Facial plastic surgery can make you look years older and a little freaky.

Just when you thought no one would notice you had a little Botox injected into your forehead, a nose job, an eye lift and injections to plump up your cheeks. Now it is blatantly apparent to all of your friends and family that you are wearing an altered face and the face everyone loved and recognized is gone forever.

Just this past weekend at a party in a swanky, California resort city, there was a gathering of twenty people to celebrate a birthday. The woman in question, less than 50 years old with a once dazzling personality and body, wore a face that drew everyone’s attention to her because she looked hideous.

The surprised breaths were audible. No one could stop staring.

She surely didn’t know she would look this way; she paid good money to someone wielding a scalpel who maybe wasn’t the artist she was hoping to hire. That’s the problem with using alterations – you just might not love or even like the results you’re given.

The Cosmetic Surgery Bible website has researched the industry and discovered that only 37 percent of those surgically enhanced subjects polled liked their results. This is stunning news that makes one wonder why, if the odds of disliking a procedure are so great, is it worth the pain, risk, and expense to choose this modality?

Most people want to look refreshed, less tired. They want radiant, wrinkle-free skin that has no apparent sagging. They just want to enhance their flabby cheeks, hooded eyes, crepy, lined neck, droopy jowls and pouches and tired, lined foreheads.

Now that’s a tall order. If only someone had told this once beautiful woman who was seen at the beach attending a birthday party that her face could easily look refreshed, toned, tightened and lifted without any surgical intervention, she would have avoided the incredulous stares she endured.

During the drive home, basically before we pulled away from the beach, this face was the topic of conversation. No one said she looked younger or prettier. Instead, the comments heard were "freakish", "scary", "meth-face" and even "jerky", like the face was frequently moving in a weird way. "It appeared that her face was contorted and not natural looking." Several attendees who have known this woman remarked that they thought she might be on drugs because her personality has noticeably changed, no longer outgoing but subdued and hanging back from others.

Will revision surgery help this cartoonish looking face? It’s doubtful.

If you are looking in the mirror thinking that you would like to enhance your appearance, please consider using facial exercise first. Not only will the results have you looking younger, even sensational, your face will be recognizable to those who you know. There will be no pain, no drugs, no huge outlay of after tax dollars, no recuperative time, no disappointments, no cutting, no needles, no death.

Facial exercise techniques, using your thumbs and fingers, will begin lifting your face immediately as those tiny muscles hidden under the skin receive beneficial nutrients from the oxygenated blood brought to the surface. The little muscles will begin to shorten and reposition, your skin will look and act younger and those sagging and droopy facial features that lessen your confidence will tighten and lift.

Your facial muscles respond quickly and reliably when they are isolated, anchored and then contracted up and back to the ear, forehead and sides of the face. Your thumbs and fingers in exercise gloves act as your "age erasers." Most users believe they look 5 – 10 – even 15 years younger in just weeks. That could be you.

Be aware that some facial exercise programs use contortions, twists and puckers rather than isometric resistance and contraction movements. Twists and puckers will not give you the results you seek and may result in increased wrinkling of your face.

The once beautiful, once most popular woman at the weekend birthday bash is, sadly, not the only person suffering from over-done, freakish facial plastic surgery and injections. It’s an epidemic but it doesn’t ever have to happen to you.