New Study Reveals: Mother and Daughter look similar around the eyes

October 28, 2009 - 9:03 am | 44 views

Technology.am (Oct 28, 2009) — New research proposes the old saying usually told to husbands-to-be is accurate, that if you desire to be acquainted with what your wife will look similar to her mother. A group of plastic surgeons from the Loma Linda University Medical Center in California scanned the faces of mothers and their daughters. They found that the daughters’ faces were beginning to sag, wrinkle, thin, and lose elasticity about the eyes in precisely the similar patterns as their mothers’ faces, with the outcome becoming more obvious after daughters reached their mid 30s.

Mother daughter Dr Matthew Camp, one of the surgeons, said the study was the initial to demonstrate systematically that women age like their mothers. Until now, Camp said, studies of facial aging have generally been prejudiced and observational.

The team studied ten similar looking mother/daughter pairs ranging in age from 15 to 90, with facial imaging and 3-D computer modeling. The most obvious similarities of sagging and loss of volume occurred in the region of the tear ducts and the lower eyelids, which are areas where loss of suppleness and slackening of muscles is frequent as people age.

As a face ages and the lower eyelid muscles loosen, the fat underneath the skin tends to swell out, causing “bags” below the eyes. A loss of elasticity leads to lose skin accumulating as folds in the upper eyelids and creases beneath the eyes. According to a leading British facelift surgeon, Norman Waterhouse, past president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, aging in women’s faces is more obvious as women’s faces transform from oval to square as the skin sags, while men’s faces be likely to be square even when they are younger. A facelift is intended to compensate the effect.

The American researchers believed their outcome may perhaps be a helpful aid for cosmetic surgery on the eye region, which amongst the commonest cosmetic surgery procedures. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPA) statistics propose surgery on the eyelids was the fourth most regular plastic surgery operation in 2008.

The results of the study were offered previous weekend to the annual American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) conference in Seattle, Washington in the US.

Photo credit: daveparker

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