Facing Summer

Most women (and men) who reach a certain age would sell their souls for younger skin. Before meeting with Mephistopheles, check out these face treatments.

Zap-a-Dee-Doo-Dah
No one warned me about the handsome quotient of Southampton dermatologist Elliott Weiss. Suffice it so say that when I walked into his office, my heart skipped a beat. When I could stop ogling his chiseled face, I was able to focus, somewhat, on what he was saying. Did I mention he’s a Harvard grad?

What brought me to see Dr. Weiss was his association with legendary dermatologist Roy Geronemus, New York’s laser king. Weiss runs the Southampton outpost of the Laser & Skin Surgery Center of New York. On the forefront of laser treatments, both doctors have pioneered much of the equipment used in their practice. Weiss is also Clinical Assistant Professor of Dermatology at the Weil Cornell Department of Dermatology.

I was in search of a major improvement to my face and he spelled out the options. Weiss is quite keen on Fraxel DUAL, his most popular procedure, which he describes as “refreshing the skin.” He employs two wavelengths. One goes deep to trigger collagen production and diminish fine lines and scars. The second removes sun damage for smooth and even skin tone. What’s not to like? And yet, I’m after dramatic results. DUAL is for patients who don’t want to “be out of commission.” After a few days of swelling and looking “bronzed,” you’re party ready.

My lined and sagging flesh needs the big guns. I point out the vertical lines above my top lip, the result of a lifetime of talking. (Is there any way to shut up?) And the forest of etchings around my bottom lip that look like a Rembrandt drawing. So the doctor kicks it up a notch and tells me about Fraxel re:pair, a CO2 laser that not only heats the sub-dermal tissue (like the DUAL), but vaporizes it. When he lets loose that my skin will bleed and ooze afterward, it is music to my ears. A long downtime is, as they say, just what the doctor ordered. I will be housebound for a full week – Scrabble anyone? — and red for some time afterward. The more ugliness now, the more beauty later is my motto.

By barraging the deeper layers of skin with “microscopic injuries,” re:pair demolishes such indignities as tattoos and crows feet while also tightening the flesh. Known as the “gold standard” of skin resurfacing, results are immediate and progressive; it’s the gift that keeps giving, continuing to work its magic for three to six months and lasting years. Weiss worked on the clinical trials for the device, which helped get FDA approval. Says Weiss: “For fine lines or scars, our laser center has demonstrated that fractional ablative resurfacing (Fraxel re:pair) is the safest most effective treatment for most patients,” says Weiss, adding, “Our center is the most cutting edge facility in the East End.” laserskinhamptons.com

Dr. Peel Good
I can’t stop looking at my face. The skin is aglow, almost shiny (in a good way). My cheeks are abloom. (What would Jane Austen write about them, I wonder?) I have just left Spa Hamptons, a candlelit refuge in a private Southampton house, and am gazing at my face in the rearview mirror with such intensity that I’m afraid I’ll get into a fender bender.

Spa Hamptons is the beauty haven of Bobbi Terzi, a lovely and vivacious medical aesthetician whose clientele includes Southampton’s ladies who lunch and a roster of celebrities including a famous Hamptons fashion designer. Yes, she can do the usual pampering spa facials, but she also performs “all levels of medical peels, natural and chemical.”

My head is awhirl as she lists the various peels she can perform. There’s a fruit salad of options: pomegranate, papaya, pumpkin. Or other more elaborate names: salicylic, glycolic, BX Lift, Jessner. She also wields a microdermabrasion wand connected to a $30,000 machine. “Not lightweight.” And she uses “wave lights” to push products deep into the skin — blue for healing acne and red for stimulating collagen. “It all sounds like a science experiment,” she says. “But there is no doubt you will come out looking better than before.”

She chooses the treatment based on skin type. Using both the healing essence of plant extracts and medical-grade skin care products, she works with patients with scars, hyperpigmentation or who have sun damage, acne or wrinkles.

For my first visit she applies Neova, a light peel of glycolic and lactic acids to turn over cells to allow fresh ones to come to the surface. Always ready with a quip, she refers to new cells as “rising to the occasion.” It will also allow her to “get to know” my skin. “I like to control the process by doing it in stages.”

For regular clients, she often changes products in order to “fool the skin.” On my second visit she gets down to business, employing her strongest weapon: the Vi Peel, a concentrated blend of chemicals that is so powerful it contains a pain-defying anesthetic that confers a light numbing and tingling. This “super-duper peel diminishes deep wrinkles and discoloration. Your new skin comes to the rescue,” she says.

I’m amazed at how my forehead lines seem to shrink and at how plump and glowing the skin is. She recommends it once or twice a year. Alas, it won’t dissolve those furrows between my eyes called “elevenses.” For that she calls in the help of Smithtown plastic surgeon Lloyd Landsman, who is on hand to inject her patients with such potions as Botox or fillers. spahamptons.com

Stick It To Me
It all started with an empress in the Sung Dynasty. “Acupuncture has been used to treat skin complaints and reduce signs of aging for centuries,” says Susan Krieger at her modern Water Mill home where she treats patients. (She also makes house calls and has a Manhattan office.) Krieger has spent years developing her own version of the “acupuncture facelift,” which she calls Facial
Rejuvenation Acupuncture.

Krieger is an internationally recognized practitioner and teacher of Chinese Medicine, Acupuncture, and Ki-Shiatsu-Asian Bodywork. Her nonsurgical treatment, she says, can improve muscle tone, increase collagen production, and tighten pores, while improving circulation and moisture. It can also diminish lines and lift sagging skin.

On my face she applies a “special lotion” to increase oxygen and blood flow. She gently and painlessly inserts hair-thin needles into my head, face, and hands. I feel a wave of relaxation wash over me. “People love the treatment,” she says. “It’s their time to decompress and be taken care of.”
Her process is a double whammy. While the needles are doing their thing to the face, she employs acupressure to your “core,” her healing hands stimulating the body’s meridians “to enhance your face and strengthen your individual health concerns.” This work is customized, based on answers to her questionnaire.

When she’s done I look in the mirror. While there is no change in lines after only one treatment, my skin looks noticeably brighter and more radiant, the color more even. “People get this before a gala,” she says, “for more glowing skin.” As benefits are cumulative, she recommends a series of between seven and 10, depending on skin type and damage. By the end “you’re holding the facelift. Then you need to only come in for maintenance every month or so.”

“Susan Krieger’s ability to make such a difference in reducing my facial puffiness and lines is extraordinary,” says one of her Southampton patients. susankriegerhealth.com