Make Sure to research your Surgeon!!

A 30-year-old transgender woman with no apparent medical training was arrested in Miami Gardens, Fla., on Nov. 18 - after a year of eluding authorities - for practicing medicine without a license with serious bodily injury. In May 2010,

Oneal Ron Morris (pictured) allegedly injected substances including cement, glue and tire sealant into a woman as part of a buttocks enhancement "procedure" that landed the victim in Tampa General Hospital, according to the Nov. 22 online edition of USA Today.

The victim, who says she was referred to Morris by a friend, reportedly paid $700 for the series of injections. Additional medical bills are accumulating due to ongoing health issues that also prevent the victim from working. No other information on the victim was available.

Medical personnel in the Miami suburb alerted authorities after speaking with the victim about her experience. "The doctors knew no licensed physician in his right mind would ever do this," Miami Gardens Police Sgt. Bill Bamford told the newspaper.

Sgt. Bamford said Morris told the woman, "`Oh don't worry, you'll be fine. We just keep injecting you with the stuff and it all works itself out.'"

Morris regularly moved locations in south Florida to avoid arrest after an investigation by the Florida Department of Health, USA Today reported. An investigator with knowledge of Morris' addresses found his auto outside one of them during a routine drive-by and subsequently arrested the suspect.

Additional possible victims are beginning to come forward, the New York Daily News reported on Nov. 23.

Although this story is extreme and most patients realize to avoid these types of "practicioners" this illustrates the point that patients must know the credentials and training their plastic surgeon has! anotherwords make sure your surgeon is really a surgeon and skilled and trained in plastic surgery. There are lots of different injectables out there and I do specialize in a procedure to enhance the buttocks, called a Brazilian Butt Lift, but I use your bodies own fat to augment your buttocks and this will give you long lasting safe! results, please call either office if you are intereseted in buttock enhancement by a board certified plastic surgeon.

Plastic Surgery Obsession

I recently came across a very interesting article related to obsession with Plastic surgery. I rarely come across individuals with this obsession but have in the past. the far majority of my patient's are men or woman that are looking for self improvement for there own benefit, not for an individual or society. This is an often discussed topic but plastic surgery obsession is rarely seen. I always ask patients why they are seeking a surgery to improve their appearance if there are not obvious reasons readible visible.
I also perform lots of reconstructive procedures and there is a striking similarity to patients that are going thru the reconstructive process and those that are seeking surgery to improve their appearnce, i.e. cosmetic surgery. Reconstructive patients have had there body changed by a disease process or trauma, cosmetic surgery patient's bodies have been altered by time or pregnancies or weight gains or multiple other causes and wish to restore their previous appearance. Very similar desires in my eyes.

The Fine Line Between Self-Improvement and Obsession

By Chelsea Mize



The term addiction has become applicable to numerous habits and vices these days. Sex addiction, Internet addiction, plastic surgery addiction. But how can you define addiction when applied to a behavior that in moderation is acceptable, even encouraged? As Marcel Daniels, MD, a Long Beach, Calif-based board-certified plastic surgeon, says, “Calling any repetitive behavior an ‘addiction’ has become fashionable. Notice how we suddenly have all these sexual addicts when previously it was merely felt to be an expression of Darwinian behavior.”



Sex, as opposed to, say, heroin, is a normal, healthy practice—in fact, if you’re not having sex, people tend to think there’s something amok. So, when is someone addicted to sex? The same goes for the Internet. The only people not spending many, many hours on the Internet in our society are considered backwards. How much is too much?



This question is particularly apropos when considering plastic surgery. Daniels says, “The subject of addiction in and of itself and with regards to plastic surgery is controversial.”



With celebrities like Heidi Montag, Joan Rivers, Cher, and Jocelyn Wildenstein making headlines by eliminating fine lines and wrinkles (and maybe getting a breast augmentation, some lipo…and some other nips and tucks), it’s easy to believe that Botox and boob jobs have some seriously addictive properties. After all, why else would an already attractive person like Montag go through so much to change herself into some kind of distorted Barbie? Then again, what if Heidi were totally happy with her new self? Would the media and her family be so quick to condemn her surgical alterations if she herself weren’t so clearly dissatisfied? Can you classify a habit as an addiction if it genuinely results in self-improvement?



Take, for instance, someone like Cher. She’s had some plastic surgery, which nobody can deny. But, she still looks pretty darn good for her age, and nobody’s really calling her an addict. Maybe part of what makes Montag "an addict" is that she’s young and she had so many procedures in such a short time. But why does age have an impact on addiction? And for that matter, why does someone who crams all their doses into one day have any more of a problem that somebody who has the same amount of surgery over a span of years?



Shervin Naderi, MD, a Washington, DC-area facial plastic surgeon, suggests, “There is no ‘number’ that signifies a threshold for becoming addicted to plastic surgery. A person who has never had a single procedure but constantly obsesses about his or her face and is constantly on chat rooms and spends an excessive amount of daily time thinking about his or her face is more concerning than the person who has had four successful cosmetic surgeries with nice and natural results.”



With this in mind, it would seem that the psychological concerns associated with plastic surgery are not so much its potential addictiveness, but rather insecurities with body image that go far below the surface. Excessive amounts of plastic surgery might just be a manifestation of a mental disease such as Body Dysmorphic Disorder. In this case, it seems that the procedures themselves have no addictive quality.

Botox Resistance

Some patients claim a resistance to Botox and this is a recent article about how to overcome this resistance
Botox is an effective injection method for diminishing certain undesired facial expressions. For the vast majority of patients, it works very well and will continue to do so with endless repeat treatments. But there is a very small percent of patients who either don’t respond well or find that ongoing treatments become less effective. In many of these cases, the source of the problem is how the Botox was reconstituted, its age, and how it was injected. But this doesn’t apply to all of these ineffective patients; the problem likely lies in their receptiveness to the Botox molecule.

A new medication designed to treat these ineffective Botox patients is now available. Zytaze is a zinc and phytase prescription medication that is used prior to Botox treatment. It was studied in the medical condition of blepharospasm, which is uncontrolled eyelid twitching, and is one of the original FDA-approved uses of Botox from the early 1990s. 

In a series of 44 blepharospasm patients who responded poorly to Botox injections, control of their blepharospasma was difficult to achieve. In these patients, Zytaze was given in oral tablet form 4 days prior to Botox injections. The study shows that 93% of the patients improved the effect of their Botox injections or how long they last. 

No explanation was provided for the mechanism as to why this supplement would be effective or how it works. Furthermore, whether its effectiveness in blepharospasm would translate to the more widespread use for the treatment of undesired facial expressions is unclear. One would assume that it would since it is not only a facial muscle but an associated periocular muscle, as well.

For patients suffering from Botox "fatigue" or resistance, Zytaze oral medication may be worthwhile to try. But don’t think that taking it will make the Botox last longer—unless the patient exhibits less effectiveness than what you had shown previously.