Facial fat

From Tyla

While excess facial fat has been a concern for many people over the past 50 years as overweight and obesity have become epidemic, more recently loss of facial fat has emerged as a growing concern as dangerous and destructive weight loss practices have gained ground.

Look at this disturbing YouTube video by popular social media personality, Bryan Johnson (above), the multi-millionaire obsessed with youthfulness who tried to restore facial contours after a reduced calorie weight loss effort that left him looking older and unhealthy due to loss of facial fat. He therefore he resorted to various injections of fillers and other materials to restore fuller, more youthful facial appearance. This, of course, is not genuine youthfulness; it is the artificial appearance of youthfulness. He is no more youthful from these injections than he would be by just wearing a Halloween mask or other superficial effort to conceal the loss of youthful facial fat.

This conversation has recently gained the spotlight because of the GLP-1 agonist movement, drugs that reduce caloric intake by turning-off appetite and slowing gastric emptying, thereby leading to reduced calorie intake and weight loss. Problems: 1) GLP-1 agonists preferentially favor loss of subcutaneous (beneath the skin) fat over the more metabolically problematic abdominal visceral fat, and 2) cause loss of a significant amount of muscle, including the musculature of the face. This was the origin of the term “Ozempic face” coined by a New York plastic surgeon who noticed that people losing weight on GLP-1 agonist drugs like Ozempic developed deep wrinkles and loss of youthful facial fat, causing them to look 10 or 20 years or more older. While the conversation has gained widespread attention because so many people have drank the GLP-1 agonist Kool-Aid, loss of facial fat is an issue that accompanies any effort to lose weight that involves reducing calorie intake. Likewise, loss of muscle, including facial muscle, is a serious problem that accompanies any effort at weight loss involving reduced calorie intake, with an especially marked effect with GLP-1 agonist agents. (By the way, plastic surgeons offer plastic surgery to remedy this situation, a “solution” that is purely local and cosmetic and does not address body-wide problems, including earlier death, that accompany GLP-1 agonists and other misguided weight loss efforts. And, of course, it pays the plastic surgeon well with thousands of dollars of fees.)

This means that reduced calorie diets (“move more, eat less,” Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and the hundreds of other programs and apps that encourage you to reduce calorie intake), bariatric procedures, and GLP-1 agonists all cause loss of subcutaneous facial fat, loss of muscle, and the appearance of accelerated aging. It may also not be just about appearances, as weight loss achieved by reducing calories, regardless of the method, shortens your life by several years, likely due to loss of muscle and the frailty, falls, fractures, loss of independence that develop with muscle loss.

Ironically, while someone like Bryan Johnson may appear younger due to his efforts to restore youthful facial features, he is actually likely to die several years earlier than he otherwise would have. The accelerated facial aging he experienced is just the tip of the iceberg in unhealthy changes in the rest of his body that make him less healthy and more prone to the ravages of aging.

How can you avoid the mistakes made by Mr. Johnson and the millions of other people who have been done the disservice by their doctors to submit to GLP-1 agonist drugs or other calorie-reducing strategies? Given the lessons my team and I have learned over the past several years, consider:

• Never reducing calories—Time-restricted eating or brief (<72 hours) intermittent fasting is harmless and may be modestly beneficial, but any prolonged effort to reduce calorie intake will lead to. a reduction in basal metabolic rate (BMR) that guarantees regain of fat—fat, not muscle—over time, even if a low-calorie diet and resistance training program are followed. Calorie restriction therefore leads over time to loss of muscle and increased fat, mostly abdominal visceral fat.
   
• Maintaining collagen intake—Collagen protein intake that you should have gotten through consumption of meats and organs favors loss of abdominal visceral fat and maintenance or increase in muscle mass. (Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that bone broth is a safe source of collagen, as it is a source of the heavy metal, lead, just like lead-containing paints, especially if you used prolonged simmering and addition of vinegar.) Bovine collagen powders, e.g., 20 grams per day, is an easy way to ensure adequate intake. You can see this reflected in reduction of wrinkle depth in the face, an increase in smoothness and “plumpness.” This will amplify the effects of other collagen-provoking strategies such as red light, microneedling, and topical retinoids.
   
• Bloom butyrogenic species in the gastrointestinal tract (GI) microbiome—Fibers such as inulin, fructooligosaccharides, galactooligosaccharides, pectin, and the all-important hyaluronic acid, bloom microbial species that produce butyric acid that reduce body-wide inflammation and encourage muscle growth. Butyric acid also leads to reduced endotoxemia that allows loss of abdominal visceral fat and helps restore youthful muscle.
   
• Resistance training—While resistance training alone is insufficient to fully restore youthful muscle, combined with all the other efforts listed here, it can contribute to rebuilding/restoring youthful muscle. And building muscle in, say, your thighs or shoulders can modestly increase facial muscles through the release of myokines, bloodborne mediators of muscle growth. For similar reasons, standing on a vibrating plate that vibrates the legs, buttocks, and spine will increase muscle in the upper body through the release of myokines.
   
• Restore microbes that increase muscle—L. reuteri shines here, especially when counts are increased by making L. reuteri yogurt.

Combine the above strategies and avoid factors that cause premature facial aging—GLP-1 agonist drugs, other methods of reducing calories, excessive exposure to UV radiation/midday sun, lack of morning sunlight or red/infrared light, lack of vitamin D, vegan/vegetarian diet, failure to obtain oral collagen and hyaluronic acid—and you will not have to resort to extreme efforts to maintain healthy facial fat, muscle, and contours.

The original IHB post is currently found on the: ⎆Infinite Health Blog, but accessing it there can require an unnecessary separate blog membership. The copy of it above is complete, and has been re-curated and enhanced for the Inner Circle membership.