The Hidden Truth About Plastic Surgery (They Never Tell You This) | Ep. 199 with Dr. Osman Bashir Tahir

0:00Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Founder Story. Today we have Dr. Osmin Bashir Tahir, and you are a world-renowned, award-winning plastic surgeon with clinics in London, Dubai, and Lahore. I love talking about aesthetics, plastic surgery, regenerative medicine. These are topics. These are my most favorite topics, Dr. OBT, which you're also known as Dr. OBG. But before we dive into all these things, because I'm very curious about what is popular right now, what are people looking at, how did you get started in this field? And then on top of that, you are a global citizen with having businesses in many countries.

0:46How did this happen? First of all, thank you so much, Daniel, for having me on this podcast today. Yeah, I think let's take it from the start. I basically, you know, as far as I can remember, I was about seven or eight years old and I was walking with my grandfather and, you know, he asked me what you want to become. And I said, I want to become a doctor because I want to help people. And I want to, you know, and I was a bit of an artist in school. And growing up, I when I eventually my parents really supported me, you know, with my education and always whatever I wanted to do. So I got into med school and I kind of I really got interested, fascinated with surgery.

1:23And it kind of all came together because it was like, you know, there was a blend of art and science. And plastic and reconstructive surgery was something which I really developed a passion for. I loved helping our people, you know, cleft surgeries and all these. We had trauma patients and we had all these challenging cases. It was a massive workload of burn patients and reconstructive patients. And then what happened was that basically I started seeing that my patients, when we used to do their surgeries, even if it was a really complex reconstruction, they were still a little bit unhappy with the color mismatch or with the texture of their skin or with something or another.

2:03And I felt like, okay, what if I can do something? And that's when the studies started getting really popular. So I started dabbling into it towards the middle to end of my residency program. And I saw my patients started getting so happy when I did things like chemical peels, a bit of lasers, a bit of microneedling, which used to start to really improve the results. And it was so funny because they started getting more happy with the final touches, which you could call more than the complex reconstruction itself. So it kind of like, I love the fact that they became so happy. And I just felt that that completed their journey.

2:41So I started practicing aesthetic medicine side by side. So I consider myself one of the first guys who really divided my practice into aesthetic surgery and aesthetic medicine. So a lot of plastic surgeons don't really do too much aesthetics. They give it to their nurses or they just aren't interested in it. At the same time, there's a lot of aesthetic medical practitioners who don't really know when to refer their patient. Therefore, that's why things are getting a bit weird. So I think that it's kind of having having gone into this really early and having that kind of diversity in my practice, it just it just evolved.

3:20And I really, you know, my patients started getting happy and I started growing my practice. And here I am today. I'm very fascinated with what you're talking about, blending art and surgery. And that makes total sense when I'm thinking about plastic surgery and the end result for what the patient wants to have. so walk me through the you know what's going on in your mind when you're looking at somebody or somebody comes in and they say i need one thing done you know you always see like this like draw you know doctors drawing lines on people and looking and i'm always what's going on in their mind so you know uh daniel the thing is that there's a lot of misconceptions and a lot of a lot of stuff which we see on on social media is i always i always kind of like say oh my god this is it's like a circus it's like it's just going in in a wrong direction you'll never hear about all the great cases all the great work all this the the confidence boost all the all the right things but you know whenever something will happen like if somebody's gotten a procedure just freshly done they're very swollen people are gonna go rush after them and troll them and all that i think everybody everybody um every one of us has an you know an area or two you know it could be your hair it could be your skin it could be something which you know you want to you want to improve it and that that'll just add a bit more confidence in you and then it kind of trickles into other areas of your life so you know for example if somebody says oh god i have this love handle issue or i have this double chin issue if i do a little bit of liposuction into it and then they kind of like i see them later on they're like they look totally different why because they've started eating right they started going to the gym now and they started like you know look dressing better and because that and that trickles and then they're they're better partners they're better in their family.

5:05So that is the essence. That's the right reasons why people should be getting things done. Not for other people, not to look like someone else. It should never be like that. When someone comes and says, I want Angela and Julie, I'm like, look, these are your lips. I'm going to try to make them as attractive and natural as possible on your face. I cannot make somebody else's lips come onto your face. So I think that when I look at someone coming into my office, I always look, what can I do for this person for them to look a little bit more attractive, a little bit more better, a little bit more healthier.

5:36For example, if they have tired eyes, I can give them solutions which are instant and also regenerative. And when I say regenerative, it means I'm blending stuff which is going to give some instant volumization or improvement, and then it's going to work slowly and slowly to improve the quality of skin tissues. And that's where, that's the right direction this industry is kind of heading and should be heading it's towards regenerative treatments and wellness and lifestyle and integration of all these things to to get the best possible outcome for the patient and on the aesthetic side what would you say is one of the most popular things that people are coming in for aesthetics yeah so like you know injectables and energy-based devices are really popular so injectables people are a little bit you know a bit more scared now because of what they see you know with with what happens with fillers but i feel that that is more of a problem when when they kind of went into the mainstream a lot of people who weren't really trained or had that much that thorough anatomical knowledge or scientific knowledge on how fillers work and they kind of just went overboard and started selling fillers rather than doing them the way they should be done and whenever i mean anybody who knows me knows that I am such a conservative injector.

6:53So fillers is still one of my most popular non-surgical treatments. And I do it the way it should be done. Like that means do a tiny bit, where it's required, exact location, anatomically correct to give the best result. When you overdo it or think that, oh, I'm going to put a bit more to get a better result, that's when things go wrong. And then you have to kind of like dissolve it and redo it the right way. So I'm doing a lot of reversals for a lot of other doctors. I'm not putting anybody down, But it shouldn't be something so casually performed. I think that it needs more regulation. And I think the States has started doing that.

7:28I think it should come to London for sure, because here, beauticians are doing the injections. And that's just wrong. Injecting into the face, I feel that's just not. It's a medical procedure after all. And when it's done by an expert who actually does it in every single day of their life for a couple of years, the results are incredible. They're great. And now there are injectable substances which are triggering your own collagen production. So you should be utilizing, you should be having that, you know, armentarium of different kind of products. And then obviously have a bespoke plan for the patient.

8:02It's not like a cookie cutter approach. Oh, whoever's going to come, we're going to make it the same way. And that's what's kind of happening when you go to these typical med spas or some locations which are just trying to sell, sell, sell. So I think that people think that anybody can achieve the natural look. But in my experience, I think only experts can achieve that natural or undetectable look. And undetectable aesthetics is actually also one of the directions where the industry is going. And I am totally for that. I like how you said the undetectable because I do see some people sometimes and I'm like, wow, it really doesn't look like them anymore.

8:40Yeah, wrong ones. Yeah. I like the accentuating the parts that you have versus looking like somebody you're not. But then you see somebody who's so, I'm sorry, but to cut you off, but I'm just so excited about this topic because then again, you also see someone who looks so good, but then you don't really know what they got done. You're like, did he? Didn't he? Did she? Didn't she? Because she just looks, or he looks really handsome, or she looks really attractive, really pretty. but you do know that they did something but you always think no they might not have done so that you know that that guest thing that's the right thing that's the way it should be and you know they should look like themselves but just the best version right who doesn't want to be the best version of themselves exactly exactly on the regenerative side what are some things that you're excited about that you're either already doing yeah or what you're seeing in the future oh you know i see so much stuff which has been is is being done for so many years but you know They kind of package it into a new name and they kind of like try to sell it.

9:43I think the regenerative aesthetic procedures, regenerative medicine is great. But obviously, you're going to have a lot of companies trying to force things which are office-based and can be done by dermatologists or aesthetic physicians. But I think as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, I know that one of the best regenerative compounds is your own fat. Your fat contains incredible stem cells. And to harvest that fat, you need to do liposuction. So it's a two-step process. It's not maybe as easier as office-based injections. There are injections out now. There are microneedling treatments with exosomes, which are stem cell-based science.

10:25But when you inject fat, and there's many kinds of fat. People imagine fat as being this really thick and bulky substance. but you can also like liquefy it and it's called nanofat and microfat is a bit more thicker. But when you inject this compound taken from your own body and transfer it into the right areas, you can get that really nice youthful effect. Things like, for example, the under eye area. When you're injecting something like that, which is really a milky version, a milky kind of consistency of your fat. We prepare that first. It kind of, it helps to improve the quality of your dry skin, for example.

11:09It'll make it thicker. It'll make it more, look more healthy. You look overall, it'll give you that nice effect because you already had that before, but you do weight loss, you do aging, you do stress, you do inflammation. You get that tired look, for example. So I do inject a lot of fat into the face. I do it whilst I'm doing my facelifts or even some patients who are not ready for a facelift and they want a bit of volume or they want a bit more improvement in their skin quality or even in their body. You can even inject any rust in the body. So fat transfer is a great regenerative treatment.

11:39But then exosomes, as I said, with microneedling is really good. There are polynucleotides, which is really popularly known. Recently, you must have heard, congratulations on getting that salmon sperm facial. That's basically salmon DNA, which mimics human DNA. And we kind of inject it. it doesn't behave like a volumizing kind of a product. So you can inject it under your eye. You can inject it into your smile lines, for example. And what it's going to do is it's just going to progressively improve the quality of your skin. And I've really seen great results with this compound. Unfortunately, I don't think it's out in the States yet, but I'm sure it's going to make its way soon.

12:12I think it has come out as a topical version, which you can just rub onto your skin during microneedling and after microneedling. But in the UK and the rest of the world, We're actually injecting it. And polynucleotide is not a new compound. I mean, it's been used in medicine since over 50 years. So it's something really good. So yeah, regenerative is a good direction for aesthetics and for wellness and all these to go tours for patients who are into this kind of stuff. Because it's going to be doing things opposite of what's happening. We are losing collagen at a rate of 1 % per year. and that's affecting everything in our body and our face and our everything hair so if we're injecting things like this into our scalp into our face or introducing it into our skin we are going to see that nice effect and you know what it's not going to be instant it's going to be very slow but you're going to be like one day you're just going to wake up after let's say if i do a treatment today i'll be okay i won't look like i had anything done uh and you know one week from now or two weeks but after a couple of months three to four months down the line you're going to be like, whoa, okay, I'm looking a bit nicer.

13:21My under eye is looking less tired, you know, things like that. That's the right way to do regenerative treatments, and they have their place. So I do a combination. So I'll do things like, you know, like the filler. I'll do some microneedling. I'll do some injectable regenerative treatments. I'll do some anti-wrinkle injections. And when you really combine these things and some energy-based devices, you can really prolong the time for you to get a facelift or to get some more invasive options. So it's not something, I mean, it's not going to take place of surgery, but there should be, there's an evolution, there's a time.

13:55You know, you can actually start doing these things, let's say in your 20s, late 20s, and then in your 30s. And then in the 40s, you can still do your surgery and combine it with these treatments. So you can look great at every age, what I mean to say. There's no age limit to this, to be honest with you. Wow, that's amazing. I mean, that's good to know because I'm now in my 40s and I want to look like I am in my 20s. I remember the PRP and then the vampire facial. I thought that was when you realize you need to hire. It's usually already too late. I've been there wasting weeks waiting for decent candidates.

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16:28Yeah, this has been an amazing conversation. I'm always very interested about what's going on in this space. Thank you for shedding light just about how, you know, how your life was, how how you got to where you are today. And then also what is going on in this industry? I'm very excited about these things because it really makes me feel like I can stay and look young. I can feel young. I can be confident in myself at any age, which really excites me. But if people want to get in touch with you, I know you have clinics in different countries as well. How can they do so? So I think that the locations are mentioned and then the contact details are mentioned on my website.

17:09And Daniel, you know what you said is spot on. It's all about self-confidence and it's all about trying to look and feel your best at every age. And I think that now with the direction where the industry is going, with the wellness therapies and your lifestyle medicine, I think that it's really important to get that nice outcome. So I believe that it's great for anyone at any age. There's no there's no age limit. And of course, if you choose the right doctor, he can definitely help you achieve your goals. Dr. OBT, Dr. Osman Bashir Tahir. Thank you so much for joining us today on Founder's Story.

17:49Thank you so much, Daniel.