.
Another rewarding part of our workshop is seeing how much our learners evolve, not just technically but also in the way they approach patient care with more confidence and precision. Witnessing that growth has made all the hard work worthwhile, and it’s a joy to see familiar faces at conferences this year, reconnecting and maintaining that open communication. We’re proud to offer ongoing support long after our training sessions end because that’s what we’re about, building a network of practitioners who are not just colleagues, but friends.
Our goal has always been more than just teaching techniques; we aim to create lasting memories, build friendships, and foster a sense of community in our industry. It’s this spirit of connection and collaboration that makes our training sessions so unique and special.
This year has also given us the chance to pause and reflect. In our training sessions, we don’t just focus on delivering knowledge, we create space to pause, breathe, and learn from every experience, whether it’s a win or a challenge. This reflection allows us to adjust our processes and actions so we can continually improve and provide even better training experiences for our learners. This mindset has shaped the way we conduct our sessions, ensuring that each practitioner leaves not only with new skills, but with a sense of clarity and direction for their professional journey.
Looking ahead, we are excited for what next year will bring. We have more fun, dynamic, and engaging sessions planned for you. So please continue to support us, and don’t forget to check out our website for updates on upcoming trainings!
As we approach the holiday season, I want to wish you all a wonderful Christmas break. Rest, recharge, and we look forward to welcoming even more practitioners into our growing industry next year.
Attending industry conferences is always an exciting opportunity to refresh our knowledge and stay ahead of the game. Recently I had the pleasure of listening to Dr Ernst Eiselen at an industry event and while much of the content echoed what I have already learned from working with such a knowledgeable team, it was a great reminder of why I am so passionate about skincare-especially when it comes to one superhero ingredient Vitamin A.
Why is Vitamin A , a skincare superstar?
Vitamin A isn’t just popular- it’s the most researched ingredient on the skincare market today and for good reason everyone’s skin needs vitamin A. It’s essential for normalising the skins functions, which means it’s beneficial for all skin types and conditions.
Here’s some of the reasons I find it so amazing:
* Vitamin A thickens and stimulates the dermis: this means it boosts collagen production, helping to slow down the normal aging process.
* Minimises aging skin : Skin with high levels of Vitamin A show fewer signs of aging.
* Supports skin repair: Vitamin A not only reduces wrinkles but also enhances the skins UV protection and aids in the repair of the epidermis.
One key thing I took away was how Vitamin A can play a role in preventing precancerous lesions. Living in New Zealand, where the sun is notoriously harsh, this was particularly relevant. Of course, nothing replaces the basics when it comes to sun protection ie reapplying SPF every 2 hours, staying out of the sun in the harsher times of the day, but any extra boost in keeping our skin healthy is beneficial.
This got me thinking about how often we focus on the skin on our face but forget about the rest of our body. Just like the skin on our face the skin on our body needs daily application of certain nutrients to protect and repair and the one I love is the ENVIRON BODY KIT. It’s packed with all the essential nutrients , with daily use over time it makes a noticeable difference in the appearance and health of the skin on our bodies.
Another little tip I picked up was after 3 months of vitamin A use nightly, the outer layer of your skin ( the stratum corneum) thickens and becomes more compact. While this is fantastic for skin health, it can also make it harder for other active ingredients to penetrate. To get the most out of your skincare routine Dr Eiselen recommended introducing homerolling to help with product penetration.
Dr Eiselen’s talk truely reinforced my love for vitamin A. Whether it’s fighting aging , aiding in dehydration , evening out skin tone or supporting skin health, Vitamin A delivers results.
So here’s my takeaway – if you’re not using vitamin A already, come into clinic and talk to one of our medical skin therapists and your skin will thank you for it.
And just like that, another year is almost over! Does anyone else feel like we just blinked and it’s gone? The pohutukawa are glorious in full flower through out Auckland and it looks like it will be a long, hot summer. With Christmas just around the corner we have some scandalously fabulous skin care gift boxes and gorgeous gift vouchers for the perfect Xmas gift for you or a loved one.
With the year nearly over, it’s a great time to reflect on the year that has been. Our biggest celebration was the move of our Britomart clinic to our gorgeous new Quay St clinic, we’ve added another couple of fabulous nurse injectors (Janny and Tina) to the team, and our team has continued to upskill, attend conferences and explore new treatments despite the sometimes challenging economic environment which has negatively affected so many in our industry.
We made huge progress with our training academy (IG @tfp_academy) this year with the building and launch of the online components of our Foundation Neuromodulators and Foundation Dermal Fillers courses. I am so incredibly proud of our wonderful trainer, Marjorie, as she has been the key driver of these courses, and has run the vast majority of this year’s workshops. She is an excellent trainer, and her learners often comment about how easy it feels to learn with her.
I recommended one of our other senior nurses, Eve, to become part of the newly formed Allergan Nursing Faculty, and she has also excelled as a trainer in this field.
On a personal level, I celebrated my 50th birthday in the Galápagos Islands, which has been in the top part of my bucket list for many years. Just before flying out for my birthday celebrations I found a lump in my other breast, which was originally thought to be a pre-cancer, but when I had surgery to remove the breast it was was discovered to have 3 different invasive cancers in it, and more cancer in the sentinel lymph node. The presence of cancer in the sentinel lymph node meant I had to have a second surgery to remove and check the rest of the lymph nodes in my armpit.
I’m recovering well from my axillary lymph node clearance surgery 5 weeks ago, although I had my drain in for almost a month as I continued to produce high volumes of sepus fluid into the drain… 50-100ml a day! They only take the drain out when it’s less than 30ml for two consecutive days, or when it starts getting painful and infected like mine did… I nearly beat the existing record of 4 weeks with a drain in…. And I kept looking at the serous fluid which looks so much like PRP, and being tempted to inject it into my face (it’s different to PRP though as it has metabolic waste in it that the PRP doesn’t).
Because it took so long for my drain to come out, my chemo was delayed by a week, and I had my first chemo last Thursday. I had a portacath (a tube into one of the veins on my chest that delivers chemo into my central circulation) inserted last Tuesday, and I’ll have a nice scar on my chest from it when my chemo is over, which will be fun for the team to play with some of our new scar treatments using Botox, insulin or growth factors, alongside our usual scar treatments of PRP, needling of vampire facial plus!
The good news is that they found no further cancer in the 21 lymph nodes they removed in the most recent surgery, so I will have a less aggressive chemo regimen of 4 x21 day cycles, followed by radiotherapy and then attempting hormone blockers again. The last two times I attempted hormone blockage with Tamoxifen I experienced severe fatigue, rage, uncontrollable crying and suicidal ideation, so I have started an antidepressant now to try and see if I can tolerate the blockade better with antidepressant support.
I missed my mum’s 70th on 23 November in Mexico due to my surgery, but the day after her birthday she jumped on a plane to come and care for me during my first round of chemo. It has been lovely having her here, and because my chemo was delayed a week, we got to have some nice time together before I started chemo. She leaves just before Xmas on 23 December, when my friend group will take over again. I have 3 months of chemo and then a month of radiotherapy, and will then attempt the hormone blockers.
I am beyond grateful to have such an incredible team, who have allowed me to step back almost completely and focus on my health, and to have had such amazing support from friends, family and our wonderful patients such as you.
Wishing you and your family a healthy, happy, glorious holiday season, and a 2025 that brings great joy and success!
I got a shock. The results from the mastectomy were definitely not what I expected.
You may recall that last month I was recovering from my second mastectomy and reconstruction, purely as a precaution because they found high grade pre cancer in the breast at a biopsy in August, just before I flew to Denver and Galapagos for 5 weeks to celebrate my 50th birthday.
I was looking forward to having all the breast tissue out, and with no more breast tissue, a very low risk of having a nasty surprise with more breast cancer. It’s already nearly 5 years since the first breast cancer diagnosis in January 2020.
Except the nasty surprise came now.
Seeing my breast surgeon’s demeanour when I walked in gave me a clue. She looked sorrowful as she broke the news to me…
“We found 3 invasive cancers in your breast… each a slightly different type….” (Oh, sh*t, that means radiotherapy)
“… and a macro-metastasis of 2.2mm in your sentinel lymph node” (Ufff, that means chemo and radiotherapy)
“Cat… two of the 4 cancers are hormone receptor positive and HER2 negative” (The air goes out of me, they’ll want me to try the hormone blockers again. I had the worst 1% of side effects with Tamoxifen, and they’ll want to hit me with something stronger 😔)
I click into my usual ‘I’m calm and going to ask lots of questions’ state that I usually go to when I get bad news, and then when she steps out of the room, I dissolve into tears. Not only is this NOT the end of the journey, I know it’s now the beginning of the hardest journey I’ve had to face so far.
With the Auckland Half Marathon just raced this weekend, I have used the analogy of my one and only experience of being talked into running it: “You run all the way around the North Shore, and then you get to the highlight of the run – the Auckland Harbour Bridge – as you start running up it, you realise it’s a lot steeper than you expected, and it’s kind of challenging… then you get to run down the other side and it’s fun and easy, and you can hear and see the finish line at Victoria Park. You keep running towards Vic Park and you hear the crowds cheering as other runners cross the finish line… there is relief coursing through your body, you’re nearly there….
… and then just as you are about to get to the park, you have to turn the corner and run another 2km through the Silo Park. That last 2km is the hardest, because in your mind you were already finished, and you are sooo tired from running around the north shore and across the bridge, it takes every ounce of resilience to keep going. Luckily, I was running with a friend, and when we hit that point, I kicked into cheerleader mode: “we’ve got this, not far now, we can do it” . Quite honestly, I was doing the cheering for me more than her. If she wasn’t there, I would have stopped 🤷♀️
When I see the oncologist the next day, she recommends I have further surgery to remove the rest of the lymph nodes in that armpit. But I know that the operation has a high risk (30%) of permanent and often debilitating condition called lymphoedema. And it’s my dominant hand – my injecting arm. My oncologist would ideally like me to have the surgery, then chemo, followed by radiation therapy, and then (gulp) hormone blockade – which could mean multiple drugs, or could mean removing my ovaries.
I’m prepared to go on the hardest form of chemotherapy to avoid surgery and hormone blockers. And another factor I’m stuck on – I’m due to fly out to Mexico on 15 November (ironically the 3rd anniversary of my first mastectomy) for my mum’s 70th. If I do what they want me to do, there is no way I can go 😔
We’ve been planning mum’s 70th for months, my brother will be joining us in Mexico for the first time, and I had originally planned to have the mastectomy in December, after I get home… as every time I have visited mum in Mexico so far, I’ve been recovering from surgery. (Although with this news, I’m so grateful I didn’t delay the surgery to December… )
I still REALLY want to go to Mexico, and although it’s not the ideal course, I’m convincing my medical team that it’s important enough to me that we work my chemo treatments around it.
About an hour after getting home from my appointment, Mercy Breast Clinic calls. My breast surgeon would like to talk with me. “You’re a very complicated case…” she tells me – something no doctor ever wants to hear about themselves “…and Karen (my oncologist) REALLY thinks you should have the lymph node surgery, both to get any further tumours out of your body, and to help us decide what the best treatment pathway is for you”.
I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want lymphoedema. It’s my injecting arm. (It will also mean I can’t go to Mexico, although I don’t use that excuse outright). I’m finding every reason to justify not having the surgery, and I know what medical people need to hear, so I’m convincing both of us (I think). I get off the phone exhausted, and decide to go to the movies to have a mindless break from having to make decisions and be in this reality.
As I get out of the movies, I message a girlfriend who has recently just been through almost exactly the journey I’m about to embark on. “Tell it to me straight, how bad is chemo REALLY?” I ask her. It sounds pretty awful as she had all the worst side effects, but she also has great suggestions. At the end she says to me “Babe, I’m not going to tell you what to do, but if it were me, I’d have the lymph nodes removed – I had it done and it’s way easier than you think. You want to get as much cancer as you can out of your body NOW”.
Damn. She’s right. I call two of my dear doctor friends who I trust to tell it to me straight. They confirm that the surgery is more important than Mexico or my injecting arm. Chemo will destroy my ovaries anyway and throw me into menopause (which my oncologist was happy about) so what’s to lose with just trying the hormone blockers? It might be better this time?
Simone suggests I start antidepressants asap to see if they can support me through the worst of the symptoms from losing my hormones… what a great suggestion. And then, the clincher. “Babe, it’s not worth risking your health to go to Mexico, the best birthday present you can give your mum is to stay alive and be healthy in 5-10 years time – but why don’t you bring her to you instead?” Inspired! So the next morning I call my breast surgeon and say that I’ll do the surgery. I message my oncologist and say I’ll give it my best shot to do everything. And I call my mum and ask her to come as soon as she can after her birthday.
I’m booked for surgery 6 November (probably just getting out of surgery now) and will start chemo around the 28 November once mum arrives. I’ve started the antidepressants (which make me nauseous and spacey, but hey, there’s worse to come, get over it, it’s not forever). I’ll work with Erin O’Hara, our science-based Naturopath at our Takapuna clinic to help support me with symptoms of my treatments and maximise the chance of getting cancer out of my body permanently. She has already made some great suggestions about fasting on the chemo days and adjusting my supplements slightly.
We are about to start offering Vitamin C infusions at The Face Place, so I’m the perfect person to trial them and work out the appropriate timings and protocols for cancer patients. We plan to combine the Vitamin C infusions with Healite LED and a gentle head and neck massage to take the focus away from ‘another needle’ for cancer patients, so I’m excited to trial those in my ‘good weeks’ from chemo (the week after chemo is a ‘bad week’ and then you have two ‘good weeks’ before starting again).
Now I have a plan, I am so much calmer.
I’m going to continue to share my journey publicly, the good and the ugly. Just like during the Auckland Half Marathon, it helps me to cheerlead other people, and gives the journey purpose.
I am so grateful for our incredible team at The Face Place, who have done such a wonderful job of continuing to run the business so beautifully while I’ve stepped back the last couple of years. I’m also grateful for the continued support of our patients as I then don’t have to worry about the business or financials. It means I can focus fully on my journey to become healthy and cancer free.
When I finished the Auckland Half Marathon I was so proud that we had just kept running… I felt like I could have run the marathon! And because of our consistency and determination to keep going, we did a really good time (with almost no training) of 2h 10min.
So although this next 6-9 months is going to be challenging in so many ways, I’ll keep looking for the gifts from the journey. When I look back at my life, every challenging period had wonderful gifts that it gave me (if you want to see a great clip that helped me understand this, check out The Hindsight Window by Eric Edmeades)
As I said to a friend the other day, “Every challenging period has gifts, and every gift has challenging periods”.
I have a mantra I look at in the mornings which starts ‘Today is a brand new day..’ which reminds me of what’s important on a daily basis. After hearing the news about my results I got really triggered by the phrase about halfway down which states ‘healthy is happy’ – I just burst into tears as I’m not going to be fully healthy for a while. But after sitting in meditation, it came to me, and I wrote beside it with a pen “Happy is healthy”. And this is my focus as I go through my treatments. I will feel the feels and the emotions, as I don’t want to have toxic positivity or be false; and I will also look for the happy moments of joy, fun, love and gratitude to help me through the tough times and be both happy and healthy.
I’m looking forward to being on the other side of this journey, healthy, happy and cancer free. Thank you all so much for the support you may have already shown me and our team, and for your continued support of our business over the next phase of the journey….
Toka Puia AT Carpark is the closest under-cover option at 15 Northcroft Street. Pay by Plate at the pay machine or via the AT Parking app ($2.50 per hour on weekdays / free weekend parking for a limited time only).
Other options…
Northcroft Street Parking (pay by meter) – One hour – $1.50 – Two hours – $3 – Hours thereafter – $3 per hour
Wilson Parking – 11 Northcorft Street (pay by plate machine or Parkmate app) – Casual – from $3 per hour – Earlybird (Mon-Fri) – from $14 valid for 12 hours – Night (Mon-Fri from 4 pm) – $4 flat rate valid until 8 am – Weekend (Sat-Sun) – $4 flat rate, valid for 12 hours from time of purchase
Anzac Street Carpark (pay by plate machine or via the AT app) – First 2 hours – $1.50 per hour – Hours thereafter – $3 per hour – Monday – Saturday (6 pm – 8 am) – No Charge – Sunday and Public Holidays – No Charge – Motorcycle and Mobility parking P180 – No Charge
Britomart Carparking
Currently, Britomart Carpark is offering 2 hours free parking* with a receipt of $50 or more from a Britomart store (such as The Face Place).
Britomart Carpark Valet Parking $20* for two hours (includes parking charges) $5 each additional half-hour to a daily maximum of $45 (to midnight). Available from 10am-8pm.
The Central Valet drop-off point is located on the corner of Gore and Tyler Streets, opposite Takutai Square. Drive in via the entrance on Gore Street, where you’ll be greeted by a friendly valet concierge. Leave your engine running, take your ticket and your car will be parked for you. Retrieve your car by taking your valet ticket to Britomart Car Park Reception on the corner of Britomart Place and Scene Lane.
Train An excellent alternative with Britomart Train Station being a short walk to us, plus, public transport is 50% off until 30th June 2023.
