439: Botched Beauty: When Anti-Aging Goes Too Far & What to Do Instead with Dr. Terry Dubrow

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. This is Well, a podcast about wellness in all its forms. I'm Arielle Laurie, and each week I'm sharing unfiltered conversations with the people shaping how we feel, live, and look. Come for the substance, stay for the honesty, and leave with the tools to be well inside and out. I am very excited about today's episode. I'm talking to Dr. Terry Dubrow. He is a board-certified plastic surgeon. I'm sure many of you are familiar with him from the Botched series, Botched and Botched by Nature, maybe even the Swan 20 years ago, which we talk about pretty in depth in this episode. I think he shares things that he may not have shared anywhere else about what really happened behind the scenes of that show. He's also the co-host of the Between Us podcast with his wife, Heather Dubrow. But what I love about this conversation is that it's not a typical aesthetics, do this, not that kind of conversation. It's really a big picture look at how aesthetics has evolved over the last few decades and maybe what we've gotten right, where we kind of went off the rails and where it's headed next. And that part in particular, I found to be really, really fascinating, really encouraging. Dr. Dubrow shares that what we look like now may be what we look like for the foreseeable future because of all of the advancements in aesthetics and technology coming our way in the next few years. So it's less trends and more perspective. And we just had such a great time talking to each other. You guys know I could talk about this stuff all day long. And he was so energetic. and I love his humor and his attitude and perspective. And he has so much experience, which was just so interesting to hear. He's really just had such a crazy career over the last few decades in surgery, and he has seen it all. So please enjoy Dr. Terry Dubrow. I'm somebody who's been very open about the fact that I've had procedures done over the years. and once you get in that cycle you start to nitpick more or at least for me like my experience was that the more I realized I could fix the more I was aware of what I could fix and I I have a totally different attitude and approach to that now and I actually heard you talking on another podcast and you were like it is a trauma you know I think we especially in LA have this blase attitude towards cosmetic surgery. I had it for sure until I experienced a complication from something else. And that like kind of changed my trajectory. But, you know, you were like, you're putting somebody into a chemical coma. You're putting a scalpel to them. I have your exact words. Yeah. You're pulling skin, you're cutting skin, you're cauterizing skin, and you're stitching them up. Like, hello. I mean, even in the best hands, under the best circumstances, it's going to go south. And every plastic surgeon that you've heard of who's had great success and who does a lot of famous people, they've all had those results. Every single one where you go, oh my gosh. And if you could see a before and after of just those, that small percentage of their patients, you would never have plastic surgery. But mostly it goes well, but that's where I come in when it doesn't go well. Yeah. My friend also was like, every surgery comes with a complication. Whether it's a complication that you notice or not, every surgery comes with a complication. And to your point, I mean, so many people, I think because I've been open about getting surgery in the past and because I've had so many surgeons on my show, people think that I'm some expert in who to go to. I will never make a recommendation. One, because I don't want to have that weight on my shoulders if something does go wrong. And two, exactly what you just said, even the best doctors that do the celebrities that everyone is like oh my god they also have their bad cases as well they do so i'm like i don't know i said to somebody yesterday i don't know like because i hear everyone complain about the quote-unquote best guys too you know so yeah we all have our disasters and i particularly am worried about that because if you think about if you've had multiple surgeries that have gone badly your tissue is very bad and the blood supply and the scarring. So the chance that someone like me who's trying to fix it is going to have a complication is way, way higher. So my complication rate theoretically is much higher. Luckily in 175 episodes of Botch, we've really only had a couple of patients that really didn't work out, that were very problematic. But at the end of the day, we sort of fixed them. But I thought when Paul first came up with the show idea, I thought this is the worst idea ever because you're only judge by your after yeah nobody ever judges you by your before yeah and so even if you have someone who's terrible because they've been ruined and you make them a lot better it doesn't still no one's looking at that starting point no no i mean i think on botch i think people probably do you know if you're missing you're a hole in your face yeah or concrete masses and they're gone and you look good acceptable maybe we get a little credit for that yeah you know why why would somebody have a hole in their face from necrosis yeah i mean if you look at what filler is has done you know the big warning about filler is that it can get into a blood vessel block the blood vessel cut off the blood supply to whatever skin area it supplies and it dies noses tips of noses fall off i've seen the flap you've seen a flap because of filler seared into my brain yes or we had one who was a neurologist she went to some local cosmetic person you know what that means non-plastic surgeon who injected some unknown substance and it literally killed the entire upper cheek gone oh my god and so you've got to steal from this part to put it back here so it's uh it's a very scary game. Yeah. It's dicey. You must like the adrenaline or something. I love it. I'm addicted to it. Yeah. I mean, I went through full general surgery training in my day when you had to. Now plastic surgeons get to go right from med school into a plastic surgery program. Me, you had to go through seven years of general surgery training and do full trauma to be able to go to a plastic surgery program. So I was chief resident general surgery doing gunshot wounds and car accidents. So it's not probably no mistake that I end up doing this kind of very difficult, extreme, risky surgery because I can, I guess, I'm trained to tolerate it. And does that make you feel calm? Like in the moment when you're doing it, are you just like in that flow state? It's a good question. I've always had the ability to lose myself in a moment. And one of the things I've always loved about surgery is, you know, It's just you and that moment and the music in the background. You have to have music during surgery. And it's a really beautiful feeling. Like when you're in a conversation that you're really interested in or watching a movie, that flow moment, you know, that mindfulness of being lost in it. That's one of the things I love about surgery. But then all of a sudden you're dissecting somewhere and you realize, oh my gosh, am I inside of the abdomen in the, where the intestines are because the scar tissue led me there. and all of a sudden you're seeing ilium or the jejunum or, you know, and you say, I'm in the wrong place. And you freak out, you go, okay, get it together. Or you're worried, is the nipple starting to turn blue in the middle of this operation, which is really bad. Yeah. That means the blood supply, that one shred of blood vessel that was keeping alive, you just cut. Oh my God. And now, you know. High stakes. It's high stakes. Yeah. It's high stakes. So, but I've done so much of it. nothing really scares me but then you have to be careful because you don't want to be overconfident either right someone comes in with a disaster i could fix it i could and that's we went through a transition from season three to like four in season where we're like normally i'm not going to try that that's too hard and then season two ago i can do that now in season three we go whoa i think i can pretty much fix anybody and then you realize okay maybe dial it back a little bit buddy. So you don't want to have surgical hubris where your skill set or your interest in helping someone is overwhelmed by how difficult the surgery is or more importantly, how bad the tissue is. We don't do angiograms, but there's no such thing as the ability to say, there's no blood supply here. You have to sort of use your intuition and you're dissecting along and you try to figure out where is the disaster in this? Where can, and then when do you stop? Like what happens if you make it look good? It looks good, but you know this person wants it to look very good, right? You go, gosh, it looks good now. And your nurse and your assistant saying, looks good. And you know, that's like the signal. Yeah. Maybe stop. And you go, well, I can get, you know, a little better. you know i've got a 88 on the test i'm a 93 and then all of a sudden you go for a 93 and everything dies oh god it gets infected and they end up in the hospital oh my god and that's the thing that happens yeah it's like a practice of restraint right it is it is you you try to figure out and then then sometimes you get there you go this is i got an a minus on this it was a F and now it's an A minus and they hate it because it's an A minus. Yeah. Everybody wants an A. Yes. Well, this is another thing. I don't think anybody is ever 100% satisfied. Maybe some people, I don't know. You know, you know more than me, but like from everyone that I know who's gotten a procedure done, including myself. There's always something. Yeah. And it's kind of the nature of what you're doing. You're going in to quote unquote, perfect something or refine something because you see something wrong essentially, or something that could be tweaked or something that could be perfected. And so it's just like the nature of it, I feel like, is such that you're never going to be a hundred percent satisfied. That's why people get themselves in trouble. Exactly. And that's where the spectrum of wanting to look better, being very picky, having true body dysmorphia where do you land on that and maybe you just wanted to look better and well you look better but now you want more and then suddenly you live in the personality disorder of body dysmorphia where it's never going to be good enough yeah and that's where my practice is very challenging because a lot of those people who do have true body dysmorphia who you would never operate on normally they come in destroyed you have to so you say to them you know you kind of have body dysmorphia you're never really going to be happy but i have to help you because you can't live a normal life right now so they say i promise i won't be crazy picky and of course sometimes they are sometimes i fix them and i get them like an a minus and they're back in society and they go back to work and it looks great and they end up going to another plastic surgeon who tweaks it and then they come back crying and it's destroyed again. This is what I want to know. And I'm sure the listener is thinking this too. Who are the doctors and what are their reasons for saying yes? Is it just solely financially motivated? So I don't want to trash doctors because nobody's a bigger fan. I mean, I have a big medical legal career of defending doctors in court all the time. But plastic surgeons as a group, you know, can be very greedy. It's retail medicine. So if you go to 10 plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills, the top guys, not all the top guys, I'm not trashing any of them because I'm in Beverly Hills now, but, and you look good, but you go in asking for like something to do with your nose and your nose is like a really good nose. Nine of them are going to give you a consult and try to get you on their schedule where 10 of them should have said, your nose is really good. You're kind of after. But even in Beverly Hills, even when we're all kind of busy and doing very well, a plastic surgeon generally wants to operate on you, sees you as a pre-op because that's how we make money. We have these expensive offices with these big overheads. And that's one thing nice about being the botch doctor. People come and I go, are you kidding me? You look amazing. Or I'll say to them, Beverly Hills or Los Angeles people sometimes come in and they have a little bit of laxity in their abdominal wall after maybe one kid, but they look great. And I say, they want a tummy tuck. You say, are you really willing to trade a huge scar all the way along the bottom of your abdomen to make your skin just a little bit better? If you say it like that, They'll go, okay, you're right. Maybe after my next kid. But if you say like, oh, I do so many tummy tucks. Let me show you my before and afters. Let me emphasize how great this is. Such an easy case. Straightforward. So straightforward. Yeah, right. This is a chip shot, right? We all have our terminology to sell you the surgery. They're going to sign up when in retrospect, they traded a little bit of laxity for a big long scar that maybe didn't heal well. yeah it's like my friend always says is the juice worth the squeeze that's very good you know i think i just think it's greed i hate to say it i think it's greed yeah because if you if if a plastic surgeon wasn't being paid to do the operation would they recommend that operation do you know what i mean i mean if it was like if it was like going to bono like it was kaiser yeah where Doctors don't get paid for individual cases. They just get paid to do, they turn down tons of surgeries because they don't make money per case. And so I try to treat patients like, even if I was having a slow month, which at this point in my career, I don't care if I like having slow months, right? It's great. But, you know, when you're starting out, you need to operate. You want to get your skill set high. You want to make money. You want to become well-known in the community. you want to operate it so everybody needs surgery you know it's the joke we have is when people say oh I'll never have plastic surgery you know what plastic surgeons call them pre-ops yeah it's so true it's so true isn't it I know a lot of those people myself yeah yeah so I mean right now though this is I don't want to get off topic because I know you want to talk about but we live in the most interesting time in the history of aesthetic medicine, where we're about to undergo what I call the aesthetic escape velocity, where we're going to have treatments, and we do, injections, non-invasive treatments, biomodulators, biostimulators, they're going to basically stop us from aging, or reverse aging faster than we're aging. The biology and the science is going to outweigh the aging process. We certainly have it in longevity. We talked about longevity escape velocity where you could inject these things. But think about it. I mean, you know, the peptide thing is so huge right now. Everybody's into peptides, but it's the wild, wild west. But a lot of them actually do send signals to the body that make your skin potentially really great. They grow hair. They redistribute body composition They take fat off you They put muscle on you We about a year and a half to two years away from everything changing in aesthetic medicine where we going to rather than cut you open, we're going to apply energy delivery devices. We're going to inject things. We're going to take a pill. I mean, if I would have told you 10 years ago, there will be a shot that you take, even if you're really overweight, that you're going to take once a week and inject this tiny little amount of a peptide in you and you're going to lose all your body weight. Yeah. And your appetite's going to be under control and you're not going to want to drink and addiction's going to, you would have said- It might help your compulsive shopping too. Right. You would have said that's never going to happen. Yeah. Here we are. Yeah. Do you know what Eli Lilly's testing right now. There's a new drug that they're testing called retitrutide with myostatin inhibitor. Oh. Which not only makes you lose weight, it makes you grow muscle. No way. And it's fully working. And there's phase two clinical trials. Oh, wow. That is probably two years away from being approved. That's crazy. It is. This is the most. That's a game changer. This is the most awesome time to be alive. if you want to live long, look great. You know, it's funny because these movies that are out there, what's that one with Demi Moore? Oh, The Substance. The Substance. Yeah. Okay. And this new one on FX, The Beauty, right? This is so happening right now. And it really is. You think about all these gym bros that are talking about peptides. You know, people are ending up in the emergency room where paramedics are being called because they're having these terrible reactions. But, you know, there's a big trip. This is happening right now. it's such a fascinating time to be alive. That's why I spend so much time preserving my body and preserving, we call this the meat body and the science of biology, right? Because as soon as these things come out, you have to be preserved enough to have them work on you. Yeah. So even so, you've got to hold out and be as fit as possible because we're just on the cusp of being able to reverse all the effects of aging and the aging process biologically. I keep saying and I keep asking every doctor in the aesthetics world that comes on when they're going to be able to reverse skin back to a certain year. I mean, I know that they're able to reverse cellular age in the skin. Yep. But I know that it's not, you know, they can't do it in humans, risk of cancers and things like that. But that's my North Star. That's the aesthetic. I'm like, I was a tanning bedaholic when I was a teenager. So I'm like, all right, I got the lasers and everything, but like, when are we going to do something where you can actually reverse that? That's the beauty escape velocity that I'm referring to. By the way, within two years, within three years. Amazing. And we're going to use artificial intelligence to do it. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you're aware of what's going on with artificial intelligence. Have you heard of this Malt Book website now? No. Where these chatbots, you can't even go on as a human. Your chatbot is discussing with other chatbots and they're plotting right now. this thing is going on right now and we are not even aware of it oh my god i just know they're going to come and take my job i know that ai is coming to take my job they're infiltrating actually you know this is a total different conversation but like ai influencers i'm starting to see a lot of that trickle into my feeds and a lot of people don't know the difference and it's only going to get better so in my case i have a pretty big skincare company it's called consult health and consult beauty okay so we have ingestibles and topical skincare a lot of plastic surgeons do So I do videos. I go on TikTok. I do all this stuff. 90% of the videos of me online selling skincare is not me. Dr. Dubrow and I are talking in this episode about how we might be able to preserve the way that we look now for a really long time in the future. 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That's P-R-O-L-O-N-L-I-F-E dot com slash blonde to claim your 15% discount and your bonus gift. prolonlife.com slash blonde. i had somebody do a deep fake of me sitting for a podcast with rich roll talking about how this korean sheet mask changed my skin they showed like a younger version of me they i sued them and i won but you can't find who these people are i mean it's like a shell company in new mexico and then whoever they had do this ai thing that's probably somebody that they outsourced in some different company so i sued them and i won damages but it's like how am i ever gonna right so forevermore you're not gonna sue anyone yeah we call well i use it as like when i see other companies do it i message them and i say you need to take this down right now because i have the resources and i will sue you yeah and i'll win like i did with this company right and usually they're like oh my god okay and they take it oh but i can't do all of them it's whack-a-mole it is whack-a-mole yeah It shows me and Heather selling this tightening cream that we do sell. And you send the money to a bank in Hong Kong. Oh, God. And they never send you the product. And then we send them a letter. They go away. And the next day, it's another company. It's crazy. Yeah, I can give you when we're done recording. There is a company and ironically, they use AI, but they're able to scan every website, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, Instagram. And they were only doing like big celebrities and athletes. but now they're doing you're a celebrity but like some of us more like normal oh please i'm normal you're the celebrity but they actually can scan and they're able to like get them taken down pretty quickly because i was just sending out cease and desist left and right which is not sustainable and i'm not like it's just it's but it's going to get even worse it's going to but ai will bring us so many great things allowing i mean you i will you're lucky because you're at an age and the way you look, you can stay this way for the longest time. You'll see, mark my word in the next two years. Okay. We're going to circle back in two years. You're going to have treatments and things that are going to change everything. Oh my God. Like what else? Like, what are we talking? So, I mean, a lot of them, it's going to be the injectables. A lot of them is going to be like the peptides, okay? But there'll be things like these exosomes and stem cells. And you know, with PRP and microneedling and these growth factors, but we will be able to have new collagen form. Right now, you've ever heard of this brand new product called Aloe Clay? A-L-L-O-C-A-L-A-E. So, you know, we like to do nanofat. You take fat from here and you inject it. I did that. Yeah, right? Well, now there's synthetic fat. What about Renuvion? This is the new version of this. Yeah. And so Renuvion goes away. It's sort of variable in its effectiveness. There's new ones that you inject it, it stays. Wow. Yeah. And so that's where we're going to be able to replace tissue. And this is happening right now. Incredible. So it's so exciting. but and younger generations are not going to age at all they're not going to age they're so lucky yeah they really and they're all going to have robots of course true true but i want a robot you want one well don't you don't you want a robot to protect you and do all the things for you yes before robots though we'll get we'll get our own jarvis okay what's that you don't remember from iron man oh yeah yeah when tony stark went in there jarvis and he talked to his ai assistant yeah they have them now it's so crazy yeah you can let them go into your computer but you don't want to do that yet because they may take over and then sell all your stocks or steal from you okay but it's happening right now let's rewind 20 years or so yes we were talking in the beginning about the swan yes were they not allowed to see themselves three months that part to me is insane having had a procedure procedures multiple myself you're in the mirror every single day you're analyzing which maybe for better or worse I mean maybe it's better if you're not seeing yourself at all but I would imagine that that would be such a difficult part of the process so it's hard to believe that they actually didn't see themselves for three months but you know what we did we put them in a apartment complex in Marina del Rey with nurses and guards and we fogged up all their mirrors, even the spoons and the silverware were matte. So they couldn't do this. Okay. Which was, we thought really weird, but you know, the whole idea with the swan was they're going to work on their internal and not have to worry about the healing and the external. The side effect for us was it was awesome because, you know, in the post-operative period, everybody's coming and saying, oh my gosh, this brow is two millimeters lower. And what about the swelling that's on this side that's not on the they never saw any of my doctors nuts they never saw any of that yeah so it was like this is wonderful but I remember the friend of mine you know when we started this one she hired me first she interviewed 50 plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills in Orange County she hired me she says who do you want to do the show with you I said my trainer my dentist the other surgeon I trained with the UCLA hire him so she hired my whole people my whole team and i remember i'm hanging out with the trainer and he's training them and i saw one of the swans they're in the parking lot walking to the gym and they're going like this in the mirror and i go hey stop that so they really didn't see themselves for three months but what was super weird was the day of the reveal when the curtains opened and they saw themselves and you know they were supposed to go like this oh i love it thank you so much you know we're sitting back there going please love it what if they hate it and you know it takes you a while to get used to your result in plastic surgery and arguably everybody hates the result to a certain degree and at three months are you really completely done especially when you're doing that much that volume way too much surgery yeah and so some of them would go the curtain would open and it's on Fox, right? After American Idol when there wasn't, you know, it wasn't even Bravo didn't even exist back then. It was just like few stations and everybody, I mean. 20 million viewers. After, American Idol was our leader. Can you imagine? I mean, it's funny because after the first episode, the next day I walked into a restaurant and everybody in the restaurant knew who I was. Oh my God. Now you could be on a show for 10 years and not necessarily unless it's a big, you know, famous show. but it was just oh they would open the the curtain they would look in themselves and they go oh you go cut and the producers would all run in that's sort of not the reaction we were looking for take two and they go they open the mirror and go oh and then they go cut cut and then finally they just go, can you just give us a, oh, this is the best. And I would imagine it's a huge shock. I mean, well, think about how much surgery we did. We would never do that much surgery today, right? That was like, what are we talking like 12, 15 hours? I never did that. Okay. I never did that. I mean, I mean the other plastic surgeon, he and I used to argue because he would do that. And I would say, don't do that because if you have a giant complication, we're going to be on the cover of time magazine with you know our little promo video of promo pics going reality tv has gone too far the swan You know I was having nightmares So I said at least keep it under eight hours you know So I always try to keep it under seven or eight because the optics of 12 hours is bad if you have a giant complication. It just sounds like, even if the science isn't true, but the science is kind of true to go that long, it's a bad idea. But it just doesn't pass the sniff test. If you have a giant complication and your patient ends up in the hospital after 12 hours, you look like a fool as a plastic surgeon. Yeah. And you're being greedy. It's like you knew better. You could do better. So I always split it into two. But truth be told, I would do seven hours of facial surgery, wait two weeks, and then do seven hours of body surgery. Oh my God. But they were young and they were all healthy. You know, they were all in their 20s or 30s. And I think only one patient on the SWAN temporarily ended up in the hospital with some kind of question mark of a blood clot in their leg and they didn't have it. So we got away with it. Today could never be done today. I don't know. Well, the message, the message is going to take the ugly ducklings, right? Is that what they call them? So mean, it's so mean. It's so body negative, you know, and by the way, we're going to take you ugly ducklings who aren't good enough. Yeah. And then we're going to operate on you. And then we're going to give you therapy. no we're gonna give you therapy but here it gets worse i don't know if you remember this part okay so each week you're gonna compete against one of the other swans and whoever made the bigger transformation would go on to a beauty pageant where you'd compete against other swans and the loser would go more surgery no the loser would go home and be like depressed and hate your plastics or I hate your life and why did I do this? It's a bad idea. Have they followed up with any of those people? They have. By the way, they have. Surprisingly happy. Okay, good. Surprisingly. Everyone who's coming for us in the comments. We just had the 20th anniversary of the swan and you would think that there'd be two or three or four who go, they talked me into it and of course we never did but we were very i mean as surgeons we were very scared because we didn't want it to look like you know it was unethical and we were pushing the limits even though we were but back then it was also a very different time i mean back then they had shows like who's your daddy yeah you know they would find your long lost biologic parent and surprise you with them it's like just every And then they had, you know, her, whatever Llamas' name. Oh. Not Fernando Llamas, his good looking. Lorenzo. He'd sit there and they'd have people on a stage in a bikini and a laser pointer going, yeah, you got a little cellulite on your left buttock area. Not good enough. Okay, next. I mean, terrible. Totally different era that we were living in. Yeah. It's a much better time now. Yeah. Yeah. But I remember like at the time thinking, wow, they look amazing. Like it was really good work. They did every once in a while, not my cases, but every once in a while, it looked a little too extreme and I'd go, Oh, where'd they park their spaceship? I mean, it's just, you know, they looked a little and particularly, you know, uncanny. Yeah. And they were still in the midst of the swelling and maybe things hadn't settled yet, but by and large, they were extraordinarily happy. And look at all the free plastic surgery they got. I mean, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth. They got plastic surgery, therapy, dentistry. Wow. That's not cheap. Oh, the dentistry was like $75,000 back then. Yeah. You know, whole mouth reconstruction. So it was a show you would never do now. It's funny because they tried to do the celebrity swan. No way. Shortly thereafter, we were going to take down and out celebrities. And I sort of tentatively agreed to that. But I mean, think about a down and out celebrity. yeah as a psychological candidate for a full head they usually have some co-occurring disorders going on there yeah probably not a great idea luckily they didn't go forward that show in fact when botched got picked up for the first season i attentively agreed to do celebrity swan and i had told e that hey i might do this they go well we're gonna pick up botched by the it wasn't called botched in the beginning what was it called it was called can i cuss on this yeah it's called nip fucked i think i vaguely remember that you know the show nip tuck it was one of my favorite shows yeah great show i started watching it again recently great show like wow yeah that probably wouldn't fly either yeah julian mcdonald yeah yeah so it was called nip f asterisk k-e-d and then we thought this is a great name and then a week before the show was set to premiere they call us they go no the advertisers don't like it so we're changing the name we said what we're changing it to botch we go botched that's because that implies that the doctor yeah the doctors are all gonna hate us yeah we're identifying whoever there did it botch them and then we thought and then worse what if we have a complication botched by the botched doctor setting ourselves up turns out to be you know yeah great name and then there were a lot of offsets right botched by nature botched by nature yeah botched by nature was a really good show Paul and I went around the country knock on people's doors and they'd have you know one tiny breast one gigantic breast and walk in and go hi we're here in New Jersey we're gonna save you and we did that and botched at the same time okay so for a year and a half all i was doing i would i didn't even have a regular practice it was just doing botched tv it's weird fun though we did botched post-op my wife was the host yeah it's been fun yeah i'm like this seems like the greatest job ever you know i got so lucky i don't know how this stuff happened to me maybe because i'm a nice guy or something and I have good karma. But all this sort of wonderful stuff, I mean, it comes with, you know, a lot of scary things that can go on. You know, if a patient's not happy with my surgery, they can always say, you know, I'm going to expose you, you're a terrible surgeon. I'm going to put it out there that you botched me. Yeah, anybody's got a microphone now. Just, you know, film themselves on TikTok and say Terry Dubrow's the worst. It's like, okay. But that's the world we live in. They can do that to you. they can do it to me too yeah yeah yeah and they do it's got to be good mood yeah well you know yeah i don't want anyone i mean have you seen the spectacular implosion of dr atia right now do you know yeah i mean i've never seen such a spectacular destruction of a brand yeah overnight and someone who was so beloved and had so much to offer. And so, wow. Massive. Massive. And it's just a car crash of galactic proportions and probably deserved to a certain degree, but very scary time to be a well-known person. I mean, this is such a tangent, but I was talking to my cousin today about the whole thing with Savannah Guthrie and her mom, and nobody knows what's happening yet but obviously there's some kind of ransom involved or something and I'm like that makes me want to delete my social media and live off the grid and I don't want anyone to know who I am because obviously somebody I think the FBI was saying that someone was stalking her for a while to know her whereabouts and her habits and all and I'm just like oh well it's funny I was doing silly tiktoks with my wife yesterday okay can you hard work but someone's got it I mean you know We're going chicken banana. I'm like board certified in general surgery, plastic surgery and obesity medicine. I'm chicken banana, chicken banana. It's ridiculous. And he says to me, OK, let's go do our TikToks. And I thought, yeah, I don't want to be known anymore. I just want to go climb in a hole and just have, you know, scroll. Yes. Anyway, it's a very weird time to be a public figure. in this episode we are talking about how we are going to preserve our faces and our bodies as we age moving into the future with a lot of new technologies but there is something that i have been doing that has been such a game changer for me and that is my red light face mask from bond charge so red and near infrared light have been studied for their ability to support collagen and elastin production which is obviously huge when it comes to skin texture and overall even over time. I like to use it for about 10 to 15 minutes a day. I habit stack it with my morning meditation, so I never miss either one of them. And what I love about the Bond Charge mask in particular is that it is super lightweight. It doesn't get hot. It's easy to stay consistent with, which is really the whole point. And consistency is what actually preserves results. So what I also appreciate is that Bond Charge removed blue and green light, which can be disruptive to circadian rhythm and you can switch between red light and near infrared in one device. You can also use them simultaneously. You can adjust the intensity and it's zero flicker, zero EMF and designed to be used regularly without irritation. So for me, this isn't about an overnight transformation. It's about supporting my collagen. It's about maintaining my collagen and elasticity. It's smoothing uneven tone and just playing the long game with skin health, especially as I age. So if you want to check it out, go to bondcharge.com and use the code blonde to save 15%. That's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E.com, code blonde for 15% off. As we get older, one of the biggest changes in skin is not just collagen loss, it is water retention. Our skin literally becomes less efficient at holding onto moisture, which is why things can suddenly look flat, dull, and even more lined, even if you're using great topicals, which can be so, so frustrating. And this is what made me really interested initially in Rituals Hyacera. So Hyacera works from the inside out to help replenish the lipids and ceramides that naturally decline with age. Ceramides are a huge part of your skin's moisture barrier. They are basically what helps your skin hold water, not just temporarily hydrate it. And when those levels drop, moisture escapes more easily. Skin can start to look dehydrated no matter how much you are layering on. And Hyacera combines bioavailable ceramides with clinically studied hyaluronic acid, supporting hydration at a deeper level, not just surface glow, but real moisture retention over time. In clinical studies, people saw improvements in skin smoothness, elasticity, and radiance within 90 days, which pretty much tracks with what I have noticed personally. I've been taking it for at least six months, probably longer, maybe around nine months, and my skin definitely feels more supple, more hydrated, more balanced, and resilient. So for me, this is about supporting my skin as it changes, especially as I age instead of fighting it. And if you want to try it, you can start Hyacera to support your glow without compromising on clean science. For a limited time, save 25% off your first month at ritual.com slash blonde. That's ritual.com slash blonde. This episode is brought to you by Wild Grain. And let me tell you, if you love the idea of baking sourdough or baking and cooking at home in general without actually committing to being a full-time bread person, this is for you. And this is my latest obsession, if I'm being totally honest. So one of my favorite things lately has been pulling real sourdough bread out of my oven. It is so satisfying. It's warm, it's crusty, it's bakery level without mixing dough, feeding a starter or planning days in advance. So Wild Grain is a bake from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal pastries, and fresh pastas. And everything bakes in about 25 minutes or less. So this is a game changer for those slow weekend mornings or if you're having friends over. And what I really appreciate is that they use really simple ingredients and a slow fermentation process, which makes their sourdough easier to digest than most store-bought bread. So think no preservatives, no shortcuts. It genuinely tastes like something that you would get from an artisan bakery. I keep a box in my freezer for easy dinners, cozy weekends at home, or when I want that just baked bread moment without the work, which admittedly is all the time right now. And their boxes are fully customizable. They include gluten-free, vegan, and they even have a new protein box. So right now, Wild Grain is offering my listeners $30 off your first box plus free croissants for life when you go to wildgrain.com slash well or use the code well at checkout. This is an insane deal. Again, that's $30 off your first box and free croissants for life at wildgrain.com slash well. I want to talk briefly about celebrity surgery. I've heard you chime in a little bit here and there we are kind of maybe entering this era where they're disclosing a little more or selectively disclosing and i've heard you also say like they'll readily admit to one thing and not another thing do you think that because i always go back and forth on this well i don't think anyone owes anyone anything i don't think that someone's personal medical history what they're choosing to do for whatever reason is nobody else's business absolutely at the same time sometimes i feel like they put themselves in positions where they're asked specific questions and then they blatantly lie and it's like that I also don't think is great because they can control that too so where do you fall on that so I agree with you I don't think any celebrity or any person has an obligation even if you're super famous to disclose what medical procedures you have I also don't want to know what medicines you take necessarily or whether you had a prostate biopsy last week or uh you know a whatever so it's nobody's business where I draw the line though is there are this person will go unnamed you're going to know who it is but a person of great fame recently who's in a family of great fame recently has said i've never had any plastic surgery where others in the family are admitting selectively to some procedures and not others which is fine i guess but this one is saying i've never had any plastic surgery and then boom boom you see on tiktok the before and after of the nose and it's gone from this tip let's be real Yeah, bulbous tip, wide bridge and the eyes to this narrow nose. You go, wow. So, I mean, I think it's nobody's business, but I think if, well, where I really draw the line is if you're attributing it to something you're selling, that's not cool. Yeah. You know, oh, I use great skincare, buy my skincare and look at my wonderful upper lids that are now cleaned up and you can see more of my platform and my skin's pulled back. This is just due to buy my product. That's not cool because that's not true. yeah so you're you don't have to admit it leave them leave celebrities alone I think you know for example the Bradley Cooper of it all I don't know if you saw I came out of a restaurant the other day and TMZ was there yeah and I don't know if you watch Real Housewives Orange County but they accused us of calling the paparazzi and so whenever I see TMZ I go oh I called you nice to see you I heard you and Harry talking yes podcast you're like wait do you Do you have a number? I know, right? By the way, do you have a number? No. Yeah. I'll let you know if I get one though. No one likes to be interviewed by TMZ more than me. Yeah. No one loves the whole fame thing more than moi. I just think it's so fun, right? I loved your description of how you're like the perfect level famous too Yeah It a really sweet level of fame where everybody really nice to you you just like like i said you like the quarterback in high school yeah everybody cool you had a good week hey terry it like that they asked me about the bradley cooper of it all and you know whether he's had or he's not had he obviously looks different i mean you know and arguably better or worse i don't know but it's really mean yeah i think it's really uncivil yeah Not, you know, and rude. And this is something interesting that happens. Take Bradley Cooper. Yep. People don't like how he looks now compared to how he looked before. So the discourse is not good. Take Lindsay Lohan. She looks amazing. Neither of them have control over that outcome. And the narrative is completely different. If Lindsay Lohan, her outcome was like Bradley Cooper's outcome or someone else who people don't find looks good it would be a completely different narrative around her comeback you know what i mean like everyone who goes in for surgery wants to look good and have a good outcome and then it's like these people are dragged for something that they had no control over other than making the decision for whatever reason to go under the knife to get surgery to you know probably like improve their look they get blamed for it yeah it's crazy to me it's really unfair yeah and it's but you know there is a fundamental level of meanness in this country yeah you're aware of now where it's perfectly okay to beat up somebody to be extraordinarily mean when they're rewarded it's an out and if you're funny it's even better yeah it's all on like pile on clickbait So, I mean, I've always tried to live my life in the world of extreme kindness. I'm a Buddha. I'm a Buddhist. I'm not a Buddha. I'm a Buddhist. Wow. I wish I were a Buddha. Jack of all trades here. No, but I'm a real Buddhist, you know. And I always try to approach anything from kindness or the way I want to be treated. And at the end of the day, you know that thing, maybe you're too old. There was a book written, everything I ever wanted to learn, I learned in kindergarten. There was a book from a long time ago. at third grade we all know how to treat each other and so what happens to those third grade lessons i just think my view on that is leave don't ask if it's it's same thing their their sexuality yeah you know didn't someone in traders wasn't there's a whole traders thing about they're calling someone out for maybe not being straight or something i don't know michael rapaport of it all really you haven't seen that i haven't seen i don't watch traders either but but you know it's funny for an old dude like me i know more about pop culture people it's funny you're immersed in it i'm so immersed in it not because i'm on a reality show or two reality shows or three or whatever but it's just that i it's my new television set i guess it's all of ours yeah yeah you know so i think a level of kindness would be nice if we could just reconsider asking people about their plastic surgery or not particularly if they don't necessarily look great yeah leave him alone yeah i know i hate that like i hate when i see that it's so mean yeah you know and bradley cooper my gosh what a talented i know amazing human being who's doing such important work and adding so much to culture and think about i wonder how his surgeon well if he's had surgery allegedly yeah yeah no i mean can you imagine the guys going yeah and by the way i have no information at all yeah zero okay speculation but i wouldn't be surprised if the same person who did for example chris janner did bradley cooper i wouldn't be surprised yeah by the way i don't even know that bradley cooper said surgery but yeah it might be the exact same i i don't know And that's the spectrum that can happen with. That's the spectrum. Yeah. And it also brings up another interesting thing, which you may not want to talk about, male plastic surgery. Males, you better be having a light hand. You better put the scalpel on low sharpness level when you're doing a male. Less is more. Okay. Don't get rid of all of the neck lines and all of the upper lid skin. Don't take all the fat out of the upper lid. don't pull too because we're not supposed to have high brows we're not supposed to have exposed upper eyelid platforms as we call it it's like it doesn't exist in nature some guys have it like gillian murphy oh yeah i don't think he's had plastic surgery because he's looked that way forever yeah he looks like he's had feminizing upper eyelid surgery but he's you know he looked like that at 20 so he clearly hasn't had it yeah but except in a few men you're not supposed to have high brows and exposed upper eyelids you're supposed to be you know sort of droopy yeah so when you take enough you know if you're a man having considering having plastic surgery if you're gonna have your upper lids done very little yeah very very little you can always do more yeah but you don't want to have to put it back yeah so yeah you know who i think does good male surgery is ben tally he's great you guys are friends but yeah great i think he does really i think i think he does good work but i think his male work i've seen some in person i'm like you would never know by the way they still look rugged i think all his surgery is great and he's a a tremendous human being yeah he did my nose like 10 years ago i don't think he does noses anymore I don't know but he's he's just such an artist and such a good dude too and a sweet human being yeah he's one that I went to a few years ago I haven't had surgery in years but I went to him and I was like I have some concerns he's like okay I'm like we'll start on the top and I'm like going down every single thing I said he said no see no no no see and I knew enough to like leave it at that that's that's the kind of plastic surgeon you want and unfortunately sometimes not you obviously but you do that you say no no no no no and what do they do go to the next person they go down the hall and it's yes yes yes yes yes so like i said he remember i said nine out of ten so he's the one out of ten who's going to be perfectly honest you know okay i have some rapid fire questions that i would like to ask what is the most overhyped cosmetic trend right now that's a good question i think these unfortunately even though i said this is the aesthetic escape velocity time i think these energy transmission devices that are going to tighten your skin they're still not good they're still not there the morpheus is the the face tights those things they either do nothing or very little or if they do something it doesn't last very long and they're very expensive and then the whole other salmon sperm facials. I mean, are you kidding? First of all, who sat back and thought, I have an idea. Let's get sperm from a salmon. Yeah. And let's get those fish. I like salmon. It's good. It's good fish, good protein, low fat. And let's take their sperm and put it on people's faces after we punch holes in the face. Yeah. Or inject it. Or inject it. Come on. Salmon sperm facial, $2,000 or $2,800. And there's a series of six I want to sell you. Oh God. You know, I mean, why would salmon sperm facial work better than, you know, human sperm for that? Maybe that'll be next. I mean, think about it. At least it's human growth factors. Why is a fish sperm so that, that kind of stuff. What do you think most people get wrong when trying to look younger? That more is better. That any amount of aging is bad. That every time something changes that you need to fix it. I think sometimes it's okay to show signs of aging and not everything needs to be operated on and yeah that's what i think the more is better is this the biggest lesson i think in plastic surgery because more often will take you to altered yeah and once you get to altered and doesn't exist in nature it's really hard to go back i remember ben was on my podcast as well and he was or maybe he was just telling me this in real life not the podcast i don't know they're so interchangeable now yeah but he said we were talking about botox and he said like people think that frozen equals younger and he said that's a huge misconception because younger people have movement yeah and they have lines they just have more collagen so they're not getting static lines they just have dynamic movement yeah but he said that he thinks that something that a lot of people get wrong is completely freezing everything i agree with that that's kind of a telltale sign that you you are a little bit older and you're trying to look young it's true it looks the what i call doesn't exist in nature phenomenon yeah and then the overfilled anything yeah you know and you know luckily everybody's stepping back a lot from filler now so that's very good what is the biggest red flag you see in patients um when they rag on their previous plastic surgeon because you're next yeah you know so if they hate everything that plastic surgeon did and that's that's a big red flag or the the most comp sort of the biggest biggest red flag of all if they've got such an extreme concern about something on their face or body that doesn't match how sort of extreme it is. So like a tiny bump is ruining my life, you know? And if my face was just a little tighter, my brows were one millimeter higher, I would be so happy, but I'm so unhappy now. That's the big, big red flag. Kind of along that same line, what is the procedure you say no to the most often? a breast lift and i'll tell you why because you know slightly droopy breasts are kind of can be kind of appealing you know and when a female has really great breasts and they've had maybe a child or something and their breasts have drooped a little bit they've gone from world-class breasts to just good breasts and to trade lifting scars to get them back to where they were it's just not a fair trade yeah so breast lift i say your breasts are really good it's not worth the risk of the surgery and it's not worth the scars at least with facelifts you can really really camouflage and hide those scars but a breast lift is around the areola and down i I mean, there it is. Yeah. So if, you know, if the surgeon's being really honest to say, you know, particularly if you have a little bit darker skin, your scar could darken up even if I do it perfectly and you might be able to see it across the room just to get your nipple this much higher or the breast mound elevated a little bit. Juice isn't worth the squeeze. Right. So that one. Yeah. What's the most bang for your buck treatment in your opinion? Yeah, I got to say probably a facelift. is the most bang. I mean, it's very expensive, but it's the most bang if you're ready for it. And to a certain degree, a tummy tuck, a tummy tuck, the before and after is like, whoa, you know, I went from really lax skin and separated muscles to I've got my bikini body back. So a tummy tuck is a big bang for your buck with a big recovery, but can be really, really powerful. We're in this era of facelifts becoming more common on younger patients. And most doctors will tell you they don't treat an age, they treat a face. And there are so many different reasons why somebody might need a facelift at 35 or 40 versus somebody who might look great and not have any laxity or anything until they're 50. right what's your position on doing it younger if it's appropriate for someone and is there like an age that you think people tend to maybe start needing well I think the truth be told what I do with my patients is I take them over the mirror and I go like this I pull it back and I go do you love the way this looks and they go I go so here's your after and then I go like this and they go do it again and they go yeah i said i don't think it's worth a five-hour operation yeah and the potential risks of nerve damage and scarring and everything changing for that so if you really look in the mirror and pull your neck back and your face back and it looks tremendously better at pretty much any age. I mean, you can be 36 and have lost 150 pounds and be a great candidate for a facelift. But if it's just a bit better, maybe try some peptides or something, or just wait a couple of years because in the next couple of years, everything is going to change in aesthetic medicine. Everything. Just wait before you have that early facelift. This is so exciting. It is. It really is. Yeah. I'm just ready for the baby skin. Yeah. Not actual babies. Right. My skin when I was young. Okay. Yeah. You're going to get the exosomes and the stem cells and the peptides and all of it's coming. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. Enjoy it. This was so fun. Come back anytime and tell everybody where they can find you. So I'm, you know, I'm a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. I moved up here about a year ago. And I have a podcast with my wife called Between Us. We talk about our lives, which we think is fascinating. I'm not sure anybody else does. It's a great show. Thank you. And, you know, maybe upcoming seasons of Botched and Orange County Housewives and maybe Beverly Hills. I don't know. We'll see what happens. So you never know. Stay tuned. Thank you. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked the episode and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe. It goes such a long way in supporting the show. Follow the show over on Instagram at well.pod. You can also follow my personal Instagram at Arielle Laurie. I'm always sharing great clips from the episodes and we also have full episodes on YouTube as well if you want to watch in entirety. Thanks for listening. Hey, I'm Josh Peck. And I'm Ben Soffer. And we're the good guys. On our show every week, we talk about buzzy pop culture stories. Maybe answer a couple of your voicemails. and go into a moment of the week that makes you say, what are you, nuts? And I swear it's so much better than this promo. Anyway, there's a lot of guys out there, but we're the good ones. Stream good guys every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts. Apple, Spotify, anywhere. You know what? Don't listen. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.