Women Lose 30% of Skin Collagen in Menopause: Dr. Anthony Youn's Inside-Out Fix | #155

**Anthony Youn** (0:00)
Women, in the first five years after menopause, lose upwards of 30% of the thickness of collagen in their skin.

**Vonda Wright** (0:06)
If you have the 40-ish perimenopausal, menopausal woman in your office, what do we start with? The basics, if we do not want 26 bottles on our cabinets, because we're busy people.

**Anthony Youn** (0:18)
The basics basically is going to be what I call a two minutes, five years younger skincare routine. The first thing, every morning, you want to...

**Vonda Wright** (0:25)
I love this two minutes, five years concept, because I do not have time. I am not one of these women who have the ability to spend an hour on my face.

**Anthony Youn** (0:34)
There are some recent studies showing a 400% increase in collagen in the skin after regular micro-needling treatments.

**Vonda Wright** (0:42)
Oh my God, I've got to go back.

**Anthony Youn** (0:44)
If you want to feel beautiful, focus on your health, because that's going to definitely show on the outside.

**Vonda Wright** (0:49)
Dr. Tony, what is the best thing a woman can do for her skin that costs nothing?

**Anthony Youn** (0:55)
I would say...

**Vonda Wright** (1:00)
Listen, everybody, I am so excited to have Dr. Anthony Youn with me today. He is America's holistic plastic surgeon, and I listen to you every single day on Instagram, along with your 8.5 million other friends on TikTok and social media. So, I'm glad to have you here today.

**Anthony Youn** (1:23)
Well, thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.

**Vonda Wright** (1:25)
Absolutely. You know, you wrote this book that's a national bestseller last year called Younger for Life, and that totally aligns with my whole philosophy. Not only this is a lifespan we're dealing with, but you being a holistic plastic surgeon, sometimes people think all we want to do as surgeons is cut people, but that is not your and I philosophy at all. What drives your practice that makes it different?

**Anthony Youn** (1:54)
Yeah, you know, like you, I did all the traditional training to be a, for me, a board certified plastic surgeon. So I did three years of general surgery, two years of plastic surgery. I did a plastic surgery fellowship in cosmetics and-

**Vonda Wright** (2:06)
And took all the tests.

**Anthony Youn** (2:09)
Yes, and passed all the tests.

**Vonda Wright** (2:10)
We took all the tests.

**Anthony Youn** (2:11)
On the first try, which is always good too. But like you, I'm sure, when I went through all my training, I never really thought or was taught much about preventative types of options and especially in plastic surgery, you don't really think about that so much.
I was really in a cut first mentality throughout my early practice, just kind of was with what I was taught. When we're in our residencies, we're taught that the bigger the operation that you do, the more you feel good about yourself as a surgeon. And so if you're a general surgeon and you're especially a resident, you're trying to get in those whipples, those big operations. As a plastic surgeon, it was the facelift. The facelift was the big surgery that, man, if you had a patient who trusted you with their face, then you know that you have hit the pinnacle of success. And so Vonda, for many years, I actually engaged the success of my practice in how many facelifts I had booked, which is kind of a strange thought. But as a surgeon, it's actually not that strange.

**Vonda Wright** (3:08)
It's not strange. Yeah.

**Anthony Youn** (3:10)
And I had a situation where I had a patient who had a horrible complication from a facelift surgery many years ago, and it really opened my eyes to thinking, like, am I doing the right thing for my patients? And should the goal of being a plastic surgeon not be to bring my patients to the OR? But I figured out that it should be the opposite, is how do I keep my patients out of the OR and try to help them to feel and look their best using actual plastic surgery as a last resort? And that was the whole idea of holistic plastic surgery and a big part of the basis of my book Younger for Life.

**Vonda Wright** (3:46)
Well, and I completely agree because as an orthopedic surgeon, I would estimate only one in 10, actually people get to the OR because we use all the non-operative means that I have in my bag and you have in your bag to help people. In fact, I love to make up words. I made up the word, the mental lessons, but you made up a category of care called autojuvenation.