The symptoms of menopause are relatively well-known. At least some of them are. People typically associate this life passage with frustrating side effects like mood swings, insomnia, and low sex drive. Well, there are several other concerns to add to the list. Abdominal weight gain is one we will discuss here.

Why Women Gain Weight During Menopause

Even amidst the hot flashes and heart palpitations and bad mood, women who are in the process of menstrual changes often cannot help but notice that they’re gaining a little extra width around the midsection. Abdominal weight gain often occurs regardless of a woman’s activity levels and calorie intake. Sometimes, there is no change on the scale, and yet there is a change in shape. While the abdomen is a common hot spot for fat accumulation, this problem may also affect the hips, thighs, and buttocks.

As you may have guessed, the accumulation of abdominal fat is related to hormones. Even before a woman reaches menopause, her hormones are fluctuating. Estrogen may rise and fall more intensely than it has since adolescence. Estrogen fluctuations can lead to the unequal distribution of subcutaneous fat. In addition to hormones, a woman’s shape may also be affected by naturally-declining metabolism. Again, this is related to hormones. Metabolism dictates how well the body burns fat. When it declines, the body is less effective at burning calories as fuel. Without calorie reduction or a sharp increase in physical activity, a woman can expect to gain weight during her perimenopause years.

Losing Weight During Perimenopause

Whether you are experiencing perimenopause or have transitioned past menopause, there are several reasons to manage abdominal fat. Doing so reduces the risk of deep visceral fat forming around internal organs. Subcutaneous fat, the kind that can be eliminated with liposuction, is less medically concerning but more cosmetically concerning. Subcutaneous fat can stick out when you wear a loose dress or blouse. It can hang over jeans as a muffin top and can generally make you feel less confident in your appearance. Fortunately, there are options for maintaining your ideal weight and shape as you age.

Diet and exercise are optimal habits regardless of whether or not you choose a procedure like liposuction to help you attain a cosmetic goal. What you eat and how much you move (even how you move) affects muscle mass and future metabolism. Experts suggest that women should engage not only in cardiovascular exercise but also in strength training. Lifting light weights or doing yoga supports strong muscles and healthy bones.

While liposuction is not intended for weight loss or management, it is a popular procedure among women who want to redesign their midsection by eliminating stubborn abdominal fat. Are you ready to see a slimmer you? Contact our Cincinnati office at 513.985.0850 to schedule your consultation.

The battle of the bulge is real. It is a frustrating journey that many people find to be never-ending. We eat well, even taking on extreme diets. We do detoxes. We do yoga, high-intensity interval workouts, and just about anything else we can to banish pockets of fat from hard-to-correct areas of the body. We aren’t suggesting that healthy lifestyle habits don’t have merit. They do. At the same time, they may not be sufficient for getting the body you want. Enter fat-reduction treatments like CoolSculpting and liposuction. We take a closer look at each treatment option here.

What is Liposuction?

Liposuction is a minimally-invasive surgical technique that is considered plastic surgery. Patients receive some type of anesthesia when they have liposuction done. This may be general anesthesia or local anesthetic and a mild sedative. No hospital stay is required but patients will have post-operative side effects and specific care instructions to minimize the risk of infection and poor healing. The way that liposuction works is by inserting tumescent fluid into the treatment area. This expands the tissue and also has a numbing effect. Alternative modalities such as laser may also be included to break down fat before it is removed. A cannula that is about the size of a knitting needle is inserted through tiny incisions. It reaches the depth where subcutaneous fat lives and suctions small tunnels of fat cells away. This allows tissue to collapse inward around the tunnels in a smooth, uniform manner. Fat cells do not return after liposuction. However, if a person gains weight, their shape may change.

What is CoolSculpting?

CoolSculpting is one of the most well-known nonsurgical body-contouring treatments available today. It is performed in the office without anesthesia of any kind. Each session takes about one hour. During treatment, a piece of tissue about the size of a stick of butter is held between two panels. These panels freeze the fat cells in this tissue without affecting the skin or other structures. After the procedure, patients can resume normal activities right away. Fat is metabolized over several weeks, resulting in up to a 24% reduction. It is important to remember, though, that the fat reduction achieved is limited to that stick of butter sized tissue.

We currently offer liposuction body contouring in our Cincinnati office. While treatment incurs a few days of downtime for swelling and bruising to subside, it offers faster, more predictable results in all sized treatment areas. To learn more about this procedure, call 513.985.0850.

Losing weight isn’t easy for every person. To reach the weight that fits our body frame, we’ve got to make a few changes. What many people find after they have made it to their target weight on the scale is that their body doesn’t reflect their hard work the way they had imagined it would. This is one of the reasons liposuction continues to be such a popular and beneficial treatment.

Liposuction puts the cherry on top of weight loss by creating the contours that weight loss alone could not. Various liposuction techniques exist, but all do the same thing: they remove subcutaneous fat that is affecting appearance. Just like you would continue to eat well and exercise to maintain your goal weight, it is necessary to do the same to maintain liposuction results. But there’s more to this than continuing to look good. A healthy lifestyle after liposuction can also protect your health.

The Fat that You Don’t See

When you see pockets of fat on your abdomen, flanks, hips, buttocks, or thighs, you see the fat that can be removed with liposuction. There’s another kind of fat though, and it can be dangerous. Deep fat that accumulates in the abdominal cavity is known as visceral fat. The development of visceral fat has nothing to do with liposuction; every person is susceptible to it. And it is just as sneaky and concerning however it develops.

Superficial fat is concerning because it affects how we feel about our appearance. Visceral fat is concerning because it affects how the body functions. Though we cannot see visceral fat (we may even look great in a bathing suit), the body responds to it. This fatty tissue pushes against organs and the intestines. It disrupts the normal production of hormones (and is related to increased estrogen in men). Visceral fat can also influence the development and management of insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes. Furthermore, this type of fat is associated with heart disease.

Working out and eating well after liposuction is necessary for more reasons than you may imagine. Liposuction can get you where you want to be and healthy habits can keep you there, and also keep you protected from dangerous visceral fat.
Learn more about liposuction and how it can boost your weight loss accomplishments. Call 513.985.0850 to schedule your consultation in our Cincinnati office.

Resolutions have a way of creating immense frustration for most people. You may have experienced the downside of resolution-making so many times that you no longer look at this time of year with the sense of excitement and renewal you once did. If one of the problems has been that you haven’t achieved the results you have wanted in terms of your body, we suggest a new tactic. In our Cincinnati office, one of the things we love to do is help patients bust through the barriers they’ve encountered in a quest for their best body.

Pave a New Path

The usual path that people take when they want to improve their shape is to develop a new diet and exercise habits. This continues to be a popular approach. We can see that by observing the myriad of diet trends that exist today. The problem is, you could spend the entire year trying to decide between Keto and Paleo, a plant-based diet or one that revolves around the caveman style of eating. Every one of us may find a degree of success with certain diet plans. However, even the satisfaction of losing weight may not bring you to the place you really want to be. In that instance, you need a new path, and we’ve got it.

Body Contouring Done Right

It isn’t as though a good exercise program isn’t a good way to slim the body and tone up. However, it may not be the right way for you. What you want is results, not hours and hours in the gym. Results may come more quickly with a little help from your plastic surgeon.

Tumescent liposuction is the procedure that has become popular for eliminating those fat cells that don’t seem to be touched by any normal amount of exercise. This procedure may be performed in an accredited facility with local anesthetic (contained in the tumescent fluid) and IV sedation. Best yet, most patients are able to return to work within a week of their liposuction procedure.

While exercise can do a lot for your body, one thing it cannot do is reconnect muscles that have been severely stretched or separated. Only abdominoplasty can do that, and abdominoplasty should only be performed by a board-certified plastic surgeon.

Eat well and exercise so your body can be healthy. To create your dream body, consult with your plastic surgeon. Contact us to schedule your visit with Dr. Krummen at 513.985.0850.

In the past several years, we’ve witnessed the development of some non-surgical facial and body treatments. We can easily find more beauty hacks than we could ever try with a few strokes of the keyboard (thanks, Google!). Because there are so many tips and tricks to try, we can benefit from questioning which ones are valuable and which ones we can skip. Here’s an example: waist trainers. This is a treatment that may give a lot more than we bargained for – and that doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.

Waist Trainers, a Modern-Day Corset

Many years ago, women endured tortuous corsets, boned garments that were manually cinched around their midsection. Corsets were uncomfortable and even led to fainting, but they allowed women to “enjoy” an hourglass figure. The waist trainer is pretty similar. This garment may also have to bone, but what it has is pressure. You know the comfy security you feel when your Spanx hold everything in its place? The waist trainer goes above and beyond. It may even take your breath away.  The process may not sound pleasant, but many women believe it’s worth it. The American Board of Cosmetic Surgery doesn’t necessarily agree.

The danger in waist training is that the body-shaping garment is worn for weeks or months on end. You could liken this process to the foot-binding that was common in China (and was made illegal a century ago). The intent is to reshape the midsection through intense pressure, but the midsection isn’t just fat and muscle. There are other important structures that reside beneath the waist trainer:

• The lungs sit just beneath the top of a waist trainer, just like the corset of old. Remember that fainting we mentioned? It occurred because lung capacity diminishes 30 to 60% under the pressure of the garment. The waist trainer is not excluded from this statistic. Fainting is only one concern related to decreased lung capacity. When air is not adequately taken in, the lungs are not sufficiently filled, and fluid may build up. Without sufficient air intake, the brain and other organs do not receive the oxygen they need to function properly. Ultimately, the consequences could be severe.
• Digestive organs. It is in the midsection where our digestive organs live. To squeeze the stomach itself may sound like a decent idea when you want to slim down. However, this can lead to a problem with acid reflux. It could also cause damage to the large or small intestine due to the long hours of constriction.
• Vital organs. In addition to the stomach, the midsection is also home to the liver, kidneys, and other vital structures. None of these organs can function well when they are living in tight-quarters.

Do you want a better body? We can help you put the icing on the cake of your healthy lifestyle. Call our Cincinnati office at 513-985-0850 to learn more about safe, effective body contouring.

Better curves. Often, to achieve this means to reduce body fat or refine contouring across the midsection. We are proud to offer services tailored to each of our valued patients. Two of the common techniques that are of interest to those wanting better curves are abdominoplasty and liposuction. There is an interesting phenomenon that surrounds these procedures: interest in them tends to mount as summer approaches. We propose that there may be a better time to start working on those better curves, now.

Why Fall may be the Best Time for Body Contouring

• Covering up is easy. We know the reason that you may want to undergo body contouring is that you want to feel good wearing less. The thing is, you have to go through a short time of swelling and bruising before you get to a place of really wanting to show off your new curves. There is no easier time to be patient about this than the dead of winter when outdoor temperatures plummet.
• “Me Time” may be easier to find. Rest is one of the most important aspects of physical recovery. To undergo a procedure during the busy months of summer, when kids are out of school and in need of entertainment, that Me Time flies right out the window. During the winter months, when everyone is in school and the holidays are behind you, the recovery time that you need may be right at your fingertips.
• Rain and snow and cold are good! One of the reasons that men and women choose liposuction or abdominoplasty is because they want to feel great when the sun is out, and they are wearing shorts and bathing suits. However, surgical incisions are better able to heal when kept out of the sunlight. UV exposure may increase the chance of scarring, so the shorter, colder days of winter offer an excellent reprieve for recovering patients.

Schedule a Consultation

Dr. Krummen and our experienced staff are happy to speak with you about your cosmetic concerns. With care tailored to meet your needs and expectations, you are close to a body you completely love. Contact our Cincinnati office at 513.985.0850 to schedule a consultation today.