Dr. Shervin Naderi, a double board-certified facial plastic surgeon, explains how bleeding and bruising affect rhinoplasty and injectable procedures and lists common medications, supplements, and foods that increase bleeding risk. He names specific agents to avoid (aspirin, anticoagulants, vitamin E, nuts, seeds, fish/omega-3s, garlic, ginseng, ginkgo biloba) and advises patients to check everything they eat, drink, or apply topically. He recommends avoiding these substances for about two weeks before—and sometimes one to two weeks after—procedures to reduce bruising, swelling, and scarring.
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Hi everyone, My name is Dr. Sherban Nadiri. I'm a double board certified facial plastic surgeon with a practice that's focused on rhinoplasty and injections. Both of those are affected by bleeding and bruising. And so we're going to talk about things that you can do to prevent or lower or lessen or avoid bleeding or bruising. 10, 15, 20 years ago, we would tell our patients to avoid substances like aspirin, coumadin, heparin, vitamin E to prevent bleeding during surgery or with injections. But today there's many, many more topical and oral compounds that can create more bleeding and bruising. Diet is a huge part of it and things that people take for granted create severe bleeding that can be dangerous during surgery, can create more bruising and also more swelling and affect the results. These same substances can definitely create more bruising and injections. And instead of potentially having no downtime and going back to work, patients can be bruised for several days to several weeks. Some of these are the nuts. Almonds, walnuts have a lot of omega 3s, create a lot of bleeding and bruising. The seeds as well, flax seeds, chia seeds, etc. Will create more bleeding and bruising. Lots of compounds that are sold in herbal or health food stores or whole foods, starts with the letter G, garlic, ginseng, ginkgo biloba. These things cause more bleeding or bruising. Obviously the fish, salmon and the other fish can cause bleeding and bruising as well. Make sure please, that you look at everything you eat, everything that you drink, everything that you use, even topically to make sure it avoids things that create more bleeding and bruising. If you want to have lower downtime with injections in the office, such as Juvederm or Restylane, you want to really prevent bleeding and bruising. Surgery is even more complicated and we want to make sure that there's very little bleeding during surgery, especially surgery like rhinoplasty. More bleeding means more swelling, more swelling leads to more scar tissue. More scar tissue means that you see the results later on not as quickly and sometimes not as nicely because there is more swelling and scar tissue that can result in a larger appearance of the post op results, even for years later. So please look at everything you eat, everything that you drink. Don't take things for granted. If you go to deli for a sandwich, you could be eating some flax seeds on the bread and not be aware of it. If you're having some oatmeal or cereal, there could be some nuts in it or even additive omega 3s, which are healthy for the heart. They're good to prevent heart attack and strokes, but they definitely create more bleeding and bruising. There's a list of these substances on the website. These are commonly available online. Please do your part to make sure you avoid these at least for two weeks before and sometimes a week or two after the procedures. Thank you.
