How can I get rid of loose neck skin without surgery?

There is a satisfying answer which is that there are a bunch of ways that surgeons can tighten the neck skin with either no surgery or a minimally invasive procedure and get a nice result.

Before talking about ways to get rid of extra neck skin or Turkey neck as it’s sometimes affectionately called, we need to look at what’s causing that skin laxity in the first place.

There are a few different things that can cause loose skin in the neck and jawline area.

The skin of the neck and jawline can become saggy or loose with age because the skin loses its elasticity over time as it’s subject to gravity and motion, over many years the collagen and elastin and other factors that are keeping it tight begin to loosen up and the skin will simply begin to sag. 

Another thing that can cause skin excess in the neck region or something because the submental area is massive weight loss.

That’s because when you lose a lot of weight if the volume of the fat in an area decreases skin sometimes can’t contract enough to keep up with that volume loss.

Imagine a balloon. If you deflate that balloon just a little bit the skin of the bloom looked just fine but if you start to completely deflate that balloon and is all the air comes out the balloon it is going to deflate and flop and look saggy unfolded, and it’s the same thing if you lose a lot of fat in an area and this case the area of the neck or the submental region, sometimes the skin just doesn’t have enough elasticity to completely contract and that is made worse by things like smoking or advanced age and other genetic and environmental factors.

The last thing that can cause skin laxity in the neck and jawline region is poorly planned liposuction.

Sometimes people have had too much fat suction from their submental region and it looks like if there’s a lot of weight loss and a lot of fat and volume is lost. The skin can’t contract enough. The same thing applies to liposuction. If there’s a lot of suction done the skin sometimes can’t contract enough on its own and we’re left with skin excess.

How to treat skin laxity of the neck or loose skin around the neck and jawline?

Can Botox tighten neck skin?

Unfortunately not. Botox can’t help to make the vertical bands of the neck look less severe.

That’s because these vertical neck bands are caused by the aging and repositioning of the Platysma muscle. It is a pared flat muscle under the surface of the neck skin, and in young people, there are 2 of this one on either side and they’re attached in the midline. With age these muscles can separate from one another in the midline, and when those muscles contract and pull they can cause these vertical neckbands. This is where Botox can be helpful, Botox can soften the severity of those vertical neckbands.

Are there exercises I can do to tighten my loose neck skin or creams that I can use to tighten my skin?

The answer to both of these, unfortunately, is no. there’s no good topical agent that’s going to effectively tighten your skin anywhere and not your neck skin.

Getting into things that do work pretty well, let’s divide the severity of the loose skin into 3 categories.

1. Mild.
2. Moderate.
3. Severe.

For the mild skin laxity of the neck, something that can work nicely is radiofrequency micro-needling, and there are several different devices on the market. The way they work is, you have a bunch of tiny needles that create minuscule physical controlled injuries to the skin and then radiofrequency energy is emitted by these needles which also cause a controlled thermal or heat injury to the skin and as the body heals these controlled entries over time there is contraction because one of the big ways that the body heals wounds is through contraction and as that skin contracts the neck skin tightens and you can get a nice result.

For this kind of moderate or intermediate skin laxity of the neck, it would be considered minor surgery or a minimally invasive procedure and the reason is that while surgeons are still delivering radiofrequency they’re doing it from both inside and outside the skin, and to do this they’re making tiny 2 to 3-millimeter incisions, about maybe 2 thirds of the size of a pencil eraser, and they’re in very well hidden locations. There’s one behind each ear lobe and one in the chin crease, and nobody’s ever going to see these.

Doctors are putting one end of the probe under the skin and then there’s a matching probe that goes over the skin and radiofrequency energy is fired back and forth between the probes heating the skin. They are getting a controlled thermal injury, but this time it’s a bit deeper and it’s passing through the full thickness of the skin and the underlying tissue. It’s a minimally invasive procedure that works well for moderately lax skin of the neck and jawline region.

The thing to know about both of these procedures is that they take several months to see the final result. You’ll likely see a little something right away.

Surgeons like to give it 2 to 3 months or sometimes even a little bit longer to see the final result because they are creating a controlled injury, and it takes time for that to heal.

The recommended treatment regimen is one treatment every 3 to 6 weeks, repeated 3 times. Whereas with the Facetite procedure this is something that’s just done once. If we’re dealing with very small areas of laxity, very focused area under the chin or neck region, sometimes instead of FaceTite, they will use a device called AccuTite, and that’s like FaceTite little sibling, its same technology but it’s a much smaller applicator so they can be a little bit more precise with energy placement.

For severe skin laxity of the neck, there isn’t anything non-surgical or minimally invasive. You do need to go ahead and do a skin excision procedure like a neck lift, or if there’s also laxity in the face you would do a facelift that includes neck lift.

This is the spectrum of options that are available for treating skin laxity of the neck or the Turkey neck.

For the very kind of mild cases, surgeons can do something noninvasive.

For the very severe cases they are looking at a more surgical option like a neck lift or a facelift, and for the cases in between they are looking at things that are minimally invasive like Facetite or AccuTite.

Each of these treatments is individualized and that’s why you need to go to someone who does a lot of this and has the expertise to these procedures to make sure that you are getting a procedure and surgical plan that is best for your expectations and your anatomy.