MIDDLETOWN, N.Y.—A group of renowned plastic surgeons and medical professionals are looking beyond patients’ surface into their hearts and minds to help them achieve long-lasting beauty.
This holistic approach to beauty, which departs from conventional cosmetic medicine thinking, was discussed at length at a global health symposium hosted by Northern Medical Center in Middletown, New York on Oct. 7.
Jeffrey Yager, the symposium’s keynote speaker, said his end goal as a plastic surgeon is to make his patients happy. To do that, he looks at the whole person, including physical, nutritional, emotional, and spiritual aspects.
Yager owns a plastic surgery center in Manhattan and specializes in medical procedures such as body contouring, breast surgery, facial rejuvenation, and injectable treatments.
“The physical part—the traditional plastic surgery—is the easiest part of my job. But it is more than just the physical, and sometimes the physical isn’t the real problem,” Yager said at the symposium.
“If a patient has a very black, dark energy, plastic surgery is not going to fix it. Whatever you put on the outside is not going to extend to the spirit on the inside. You have to get to the root of the spiritual problem that patient has, and it can be treated in many different ways,” he explained.
A Paradigm Shift
While treating patients, he grew more confident that spirit or energy plays a vital role in beauty.
But whenever he brought up the spiritual aspect of the work with other doctors in his field, most just rolled their eyes and said this had nothing to do with their jobs, he said.
“In the hospitals, people become institutionalized, which means you work in an institution for a certain period of time, you put yourself in so deep that it’s not worth trying to back out and going to different tracks,” he said.
Later, when Yanger found like-minded medical professionals at Northern Medical Center, where an integrative cosmetic medicine center is in planning, he quickly signed on.
SY Aesthetics
Damon Noto, a back and joint pain specialist at Northern Medical Center, unveiled at the symposium the center’s plan for a world-class destination for integrative cosmetic treatment.
The soon-to-be-built cosmetic medicine center, SY Aesthetics, will help patients achieve beauty by addressing four dimensions of health altogether: physical, biochemical, energetic, and spiritual, Noto said.
“Everybody has on the outside surface of you—a structural surface. But underneath that, you also have what we call a biochemical level: hormones, nutrients, neurotransmitters.
“And if you look at the older, more classical traditional healing methods, such as traditional Chinese medicine, they knew energy is the driving factor in one’s health. The fourth dimension we talked about is your thoughts. Are they positive thoughts? Are they negative thoughts?
“When you address all these four layers of a person, you are looking at long-lasting, powerful results,” he said.
Jingduan Yang, CEO of Northern Medical Center and a practitioner of integrative medicine for many years, envisions SY Aesthetics as a unique cosmetic medicine center that will change the entire healthcare industry.
Yang, a fifth-generation Chinese medicine practitioner and neurologist, said he decided to enter the cosmetic medicine field following a deeper understanding of the relationship between beauty and health.
“I never thought my career would evolve into the industry of beauty. But as I learn more, I began to realize that beauty is not superficial, or vain. To help people to be beautiful, you really have to help them to have healthy body, mind, and spirit,” he said.
Joseph DeStefano, mayor of Middletown, welcomed the global symposium and the future SY Aesthetics.
“The symposium brings medical professionals from all over the country and world here. The level of professionalism of the people who are going to be working here is something you probably have to go to Manhattan for. The Northern Medical Center has been very rewarding for our community,” DeStefano told The Epoch Times.
History, Techniques, and Humanity
Other speakers at the symposium also shared their knowledge and experiences in cosmetic medicine.Utpal Bit, dean of the plastic surgery department at Calcutta Medical College in India, shared remotely the Indian root of plastic surgery, tracing it back to Sushruta Samhita in 600 B.C., and how the Indian nose reconstruction technique using forehead flaps was brought into Rome.
Francesco Gargano, a renowned plastic surgeon who worked in Europe and now owns a private plastic surgery center in Manhattan, talked about human golden ratios discovered during the European Renaissance.
He shared how he helped people gain good body shapes, including his acclaimed “yin-yang” breast technique.
Gargano said he grew more interested in the holistic approach to medicine during the pandemic shutdown.
“This was the first time I am obliged to be home. I wanted to do something that I had never done before to improve myself. So, I said let’s do meditation. I was fascinated by it,” he told The Epoch Times.
Paul Dreschneck, a plastic surgeon and a four-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, shared how he helped children born with deformities through his humanitarian work in India.
“We, plastic surgeons, have the greatest job on the earth. You look at people, see beauty, and bring it forward so that people can see and feel good about it,” Drescheneck said.
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