This column first appeared in the Men’s Health email newsletter. The Optimized Man is a biweekly series from our editorial director as he tries out the latest, greatest, and weirdest health and wellness innovations so you don’t have to. Sign up here to get the next one.
I feel bad about my jawline, and with apologies to Nora Ephron, it is responsible for roughly 70 percent of my weirdness about getting older—and looking it. The outer rim of my face began to soften and round in my early 40s, around the time MH contributor Garrett Munce wrote his authoritative guide to jawline preservation and optimization. And as my jaw gradually lost its literal edge, I often thought about the end of Garrett’s opening paragraph: “Batman, Superman, Thor, the Human Torch.
I could draw dozens of their faces from memory even before the Marvel Cinematic Universe began making gods out of guys named Chris. The one thing they all have in common? A jaw that looks like a block of granite.” My jaw was looking less like granite and more like marshmallow.
This is what happens in middle age: Your skin produces less collagen and loses some of its snap; the fat in your face thins in some places and shifts in others, and even the bone underneath subtly changes, leaving the entire lower-face support system a little less…supportive. Doesn’t really matter who you are; the clean lines blur. Next stop—wait for it—Jowlsville.
So over the next five years, I went to a bunch of dermatologists to try the latest and greatest in skin-tightening, collagen-building technology. Each creates a slightly different kind of controlled injury to your face and jaw, mostly by heating the tissue beneath your skin. Sofwave and Ultherapy use ultrasound to create tiny zones of heat; Morpheus8 uses tiny needles to deliver radiofrequency energy—and yes, it hurts.
The basic idea behind all three is the same: Heat or irritate the tissue enough to bully the body into producing more firmness-inducing collagen over the following weeks and months. I didn’t dislike any of them, and I’m pretty sure each helped me hold the line on my jawline. But I wished I didn’t have to spend three months waiting for something—anything—to happen, you know?
Extract — continue reading at the source.
