Episode 81: MyEllevate and the Weight Loss Revolution with Dr. Greg Mueller

Welcome to Plastic Surgery Untold. In this episode, Dr. Johnny Franco and Dr. Sean Arredondo are joined by Beverly Hills Plastic Surgeon and renowned inventor of MyEllevate, Dr. Greg Mueller. The surgeons delve into the MyEllevate procedure, a highly effective option for individuals with skin laxity and jawline augmentation, and its notable impact on patients in the weight loss revolution. Dr. Franco, who has successfully lost over 70 pounds through our skinny shot, plans to undergo MyEllevate to address skin laxity. Our experts discuss the tremendous benefits of this innovative procedure, especially for younger patients or those who are not yet ready for a full face and neck lift.

Transcript:

Welcome back to Plastic Surgery Untold, the greatest podcast in the world, is voted by us, we actually have a very special guest here, you know, MyEllevate is something that’s been near and dear to our heart and our practice that we’ve absolutely loved. And so we’re super honored to have Greg join us here who, who actually developed, pioneered and, and made MyEllevate. And so, I’m gonna let you know, a little bit, I’m a little nervous having you here just because you’re such a celebrity, but appreciate you joining us.

Oh, Johnny, thank you so much. And it’s so amazing to be here. It’s amazing to be in Miami, to be enjoying the esthetic meeting. And also, you know, I’m a plastic surgeon from Beverly Hills. And honestly, when I first thought of MyEllevate, I never imagined being here, being interviewed, because really, in the beginning, it was just for me. And now it’s become something that over 200 doctors are using. So I’m just loving it right now.

And if you don’t mind, let’s jump into, you know, something that’s been near and dear to my heart is this, this weight loss revolution. I’ve started some of these medications. I’m down about 70 pounds over the last six months, and I’ll let you in a little secret and our other million followers here, Sean’s actually going to do MyEllevate for my birthday in October, because with my weight loss, I just want to do a little, little tightening and get this jawline just nice and right. So we’ll keep you posted on that success.

No pressure right?

But I’m not alone in the world of you know, this unique population of people that are losing about 30, 40 pounds. It’s a much younger population than the typical bariatric weight loss patients that we’ve seen in the past and just want to get your thoughts about how MyEllevate fits into this, this really unique population that that’s going to explode with over 2 million Wegovy prescriptions in ’22.

Well, I think it’s pretty amazing. And I’m so excited you’re going to have the procedure to start off.  It’s, it’s pretty amazing, the patients who come in and see me and these are patients who just lost weight by traditional means. So imagine, as you were saying, you know, multiplying this, this is going to be a great area for MyEllevate, a way to elevate and shape the area underneath the jaw line without opening the neck. So you’re gonna be a great candidate. When I think for like, especially man, I got a little bit of thinning hair here, I’m still holding on as long as I possibly can. But for those of us that just don’t want some of the telltale signs of of, of scarring of a face and neck lift. I think for some of us who honestly don’t feel like I’m ready for it. I feel like I just need a little bit more of kind of jawline enhancement. I think it’s such a unique opportunity because truly the way you’ve developed this with with a special little punch holes, and then the light guider probe stuff. Once a couple of months go by, I mean, it’s truly imperceivable, some of the incisions that have been made during during this

Oh, absolutely. And everything’s done, as you know, through the little punctures, everything’s done with light guidance, the illuminated sewing needle and thread, which is something that I thought of that I thought somebody else had before, was totally original. But you’re going to be able to sow the neck, your neck, and be able to have no signs of any type of procedure, which is pretty crazy.

And the cool, unique thing that MyEllevate does that a lot of other just surface energy devices don’t is you actually have the ability with this when you loop around to address some of the muscle laxity and some of those participle bands that are super prominent when you’re really thin and lost a little bit of weight.

Yes, the technique involves making a little cut in those bands, all too little needle punctures, and then lifting and suspending them and shaping.

It’s such an obvious way to address it when you look at it now, but truly just mean, before that it was a neck lift or nothing, you know, and so it’s just amazing how that one little maneuver has just trained, made this procedure such a success, because I think that’s one of the keys behind why it works so well. You just sort of let the tent poles down and then bring that skin up.

Sure, absolutely, by by cutting them, you’re releasing them and lifting them.

Because I remember as a resident sitting here at ASAPS and listening to lectures and there was these whole panels for an hour about whether to open the neck or not. And and because you could or couldn’t address the muscles and and you’ve actually developed a few other things in terms of, and it kind of evolved MyEllevate to MyEllevate plus and some other things where you can kind of get the best of both worlds, address the muscles but maybe not open the neck and do some cool things. And and I don’t know if you if you have time to touch on that just a little bit, but that’s super exciting, too.

Oh, sure. So in my practice, the first time I performed the predecessor of MyEllevate was in 2007. So I have literally not opened the front of the neck since then. I do a lot of neck lifts and facelift, so my ovate can be combined with those. There’s also a MyEllevate plus procedure that’s like a little mini lift. And then we have the MyEllevate procedure that we usually combine with energy.

And that’s something else that I think is super cool is that, you know, My Ellevate can be combined with so many things. In my practice, I do a lot of body contouring. And I have so many patients that come in like, hey, we’re taking care of things from the neck down in terms of lipo, and can we do a little something for the this neck and the second portion? I’ll tell you, I’ve had patients you know, like we scheduled out a decent way and people have started some of these medications, they show up for their pre op three or four weeks ago, or three or four weeks before the surgery, but we saw them for a consol six or nine months ago. Also, now they lost 40, 50 pounds and someone who I was just going to do lipo on I was like, hey, we may need to do a little something extra to to address some of that skin laxity. It’s nice that you can do this additional procedure, but it doesn’t add three or four hours to the surgery. You know, actually super quick if you already have somebody asleep and doing neck lipo as part of the procedure.

Oh, absolutely, because when we do the, you know, the MyEllevate with skin removal, we do a limited area of skin elevation, we do the left, and then MyEllevate is placed. So you don’t have to open the front of the neck. So it’s much less invasive.

And Sean’s my partner here. And he, he does a lot of these in the office. So I think, again, for some of our young patients, it’s, they love the idea of not having to do general anesthesia for some of these procedures.

Well, I think just everybody now. There’s a big concern about opioids and the abuse potential of those. I don’t prescribe any medications like that for these patients after the procedure. They mostly take Tylenol and Motrin. That’s pretty much it. If I’m using energy, sometimes we throw in a little bit of the Neurontin or Gabapentin, but wide awake, no anesthetic during the procedure, and then they go home and they’re on over the counter meds while they recover for the next few days. Oh, absolutely.

It’s like, you know, days versus weeks with traditional techniques.

And just so we can clarify for some of our listeners stuff, because sometimes people come in and be like, oh, you know, I’ve looked into thread lifts or I’ve done thread lifts. And they think that this is the same. And to me, this is apples and oranges. I mean, they’re not even in the same realm because we’re actually suspending this to the mastoid fascia where we actually do a lot of our neck lifts traditionally, just in a different manner is, is that fair to say?

Oh, absolutely. I always used two words when people ask, “How is this like a thread lift?” Totally different. It really is. And it’s and it’s using the retaining ligaments that we are very familiar with when do neck lifts and face lifts, but using those without having to open the skin. And so this system is very stable, the light guidance allows you to place that suture right onto the muscle as if you had the whole neck open, but it’s not. So that’s the whole key behind the technology.

You know, what’s been interesting, and you know, even not, not even a population, I thought that would be super interested in this, you know, because most of the time it’s people that come to see us from the surgery, and then we’re referring them over to our nurse injectors and extenders, it’s been interesting that we’ve had this younger population that just want this snatch jawline, and are, now our extenders have been referring patients to Sean and I because, you know, they’re like, hey, I don’t want them to have this overfilled, you know, look to them. They just got a little bit of kind of that that neck, whether it’s weight loss, or just some of those muscles that have fallen a little bit, they just don’t have that nice angle. And that was kind of surprising to me how many younger patients were interested in something like this, they didn’t want look overly fake, didn’t want to look overly filled. But they’re on social media, they’re on Tiktok, Instagram, Snapchat, and wanted that fine jawline. So that was kind of interesting.

Oh my gosh, when when I perfected my ovate technique. And this is before we did the big launch in 2018, started doing it within six months, the average age of my patients dropped five years. Wow. So that just tells you that just like you said, we were attracting all these younger patients who wanted the snatch jawline. They look at themselves when they’re looking down taking a picture, they hated the fullness. MyEllevate perfect for that.

And with some of the tweaks that you’ve developed in terms of the plus, being able to incorporate this with some other things. When they come see us, I mean we’ll guide them to whatever they need and as you said, sometimes you add some energy devices, there’s a couple different options in terms of that, you know, maybe they include, you know, a plus, maybe they do some other, you know, mid face lifts or other things in this. And so, I think that’s what’s really cool is that you guys are focused on plastic surgeons, so it’s going to people who, you know, can really guide patients to whatever procedure they truly need.

Oh, absolutely. And you know, just like we said earlier, this is not a thread lift. This requires a fully trained surgeon with excellent skills. This is just a cool new tool in the hands of a very qualified skilled surgeon.

The thing I really love about it too, is it, it’s bringing a lot of things that we’ve done before, but just together in a very unique way. We’ve all done.. lipo. We’ve all done suture passage to you know, in different surgeries to suspend suspend different things. But this is just bringing it together in such a smart way that makes that skilled surgeon very comfortable very quickly doing the procedure.

And it’s you know, you think about it, and I don’t want to show my age a little bit. But you know, I was right at the time when they were changing from, you know, gall bladders being open procedures to laparoscopic. And you know, some of this is super interesting because people will sometimes want to think, well, if you don’t make these big incisions, that it’s less of a procedure and it’s truly, truly not, you know, it’s the precision and the technologies, we keep moving forward. The goal is, the less we can do, the faster recovery people can have, the minimal incisions and still get the same result. I mean, the beauty of this to me is the lack of incisions, the quick recovery, and still addressing like Sean had mentioned earlier, all the same things that we would do and in some of these traditional neck lifts that we do.

Absolutely and when, in the very beginning when I was thinking about it, what my goal was was to find a way to sew the neck muscles without opening the whole area and it was basically how can I see to sow and that’s where I came up with the whole thing with light guidance, you know, we are actually sewing the muscle as if the neck was open. And that’s the beauty behind it. So thank you for seeing that. No, I appreciate you being here. Any last kind of really, really cool MyEllevate stuff that you’d like all the listeners and patients who are exploring this to know about it?

I would say this, I would say for any person who’s out there listening to this, if you look in the mirror and maybe you’re younger, and you just don’t have those nice jaw lines that you really wanted to see and then the nice angles and so on. This is a great procedure for you. And then also if you’re a little bit older, and you maybe you lost some weight, and you’re starting to sag a little bit, this is the perfect procedure for you.

Greg, I can’t thank you enough for taking time out of your busy schedule. I know that you have about 18 talks this this weekend here in Miami at ASAPS so appreciate you taking a little time to join us on our show. So, thank you again. We’ll see you guys, Plastic Surgery Untold. Bye.