00:00
JJ
So before we get into what went wrong, but more importantly, what went right, none of this is going to make sense without a little context. Before the complications, before the recovery tools, before the mindset work, there was a decision. And that decision first of course, was that I was going to do this and then how I chose my surgeon, the prep behind it. This all set the stage for everything that followed. So this is where the story really begins. Hey, I’m JJ, virgin, PhD dropout. Sorry, Mom. Turned four time New York Times bestselling author. As a certified nutrition specialist, fitness hall of Famer, and globally recognized leader in health, I’m driven to keep asking the tough questions and use my podcast to simplify the science of health into actionable strategies that help you thrive. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on the show.

00:54
JJ
And here’s the fun part. When you send me your review, I’ll reply to you using my on demand virtual Me. That’s right, my team and I created a virtual JJ packed with my books, speeches and wisdom so I can personally connect with you. Here’s how you do it. Subscribe and leave an honest review of the podcast. Take a screenshot of your review. Text it to 813-565-2627. That’s 813-565-2627. My virtual JJ will reply directly. And trust me, this will make your day. So subscribe now@subscribetoj.com and text me your review. Let’s keep thriving together. So my skin’s always been my kryptonite. I had really bad acne growing up. I mean, and the biggest challenge with that was I was also an athlete, so. So it was impossible to keep makeup on it. I just was really self conscious about my skin.

02:01
JJ
In my 30s, like I still had acne going on. I mean, I still get some breakouts now. It’s like, come on, I’m 62, still getting breakouts. What the heck, they’ve gotten a lot better. One of the things that really helped my skin a lot was discovering the virgin diet and what was going on with dairy in my skin. But I still had a lot of acne scars. And in my 30s I found IPL and it got rid of all of my acne scars. It was like, it was amazing. And then I started doing more lasers around that same time. One of my clients was a plastic surgeon. And I remember I was editing video. I was doing these little TV commercials and helping to edit them, and I saw these lines in between my eyes and I was like, what’s that?

02:46
JJ
So started doing Botox way back then. Then, gosh, fast forward another decade, found out about filler. So I’ve just been doing things all along that I thought would keep me from ever having to do the actual thing, the plastic surgery. And what I started to notice was I was having to do more and more of these things more often. It’s kind of like I used to be blonde and I remember the first time I dyed my hair and it was like once or twice a year you’d highlight it, then all of a sudden it’s more often and it’s more than highlights. And now it’s covering gray and it’s like it feels the same way with your skin. Where I was doing some things that was working well and I had to do them more often, Botox more often, filler, doing these lasers in series.

03:30
JJ
And I’m like going, this is taking an awful lot of time and costing a lot of money, let’s be honest. And I’m not really thrilled with the results. And so I started looking around at plastic surgeons and I have a lot of friends who are plastic surgeons, amazing surgeons. So, you know, of course, they always love this too. What do you think? You know? So asking them, looking at different surgeons, and I just wasn’t finding anyone that I was really comfortable with. I’ve had friends who’ve gone to some of these amazing surgeons. I interviewed them. It just. I don’t know. I don’t know what I was looking for, but I wasn’t getting it. But it was starting to bother me more and more. And to be honest, I was feeling really self conscious.

04:06
JJ
I was starting to feel like maybe things are passing me by because of my age. Like, I felt like my body and my face didn’t match. And it was frustrating. And that’s just self conscious, really, around the lower part of my face. You know when you get in the mirror and you start messing with your face going, what would happen if you pull this up? That’s what I was doing. And then Kris Jenner happened. Like, when I saw Kris Jenners, I was like, oh my gosh. But something else happened. I was reading an article and the article said that one of the reasons she had such great outcome was because this was her second facelift and that when you do these earlier that you actually have better outcomes. I had thought it was the opposite.

04:44
JJ
I thought that you wanted to put this off as long as possible, that this wasn’t something you did more than once, that it could make you look older, like I had all this. This narrative going on that turns out were actually not true, so shame on me. I should know better than to. I don’t know where I got all this misinformation from, but if you’ve heard any of those things, as I started to unpack, it’s like, no, that’s actually not the case. You’re actually better off doing it a little bit earlier, not waiting as long, but who knew? Anyhow, once I made that decision, it’s funny, all these things fell into place. One of my girlfriends from San Diego called and said, hey, I met a girl in Miami and another gal in la, and they both went to a surgeon in Tampa.

05:26
JJ
And I go, Tampa, because let’s be honest, it is so much nicer to do these things near your house. A year ago, Tim needed to have a hip replacement. And I love my surgeon in la, so I convinced him he should do it there. And then were in a hotel room in la. It was really hard. And so I kind of made that decision. We’re not going to do that again. That was just too hard to do. So I really wanted to do something near home. And. And as luck would have it’s amazing how these things all seem to happen exactly perfectly. I get introduced to this doctor who people are traveling to Tampa to see, and I meet her and absolutely love her. She has incredible training. She’s a head and neck surgeon.

06:06
JJ
Trained as a head and neck surgeon only does facial and neck is really normal. You know how some of these plastic surgeons, okay, between you and me, look a little weird. Like, look like they have gone overboard and the whole office looks like it’s gone overboard. It’s so not like this with this gal. So really, someone you just want to go to lunch with, like, very good, knows what she’s doing. And as she walked through the procedures, both with me and my husband, I was like, oh. And how she would do us differently and what needed to happen and what were issues and what our choices were. I was like, okay, this is my person. And the minute I felt that, like, I felt completely confident. I didn’t freak out, wasn’t concerned. I felt very competent about the whole thing.

06:49
JJ
Then the next thing was, well, when the heck can I fit this in? And here’s the reality. I travel about 70% of the time. There’s about two weeks where you have to be prepared for downtime, and I’m rarely ever home two weeks in a row. And so we had this one time in our calendar right before Thanksgiving that we Knew we’d be home for two weeks before I had to go to Las Vegas to speak at an event. We did have a team meeting that was supposed to be happening at our house, but I was like, oh, who cares? They don’t care. Luckily, she has that time in her calendar. We scheduled a time. And then I go, all right, I need to do everything possible to get great outcomes from the start.

07:26
JJ
And a lot of this is, of course, the diet is super important now. My diet, I was already dialed, like, anti inflammatory diet, good protein sources, all that. So diet was good. But I wanted to make sure I was also doing peptides to support all of this. So what I did was I pinged my buddy Dave Asprey, because Dave had a facelift. I’m like, what did you do to get yourself dialed in and recover better from your surgery? Now we already have a hyperbaric chamber at our house because I got one for my son Grant to help him with his traumatic brain injury. So I have a hyperbaric. I have a lot of red lights, and these are two very important things to help you heal. And then I wanted to put that together with peptides and topicals.

08:08
JJ
So from Dave, he told me to do ipamorelin and CJC and BPC157 and TB 550 copper peptides. So I put those together for my process. And I had like morning and evenings that I was doing. Then I had a topical from Oral Wellness, this amazing copper peptide topical. Incredible. So I got that. And then for to help me with healing, of course I doubled up on my essential amino acids. I doubled up on my yoked fortitropin because I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to lift weights for a couple weeks, and you really can’t. And I’ll explain that in a moment. And I doubled up on my collagen, so I had my essential aminos, my collagen, and my yolked for cordotropin, and then those peptides and then that topical copper peptide. And then along with my one skin. Oh, my gosh, my obsession.

09:00
JJ
So that’s all the stuff that I had then. I am a big mindset person, so I never thought anything but this was gonna be easy and perfect. And of course, right before I’m going in, I see that my buddy Chalene Johnson has just done it a week before, and she looks great. Everything looks great. I’m like, okay, no problem. I got this. My husband goes in the day before because I was getting all my last minute recordings done before I went in because I’d have to be off camera for two weeks. He goes in, I take him there, I pick him up. You know, he’s doing great, seems fine. I’m like, okay, this is a piece of cake. I got this. So I get up, I go in the morning.

09:33
JJ
Now, here’s what’s interesting about this surgery is so I was doing a neck lift, a deep plane facelift, and brow lift. My husband actually did more than me. He also did an upper and lower bleph. So he did all those things in upper, lower, and bleph. This will get funny in a moment. I go in, and they have you take a halcyon before you start. They really want your blood pressure low. You calm. You don’t go under anesthesia. You have locals put into your face. I think it’s like lidocaine in your face. You numb your face. But they don’t want you going under anesthesia because they do not want you to get nauseous, come out of anesthesia, and throw up. That is the number one risk in plastic surgery for having trouble with outcomes is throwing up. Up. Didn’t pay attention to that enough.

10:18
JJ
All right, so we go in. I have an old injury in my mid spine because my first husband thought I should help him carry a very heavy coffee table up a flight of stairs. It pulled out a rib rotated, and it’s never been the same since. So lying back on something for. On my back for more than, like, 20, 30 minutes gets really problematic for me. Now I’m lying back on this chair, which will be for four hours, but I’m not thinking about that. So I lie back. I’m on. I have this halcyon. I’m relaxing. You know, you’re basically kind of semi sleeping, and she’s doing all this. I can’t feel anything. It feels fine. But about three hours in I get, they give me another halcyon because I guess my blood pressure was going up.

11:04
JJ
And that’s the thing they have to really control for is that your blood pressure doesn’t go up. I have low blood pressure, but I think what happened was I started to hurt so much in my upper back that it started to create a little anxiety. That’s my take. That’s my clinical diagnosis. Diagnosis. Anyway, that happened. And then at the end of all of that, I’m all wrapped up now, ready to go. I’ll show you a picture. I looked amazing. Like, had all this stuff done, and I had, like, a little bit of redness under my eyes. Like Nothing looked perfect, darn it. And they gave me an oxycodine. I should have known better. They had told me about this, and I shouldn’t have. I should have said something before because I hate those. They always make me throw up.

11:45
JJ
And I should have just said, nope, those always make me throw up. Anyhow, I took some anti nausea stuff when I got home, but still, I felt like I was gonna throw up. And I just. I guess I was too out of it to go. Do not throw up. So I threw up. And when I did, it caused a hematoma. And that’s like, the big. No, no. And you will see a picture. Oh, my gosh. Like, I went from, you look fine to what the heck? Like, scary monster in an hour. Like, my whole side of my face swelled up. I got this. Everything turned black and blue. Like, I was black and blue inside my mouth, in my ears. It was unbelievable.

12:22
JJ
Meanwhile, I’m looking over at my hubby Tim, who had more done than me with that upper and lower bleph where they go inside your eye, right? Like in there. And he looks fine. And I’m like, what the heck? He’s got, like, a tiny little bruise. I am black and blue and swollen, puffed out. And we go back to see her, and she’s like, has to go in there. She has to, you know, drain this hematoma whole bit. Okay? I go back home, I’m like, all right, just breathe, stay calm. You know, fortunately, I’ve done a lot of lasers and things over the years that you’ll be like, all right, you look scary, you know, so I’ve had things go on where, like, you know, you’re gonna look scary from this chemical peel from this laser. But it always comes. You always recover.

13:04
JJ
The next day is Thanksgiving. I wake up, the hematoma’s back. I have to go back in. She has to not just open it up. She has to open it up, kind of undo the sutures, go back in. And my family’s coming over for dinner. Now, they’ve seen me do some things, so they’re like, okay, well, you’ll be fine. Like, none of them are at all freaked out. Tim’s a little freaked out. My husband. And we are supposed to. This is now Thursday. We are on Monday having all these people coming over Monday night that are having a team meeting Tuesday, Wednesday. He’s like, we can’t do it. I go, well, he says we should do zoom. I go, oh, we’ll be fine. I go, I’ll just hide in the Bedroom or, you know, whatever. Like, it’s fine. He goes, no, no.

13:46
JJ
He was freaked out about what I look like. I was like, eh. So I’m bruised. Anyhow, we ended up doing the meeting by Zoom. Probably smarter. But now the clock is ticking because I am going to be standing on a stage in 10 days. And right now I’ve got. I’m black and blue. So I start going in, and this doctor who’s amazing, completely calm during all this, explaining what’s going on, explaining how it’s gonna get better. You know, okay, we’ve got 10 days. We can get through this. I was doing those peptides I talked about. I was doing the topicals. I was doing red light. I was using this bon charge red light mask, but twice a day. And I was also in the HBOT. I have a home HBOT from Oxyhealth, and I was in there 90 minutes a day.

14:32
JJ
So I’m doing all of that along with the dietary stuff. And now she starts doing IPL on me. Now, I love ipl. I’ve had great experiences with IPL in the past, so I’m like, all right, let’s go. Anyway, first day I do it’s a little better. I can tell it’s getting a little better. It takes about a day, but I’m like, that’s starting to get a little better. So I literally do it five times before I’m going off to Vegas. And by time, like, I do it on a Friday, then I do it on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And I’m now looking at over the weekend. I’m leaving that following Wednesday. And I’m like, okay, this is actually gonna work out. Like, I had five of these IPL treatments done.

15:08
JJ
And, you know, I still have a teeny bit of puffiness and a little bruise here. It’s been eight weeks where the hematoma was. Like, I can notice it. You probably wouldn’t notice it unless I said, hey, look at this thing right here. Which is. Don’t we all tend to do that? Like, look at this. But I can feel it. And I notice it’s a tad teensy, teeny bit of black and blue, which I. I should have gone back and done more ipl, but I just got busy. However, you’re gonna see these photos and go, how did you go from this to that quickly? And I think it’s all the stuff. So I think, first of all, was not freaking out when all this is going on. I was like, okay, this is gonna be fine.

15:46
JJ
It’s so challenging when you know, the day after someone has surgery cause they’re freaking out. So there’s that piece of it. But I just was pretty confident. Now in retrospect, a couple things I realized coming into this and when I told the surgeon about because I was like going, you know, this strikes me that this could be a problem for other people. And this may or may not have anything to do with this, but when you’re going in to have a surgery, generally you go off of all the G’s, the ginkgos, the garlics, the ginsengs. Okay, I was off all that. And you also go off fish oil. So you go off things that are blood thinners. Well, I did all of that and usually do that for one to two weeks. I was off of all of it for two weeks. Weeks.

16:26
JJ
However, two days before the surgery, I had my function health annual like, well, you actually get your lab test done twice a year. So I just done a function health test and they did my omega 3 index. And what that looks at are your, my omega 6 to 3 ratio. It looks at your balance of omega 6s, which are your pro inflammatory and your omega 3 anti inflammatory. And you want those to be about 4 to 1. Like you want to be able to clot to launch a blood, you know, to be able to reduce inflammation and to be able to increase inflammation, you need to have that balance. And my omega 3 ratio, the 6 to 3 was 3 to 1 where 4 to 1. If it gets higher, it’s more pro inflammatory.

17:05
JJ
Apparently the typical standard American diet, someone’s like 20 to 1, very pro inflammatory. But I was too much the other way, which means thinner blood, easier to bleed, which I don’t think caused the hematoma. But it did not help matters when this happened. And here’s the problem. Two days before my surgery, I got that test back. The reality is if you want to shift that ratio, it can take months. Now, generally my ratio’s spot on, but I had been eating a lot more fish than normal and still taking fish oil, which was not smart. You don’t need to take a bunch of fish oil if you’re eating a bunch of fish. Like if you’re eating fish four or five times a week, you’re probably good. And I just started eating more fish. I don’t know why.

17:47
JJ
Anyhow, I think that contributed to the issue along with know yourself, if something makes you throw up, don’t do it. Here’s the funniest part about the surgery. It really wasn’t that Painful. I could have totally managed it with Tylenol. I took like a couple Tylenol over the whole time, and I think one Tramadol and that was it. Like, it just wasn’t that big of a deal, which is wild. So the other thing I would say is I could have iced a lot more in the first 24 hours, but I was so out of it and not feeling good and freaked out that I kind of, like, didn’t do as much as I should have. So if you’re going to go do this, absolutely do what I did in terms of the collagen and the yolked fortetropin and the essential aminos.

18:28
JJ
Absolutely do what I did with all those peptides that I talked about, the BPC157 and TB500. And again, this is not medical advice. This is what I did. If it was me, this is what I would do. That’s all I’m saying. You know, but check these out. Check out the copper peptides. Check out Ipomorlin, these things and cjc. These things seem to help a lot. You know, if you can get into a hyperbaric, and especially if you go into a hard shell every day, huge. It’s probably the single biggest thing that will make a difference is hyperbaric. And a red light. Bon Charge has this great red light mask. Amazing. An easy thing to add into the mix. So all these things help tremendously. But I think the biggest thing that made the difference was me not freaking out.

19:09
JJ
There were times there I was like, oh, but I just having gone through, say, different types of lasers and no cut facelift and peels, I was like, you’ve done this stuff before. You can get through this. So that’s what I would say. I think the most important thing is to really find someone that you trust. The doctor I went to, her name is Dr. Abby McEwen. And I’ll put her information in the notes. But just great bedside manner, very talented. Like, her before and afters are insane. And I just felt super duper comfortable with her. And I think the reality for me, because again, this was something I thought I would never do. But then I realized I’m doing all this other stuff. What is really the difference?

19:48
JJ
So you’re doing all this laser, no cut facelifts, you know, which is this ellacor, all these other things, filler, Botox. I’d rather not have to do any of that stuff and just do this, you know, and be done with it. So I actually think in the long run, this is going to be way less costly and way more time efficient and actually move the needle more so again. And I feel totally comfortable in what I’ve done and in sharing the story. The only thing I would redo if I had to do it all over again was not take that darn oxycodeine. Check my Omega 3 index back down off of that. This is something you’re considering. Do your due diligence, find someone you super trust, do all the prep work. Understand that things could happen.

20:31
JJ
My husband rubbed his stitches out of his eyes, rubbed them out and had to go get restitched re sutured. I’m like oh my gosh. So things are going to happen, you know, which is why it’s great to have someone you know make sure you’re either staying nearby or you’ve got a surgeon nearby. And again, if you’re doing any of these types of things, hyperbaric for the wind is what I have to say. All right. Hope that gave you some insight and didn’t scare you. And hopefully these pictures, just when you see the transformation can help you go, wow, okay. If she would be that black and blue and be out at an event and on a stage 14 days later, that’s pretty amazing.

21:09
JJ
So if that’s something you’re interested in, hey, do your due diligence, do your research and I wish you the best of luck. And if you’ve got a friend who’s thinking about doing some stuff, be sure to share this with them too so they can know what types of things to prepare for. Be sure to join me next time for more tools, tips and techniques you can use to look and feel your best and be built to last. Also, I’d love to connect with you and hear your thoughts on the podcast. Here’s how. First, subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest review. Second, take a screenshot of your review and third, text it to 813-565-2627. That’s 8:50-0813-565-2627. When you do, I’ll reply using my brand new virtual jj.

22:07
JJ
It’s my on demand virtual self built from my books, talks and years of experience so I can interact with you directly. You’ll make my day and I can’t wait to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in and I’ll catch you on the next episode. Hey JJ here. And just a reminder that the well Beyond 40 podcast offers health, wellness, fitness and nutritional information that’s designed for educational and entertainment purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your health, you should always consult with a physician or other healthcare professional.

22:48
JJ
Make sure that you do not disregard, avoid or delay obtaining medical or health related advice from your healthcare professional because of something you may have heard on the show or read in our show notes. The use of any information provided on the show is solely at your own risk.

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