This past weekend I completed the Oral Board Exam and thus the final step towards Board Certification in Anti-Aging/Restorative Medicine. As many of you know, this path has required a tremendous amount of time, energy, and perseverance. But in doing so, I feel that I will now be offering a more complete and more robust offering to my patients than ever before.
Over the course of the last year, many people have asked me why I would add this to my practice and whether this was a step away from a surgical practice. It is not. In fact, I see it as a tremendously positive expansion and a move that will now allow me to practice medicine in a more comprehensive manner and treat the aging process with a more rounded approach.
While the field of Plastic Surgery continues to expand its offering of various new technologies and procedures, I have always questioned the end point. Though I am excited about new advances, I am also wary of heading down a very single-minded route that seems to ignore the basic underpinnings of the aging process itself. It has always surprised me that we are so good at treating the outcome of aging but not so good at establishing a real diagnosis of why this process is moving forward and how to actually slow it down. If we ignore the reasons for aging and simply treat results, we are missing an opportunity to create a more robust and more sustained improvement at a very basic level. And that is why I am adding this new component.
Many of you will notice that I have begun incorporating elements of Anti-Aging to my practice already. For those of you interested in treating gynecomastia, you will notice that I now test for hormone levels prior to surgery. Why? Because the process of male breast development is often the direct result of derangements in levels of testosterone and estrogen which ultimately lead to the development of this condition. If I simply remove tissue that has grown because of this, I am not truly treating the root cause and simply addressing the symptom. By correcting underlying abnormalities, I may potentially improve the long-term prognosis and create a result that is far better than that achieved with surgery alone.
For body contouring patients, I have begun discussing the effects of various hormones on weight loss/gain as well as emphasizing the need to reduce the stress hormone, Cortisol. There is a very strong interaction between Cortisol elevations and the inability to lose weight as well as the inability to reduce retained water. By adjusting Cortisol, I can potentially improve the appearance of not only treated areas but also the appearance of areas we don’t even address.
These are but a few of the examples where hormone modulation can improve not only surgical results but also your overall health. Keep in mind that the science I bring to this comes not only from what I have learned through my Fellowship but also through my own personal experience training for a highly competitive Bodybuilding competition.
I am taking BEAUTY by BUFORD in a completely new and exciting direction that I feel will benefit patients not only during their healing but also for years to come. I also feel that this will be the exact approach Plastic Surgeons will be introducing in the future to achieve results far greater than what we are seeing now. I am excited to work with you to achieve benefits on the outside as well as the inside and look forward to your comments and insights. To help prepare you for your greatest years ahead, I am adding a more robust section on Optimal Wellness, Fitness, and Nutrition that will educate you to not only what works but also what does not. The vast amount of information available to you regarding your health can be overwhelming. My job is to sort out the good from the bad and deliver to you what you need to know to accomplish the greatest years of your life.
Thank you again for your continued support. I look forward to working with you. To contact me directly, please call my office at 303.747.6719 or email me directly at drbuford@beautybybuford.com
In the words of a very wise man:
“And in the end, it is not the years in your life but the life in your years that matters.”
-Abraham Lincoln