 You and every one woman. If you've been wanting to turn that 12 pack into a six pack, the doctors from Finesse Plastic Surgery are going to talk to us about the tummy tuck. Everyone wants a flatter stomach, but for some doing crunches just isn't enough. Dr. Gown and Dr. Wester here from Finesse Plastic Surgery to share some options on how to get a flatter stomach. Now I understand that there are some really innovative and also some extremely invasive ways to get that appearance of a flat tummy. What would be some of the most invasive ways to start? The most invasive? Well, I'd like to start just by telling you about why this happens. So certainly in women, it's babies. In men, it's Budweiser. To go back to the women with pregnancies, not only does the skin stretch, but that six pack that you see in athletes also stretches and goes out to the sides. And so you get a little bit of a loosening of the tissue and less of a firm tone to the midsection. So any combination of liposuction and surgery can refine that trunk to get that better, tighter look. So you would do both, liposuction and surgery? Oftentimes both are done, sometimes one, sometimes another. And when we combine them together, it's called a marriage abdominoplasty. OK. So the least invasive or the less invasive, it's going to be something using technology like a cool sculpting. What is a cool sculpting? So a cool sculpting is a device that's been around for several years now. Essentially what it does is it exposes the fat that you're having a hard time getting rid of and exposes it to cold. So it's a suction device that's attached to, pulls the skin and fat away from you and exposes your body to a cold temperature. Your fat is actually more sensitive to cold than the skin is, so you can hurt the fat cells and make them go away without hurting your skin. It takes about two months to see the results. The best candidate for that's going to be somebody who is in otherwise pretty good shape. Somebody who's maybe going to the gym, but no matter what they do once they hit a certain age, they just can't get rid of the little trouble areas. Maybe it's their flanks, or maybe it's the lower part of their belly, or for some people the fat along the bra line. So people can come in and do a non-invasive procedure in the comfort of our office while they're watching a movie and have some of that fat melted. So that's probably the easiest thing that you can do. Now can they just target a certain area? Absolutely, we have different handles or different applicators for the different areas. So inner thigh, outer thigh, lower abdomen, upper abdomen, back. We fine tune it to every patient. So that's the non-invasive, that's the cool sculpting. Now fast forward into the next stage, which is liposuction. Liposuction alone is good for women who are younger, who still have that nice tone, but have a little bit of those excess areas that they want to get rid of. And those are the regions where no matter how much working out, how many hours of the gym, they still have these collections of fat that are stubborn and won't go away. How long is a recovery time for a liposuction? A liposuction in people, it depends on what you're asking. Part of the question is when can you go back to work? So it really depends on how much do you do. For really targeted low volume liposuction, you might be able to do the surgery on a Thursday and go back Monday. If you're doing multiple areas and you're taking out a lot more fat, the person might need a week or 12 work. It also of course depends on what you do. Do you work behind a desk or do you have a really active type job? In general, liposuction is a relatively short recovery where you have discomfort, but we don't put many limitations on you because we haven't sewn the tissue. We haven't put muscle back together that we have to worry about healing. So it's more of a soreness. Now I have a couple of mommy circles and that's kind of an issue for a lot of the smothers, even though we can get fit and back into shape, that we seem to have this excess skin that hangs. And it's not necessarily fat. What would you do for a mommy like that? That's exactly the next step is going forward to what's called a mini tummy tuck or a full tummy tuck. And the difference between the two is in the mini tummy tuck, it's a smaller incision and it's mostly targeted to take care of that lower pooch of extra tissue versus a full tummy tuck when there's more excess and loose skin all throughout the entire thing of the anterior abdomen. And that requires repositioning of the belly button and a little bit longer incision to get more of that skin to create that nice tight contour. So you actually move the belly button when you do a tummy tuck. When you do a full tummy tuck, yes. You make an incision all the way around it. You pull the skin down over and then you make a new opening for the belly button to come out. So it actually stays in the same position but you make a new hole for it to come out. Wow, that sounds interesting. What allows us to get out all the extra skin out that you need to have removed? And you'll never notice the incision because it's hidden inside the belly button. Now, is that something a man would go through? I mean, with women, we tend to, you know, but what about a man? Do men go through tummy tucks? They certainly do. And in most cases, a lot of men store fat differently than women. And so it's more central fat but they still do benefit from that same procedure that we do with our tummy tucks which is bringing that central musculature together. With women, they have babies and that stretches out that six-pack, if you will. And so they get what's called a diastasis repair. It's really creating an internal corset. If you remember how the corsets are made, they have the tight straps with the strings pulling real tight but it also brings in the midsection. And that's what we're doing internally on top of lifting and then stretching and removing the excess skin to give the overall hourglass shape to get that final nice, refined result. If you want a couple ccs of liposuction then you have the absolute full package. So if you don't have an hourglass shape, you could actually create one. You can certainly get somebody closer to that shape. I mean, it depends on what the person is starting with. But somebody who is in otherwise good shape that you go ahead and put the muscle back together, you remove the excess skin, you can absolutely accentuate their natural hourglass shape that they have. No, thank you gentlemen. That was extremely informative. If you would like to find out more information about tummy tuck and less invasive procedures on that flatter tummy, please check out their website at finesseplasticsurgery.com. You win.