A plastic surgeon breaks down how to recover faster from breast augmentation. Stop alcohol and smoking two weeks before, use local anesthetic during surgery to minimize pain, and skip narcotics after. Early movement, magnesium, and morning sunlight help with swelling and healing.
Thinking about breast augmentation surgery, but you're worried about the recovery? Well, things have changed, especially in my practice. There are a lot of things that could be done to improve the recovery of breast augmentation surgery, or any breast surgery for that matter. And it all starts prior to the operation, preparing yourself, taking the appropriate supplements, getting the appropriate amount of rest, and then avoiding the things you're not supposed to be doing, like smoking and alcohol and things like that. Alcohol is a big one. A lot of surgeons don't even promote this, but if you stop drinking 2 weeks prior to your surgery, you will get a lot less bleeding, a lot less inflammation. That's what I recommend to all my patients. So it starts before, and then during the surgery, obviously I pre-inject with a lot of numbing medicine. I do minimal dissection. And I also use some multimodal anesthesia, which helps you recover much faster. So when you wake up, you're not in pain, and then I have alternative supplements. I do prescribe narcotics. Most of my patients don't even need to take those because when they wake up, they're not in a whole lot of pain, mainly from the operation and also from that pre-injection of the numbing medicine. Alternative things like magnesium, which help relaxes the muscles, right? So if your muscles are tight and they're spasming, take magnesium. That relaxes that, right? That doesn't affect your whole body. It also helps keep you regular if you need it. CBD works really well. Lastly, you can always do like a little over-the-counter Tylenol if you're having a whole lot of pain. Early movement helps you heal faster. Daily sunshine aligned with your circadian rhythm is really good to get better sleep at nighttime. A little bit of massage, a little gentle massage at the appropriate times depending on what your surgeon recommends, can also help offload a lot of the fluid buildup. And that's typically why I don't put you in a surgical bra right after surgery, because that cuts off your outflow of your lymphatics and prevents blood supply to the area that needs to heal the most. A lot of people forget, where's my surgical bra? It's like, it's on purpose, not supposed to have any. Obviously that depends on the surgeon, the type of operation that you have. So let me know in the comments if you've ever had cosmetic procedure and any tips that you recommend that sped up your recovery.
