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Breast augmentation has been a long-standing, popular solution towards improving one’s body image, restoring the breasts size and shape into a more symmetrical, aesthetically-pleasing form. When it comes to enhancing the breasts, this procedure can be more than just an improvement – it can transform a person’s entire self-image and impact their lives in dramatic ways. Breast augmentation has become a relatively accessible procedure, but for many women considering this alteration, it can be a difficult and challenging task to decide on. If you’re considering breast augmentation, then we’re here to outline some key reasons and features of the procedure for helping you decide whether breast augmentation is right for you.

Reasons to Get a Breast Augmentation

Most often, surgeons will assess your candidacy based on your medical history, your ideal goals, and how the procedure will impact the body. As a patient, it’s essential to fully understand your reasons before proceeding, as these reasons are vital towards having a successful procedure. For many women, the reasons vary from simple aesthetics to medical needs, with some of those reasons including:

• Breast Asymmetry: For those with asymmetry noticeable, breast augmentation can create a more balanced look.
• Small Breasts: For some women, having larger, balanced breasts can be a cosmetic choice.
• Mastectomies: After battling breast cancer, losing breasts can result in a loss of femininity and self-esteem.
• Sagging Breasts: Significant weight loss and pregnancy can contribute to sagging skin, loss of volume, and an overall flabby appearance.
• Self-Confidence: Many women often choose breast augmentation because it can help improve their confidence and self-image.

Communicating With Your Surgeon

Through any consultation, you’ll be asked about your reasons for considering breast augmentation. With the numerous options presented, it’s essential to advocate for your needs, what you’re comfortable with, and how you believe having a breast augmentation will improve your life. For many women, achieving the best results comes with properly communicating what they need, what their surgeon can perform, understanding what the procedure contains, and discussing the operative decisions that impact the surgery’s overall success. Some tips to help speak to your surgeon include:

• Background Checks: Asking your surgeon about their experience performing breast surgery can provide you with a great deal of assurance when looking at the surgery outcome. Understanding the areas they specialize in can give you a good idea of how the outcome will appear and how they can help you with future surgeries and checkups.
• Personal History: Talk to your surgeon about your previous surgeries, how your body has responded to those surgeries, and other relevant medical histories that could impact your candidacy for breast augmentation. Some medical conditions, such as diabetes, can disqualify you from the surgery due to the extensive amount of blood flow needed to encourage healing.
• Procedure Techniques: Your surgeon’s techniques have a heavy impact on the surgical outcome. Understanding your surgery’s details and what the recovery time looks like will provide you with a better outlook for the surgery.
• Reasonable Expectations: Lastly, setting reasonable expectations for the overall look and appearance will help put you more at ease for the surgery. Breast augmentation is meant to aid people’s self-image and confidence and rely heavily on expecting less than perfect outcomes to make it successful.

Dermal fillers have helped people feel more confident and attractive with their appearance; for those concerned with the shape of their lips, dermal lip fillers can improve the lip’s fullness, symmetry, and overall appearance by using hyaluronic acid, a type of acid that penetrates the dermis layer of the skin and adds volume and smoothness. Dermal fillers provide people with numerous benefits, but often due to unethical practices and faked products, many have become victim to mishandled procedures that often lead to infections. Under the practices of the organizations such as the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery, dermal lip fillers require ethically sourced, FDA-approved products that can achieve these results with precision in mind.

What Products Are Safe For Lip Fillers?

Plastic and reconstructive surgery requires a significant amount of experience practicing and handling these situations, and thus choosing the right products for patients makes a huge difference. Studies such as those found in the Journal of Cutaneous and Aesthetic Surgery often review such products’ efficacy and safety containing hyaluronic acid. These various fillers have to be approved by the FDA to be incorporated into plastic surgery practices.

For many plastic surgeons, the use of dermal lip fillers often comes down to a select few:

• Restylane: The Restylane brand has been a popular and highly trusted dermal filler for plastic surgeons, as the filler aims to reduce fine wrinkles and creases within the skin. Restylane is also commonly used for lip volume and can create a more desirable contour. Restylane Silk, another variety from the brand, is the only FDA-approved dermal filler used to correct fine lines around the mouth and enhance lips.
• Radiesse: Radiesse provides natural-looking treatment for patients looking for long-term solutions of up to 1-2 years. Radiesse aims to stimulate the body’s natural collagen to produce new skin cells, and for the lips, Radiesse can provide long-lasting volume due to its nontoxic, hypoallergenic formula.
• Juvaderm: As one of the most trusted dermal filler brands, Juvaderm provides very similar results as Restylane and Radiesse, as it focuses on the cheeks, lips, and areas around the mouth. Approved back in 2006, Juvaderm’s results can last up to two years, and its varieties provide specialization to areas such as the lips with the names such as Volbella XC and Ultra XC.
• BellaFill: BellaFill, while less known, uses a collagen and polymethyl methacrylate base to treat acne scarring and treat facial contours of the mouth. It reduces the look of wrinkles, was approved by the FDA back in 2006, and has lasting results of up to five years.

Why Choose Dermal Lip Fillers

Dermal fillers require substantial review and testing before spreading out into the market, often because of the risks involved with lip enhancements. Lip enhancements require experienced surgeons that earned their medical degrees from accredited universities to help patients enhance their facial features and reconstruct the body back to health, giving them confidence in the process.

One of the most disturbing revelations about NXIVM’s inner sex cult was the ritual branding of female “slaves.” Now that most of those women, like India Oxenberg, have reclaimed their lives, will they have to carry that mark with them for the rest of their lives?

BY GINA TRON

By now, it’s basically common knowledge that members of the inner sex ring within NXIVM got branded with the initials of group leader Keith Raniere. But now that many of those women have left the group and reclaimed their lives, will they be forever stuck with that mark on their bodies?

India Oxenberg was one such former member who got branded on her pelvic area with the initials of Raniere, who on Tuesday was sentenced to 120 years in federal prison for a slew of charges, including sex crimes. Oxenberg became involved in NXIVM, an organization ostensibly devoted to unlocking human potential through a curriculum centered around behavioral and psychological modification, when she was just 19. While it began with expensive courses, by age 24 she was recruited into a secret group within NXIVM known as DOS, which prosecutors said was a sex cult.

Members of DOS subjugated themselves to a higher-ranking “master,” and were required to regularly turn over collateral, or blackmail material — typically including nude photos or potentially damaging personal information — to ensure secrecy and loyalty. These “slaves” were also expected to recruit other women to serve underneath them, in a pyramid scheme-like structure. At the top of the hierarchy was Raniere, with whom some DOS victims were coerced into having sex during their time in the group.

Members were also ritualistically branded around the pelvis with Raniere’s initials. The brands were carved onto the women with a cauterizing pen, a medical device used for surgeries which can cut through flesh, as the women lay naked and prone on a table. DOS “slaves” would take turns holding each of the other members down on a table — no anesthetic was applied during the procedure — as a resident physician carved the initials into their skin. Many survivors recall the smell of burnt flesh during the DOS indoctrination ceremonies.FULL EPISODEWatch ‘NXIVM: Self Help or Sex Cult?’ From ‘E! True Hollywood Story’ Now

In “Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult,” a four-part docuseries on stars that explores Oxenberg’s NXIVM experience (and which she serves as an executive producer for), she visits a plastic surgeon in New York City to discuss the removal of her brand.

“We can give you some options,” Dr. John E. Sherman told her. “Sometimes there are none. Over my 40 years as a plastic surgeon, I haven’t seen this type of brand.”

He told her that the branding had depigmented her skin, and there was no remedy for that.

Sherman said that her only option was surgical, and the process would be drawn out. He explained that they could gradually remove the scarred area, bit by bit. He would start out by removing a sliver of the brand and then closing it up. He’d give her about six months to heal before removing another piece. In the end, she would still be scarred, but it would be surgical scar instead of the NIXVM mark.

Sarah Edmondson, a former DOS member who exposed the group in a 2017 New York Times story, testified during Raniere’s sentencing that she needed plastic surgery to get her brand removed.

“Branding is actual scarring that cannot be removed,” Dr. Brian A. Pinsky, a plastic surgeon at Long Island Plastic Surgical Group told Oxygen.com. “This would have to be completely cut off surgically which could be disfiguring, create bigger scars, or require a skin graft  Other options such as dermabrasion may soften or flatten the brand, but won’t get rid of it.”

He added that “covering the brand with a tattoo is always an option.”

A spokesperson for Starz told Oxygen.com that India ultimately decided to get a tattoo instead of opting for the surgical process.

“I designed a tattoo around the brand,” she described to Vanity Fair. “It’s this mandala-type shape and an evil eye pointing outward. Around, it says ‘en quora en para,’ which means ‘still learning.’ For me, it’s about reclaiming that part of my body so I didn’t have to look at myself naked and see Keith’s initials. I see something that I want, that I’ve placed on myself.”

Article From Oxygen.com: https://www.oxygen.com/true-crime-buzz/how-ex-nxivm-members-branded-with-keith-ranieres-initials-are-dealing-with-mark