Dr. Stuart Linder Was My Breast Surgeon
Alicia:
All right guys. So today I have a very special guest on my podcast. I have Dr. Stuart Linder. He was my surgeon. He operated on me a little bit more than six weeks ago. He had quite a job to do as I came in pretty botched, I believe. So he did a fantastic job on me. So he kindly offered to be on here and talk about his experience and why he specifically chose this field in plastic surgery. And I know there’s a lot of you that have questions when it comes to fitness and how it’s related to this and maintaining it and all this sorts. So Dr. Linder, thank you so much for being on here. I appreciate you.
Dr. Linder:
It’s my honor. Thank you for having me.
Alicia:
Of course. So tell me, how did you start? Why did you choose this specific area and we’ll go from there.
Dr. Linder:
That’s a great question. So I’ve been in practice 27 years, which is hard to believe because I look so young.
Alicia:
You do.
Dr. Linder:
It’s true. 1997, I did all my formal training, pretty much most of it, UCLA, and I always wanted to be a plastic surgeon since I was actually 13 years of age. I’ve known for such a long time as just a young child. I liked reconstructing and fixing things and I liked being able to operate. So if you operate on people and you want to make things better or beautiful and normal, then plastic surgery is your field. So 27 years, I’ve done over 16,000 implants, which is a lot. Since 1997.
As you said, correctly, I specialize in body sculpting procedures only. Breast augmentation, breast revision reconstruction, and body sculpting as well, tummy tuck, lipo contouring and things like that. I don’t do facial surgery. I don’t care to do facial surgery. I never enjoyed it. And so in 2000, so 24 years ago, I just made a decision that I would be one of the top breast surgeons in the world and I would super specialize and coin my talents on breast augmentation, breast revision, breast cancer reconstruction, and leave away all the other facial stuff. And I’ve been blessed and lucky enough to be able to do what I enjoy and do very well in it.
Alicia:
And there has to be a certain element of where you fixate or you’re obsessed with, I wouldn’t say perfection, but making something as best as you can make it. Right? Is that something that you fixated on as a kid perhaps?
Dr. Linder:
Well, I just believe that reconstructing, especially like you’re doing revision surgery such as yours, it’s more challenging. Today I did two breast augmentations for first timers. I did a breast reduction and a tummy tuck on a patient who lost over 150 pounds, so she had massive weight loss, so I did her reduction and her tummy tuck, bigger lady. Ones before that were much thinner women and they had saline and silicone implants placed under the muscle, one hour surgeries.
But I just liked the myriad of different anatomy and different patients coming from everywhere and different walks of life. People are people, bodies are bodies. Humans are humans. Nobody’s any better than anybody else. Doesn’t matter who the hell you are. Celebrity or someone who works their off to barely be able to afford to have surgery. You’re all the same. Everybody’s wonderful, and I treat everybody equally, but I look at anatomy and anatomy is the key to determining, in breast surgery, what type of implant we’re going to use.
Alicia:
Right.
Dr. Linder:
Where will we position the implant, how big an implant we’re going to use, what’s the profile going to be. So there’s a lot of variables involved in breast surgery. And it becomes even more involved when you’re reconstructing and doing revision breast surgery too.
Alicia:
Yeah. So I was going to ask you, so there’s a huge difference obviously between someone who’s petite like me because I’m all 4’11. As opposed to somebody who’s maybe 5’8 or 5’9 or around there. So there’s a difference. How are you able to know which one… how to make it perfect, which implant to use, the profile that you would choose to operate on or do?
Dr. Linder:
Yeah, so the height of a lady is really important or patient is really critical. But really what’s important as well is how much breast tissue you’re dealing with, how thick the tissue is, and how muscular the woman is. The thicker the muscle and the more breast tissue you have makes it more often that we will put an implant above the muscle. For example, if a woman has a C or a larger size breast, C or larger, and that’s the breast tissue itself, putting an implant behind that patient’s muscle is not going to do very well because you have what’s referred to as effacement. Effacement is a flattening by the pectoralis muscle of the upper portion of the implant flattening it.
And patients aren’t happy without upper pole shape. So if a woman is a C or larger, we usually aim to go above the muscle or a subglandular position.
Alicia:
I didn’t know that.
Dr. Linder:
It doesn’t matter if a women’s 5’9 or 5’1. If they’re very thin and they’re 5’9 or 5’1 we’re going to go under the muscle because there’s not much breast tissue and we need muscle coverage. So we call that a dual plane technique, 2/3 under, 1/3 over. And so really we have to look at the anatomy of the patient to determine positioning of that implant. Above versus below the muscle.
Alicia:
Right. Okay. So that was one of the questions actually, someone asked me in one of my DMs is what’s the difference between going under the muscle or over the muscle? Because I feel like in the 90s, in the early 90s, you saw a lot of these women that walked around that looked like they just had balls on their chest. Was that because they were over the muscle as opposed to under the muscle?
Dr. Linder:
Well, it’s both. You can still have that really unnatural fake look under the muscle. If a patient has multiple surgeries and they keep going larger, having what’s called tissue expansion, and then the breast will expand only to a certain point. A year later, they can come back and switch out their implants and go way bigger and overfill it, and then they can look fake even under the muscle. But sure. It’s actually the 70s.
Alicia:
Was it?
Dr. Linder:
Yeah, the 70s the plastic surgeons really didn’t know how to go under the muscle. So almost majority of breast surgeries were above. In the 70s and then the 80s and 90s is when the plastic surgeons in the United States started doing what’s called dual plane technique. That’s 2/3 under the muscle, one third over, that’s the lateral third.
Alicia:
What you were just talking about where you were just describing? Yeah, go ahead.
Dr. Linder:
We have to tailor the surgery to the patient specifically, to their body. It doesn’t matter what their girlfriend had or their mother or sister had. We have to look at that individual’s anatomy to determine what’s the best approach.
Alicia:
Right. So have you ever had a patient come in? Because I’m in the fitness industry, so I have clients that come in and sometimes they have sort of ridiculous expectations of what they want to look like, right? If I have a girl who’s my height and she wants a body that looks like a six-foot model, I have to tell her, unfortunately, that’s not going to work, and that’s not how your body anatomy is going to play out. So have you had a patient that comes in and they just kind of want something kind of just ridiculous and out of the ordinary, if so, how do you redirect them?
Dr. Linder:
Well, I don’t operate on everybody.
Alicia:
I was going to ask you that too. There must be some sort of…
Dr. Linder:
Well, there’s two words, unrealistic expectations. If they’re not having realistic expectations, we’re not going to have a happy patient. We don’t want to deal with that. We want people to be happy and be thankful for the work that I do and to, as you do and everyone else, refer their friends and other people, which is my whole practice has been referral for the last 27 years because of word of mouth and the quality of the work I do. We don’t put ads on bus stops or billboards. We don’t do that. Our patients are our advertisers, and that’s because we want them to be happy with the quality of the work that we do. So that’s the most important thing is that we do the right surgery on the patient correctly, and that we give them realistic expectations as to what to expect.
Alicia:
Right. Okay. Like I’ve said, I’ve had to turn people away. There’s sort of an interview process when I’m interviewing somebody that wants to work with me. Well, I have to figure out if that’s the right client for me as well, because like you said, I don’t want a problem on my hands.
Dr. Linder:
That’s correct.
Alicia:
So you don’t want a future problem on your hands. Yeah, I know. Exactly. So let’s get into, there’s some questions that some of the girls asked, and I know a lot of them are curious. So we kind of just went over the difference between going over and under the muscle, and I think we just covered, have you ever turned away a potential patient and why? Have there been any sort of instance that actually stand out to you where you just said, no, this isn’t going to work?
Dr. Linder:
Well, most importantly are patients who need breast lifts, for example, because they’ve lost a lot of weight or they’ve been pregnant and they have implants and their skin is very loose. So they have what’s called grade-three ptosis. And if they have a lot of skin laxity and they will not be accepting of a anchor scar or a breast lift scar, we can’t do the surgery correctly.
I always say it’s kind of like your car. If your car has two problems, an alternator and a carburetor problem, and you just fix one of those two problems, maybe the car, it’s still not going to work. Your car is not going to function. You have to fix the issues. If a patient has a volume issue and a skin problem because of let’s say pregnancy or breastfeeding, and they’re drooping a lot. They have a lot of skin laxity. You have to do implant volume change, and we have to remove skin. To remove skin, scars. Anchor scar, and they’re, oh, I don’t want… Women say, I don’t want any scars. I’ll do anything, make huge implants, put the 800s and over, and I’m like, your skin’s already loose. That’s going to make it even worse in a year. So the answer is no, it’s not. Go somewhere else.
Alicia:
Wow. That really surprises me. In today’s time, girls really have issues with scars.
Dr. Linder:
Not all.
Alicia:
Not all, but some actually.
Dr. Linder:
Some. Some will. Yes. Some will and those are the ones I can’t wait to say, you know what, I’m not the right surgeon.
Alicia:
Right, right. Yeah, exactly. You try to get the right ones in, the wrong ones out.
Dr. Linder:
Yeah.
Alicia:
I had no issues with scars when it came to that process.
Dr. Linder:
Well, because you have realistic expectations.
Alicia:
Realistic expectations.
Dr. Linder:
That’s the thing in consultation, is to educate the patient and to inform them of what your recommendations are as an expert in the field of breast surgery and let the patient make a decision if they feel it’s worth the operation, it’s worth having a breast lift, knowing the scars can heal poorly. They don’t always heal so beautifully. You can’t prevent scars, no doctor in the world, no hands, no plastic surgeon on the planet can guarantee there’ll be a thin line on a scar. We can do our very, very, very, very best to make them as thin as we can. We can use beautiful suturing, and then we still end up sometimes with scars that are not great.
That’s part of just the way it is. And everybody heals at a different process. And so even though, hey, my scars look so good at two months, they come back a year later, what happened to my incisions? Why did they spread? Or why are they dark? What happened, Dr. Linder, what happened? Your body just heals that way. You could see I did my best and the scars, I’ve tried to make them beautiful. I did really fine suturing, but there’s no guarantee.
Alicia:
Well, I think your work speaks for itself. You have 27 years, you said, and I’m in the 805 and you’re in Beverly Hills. So that’s how I was able to find you, was from great reviews.
Dr. Linder:
Oh, you’re very kind. Thank you.
Alicia:
Yes, of course. Okay, so next question. Again, because a lot of girls are in fitness that follow me. So what is the recovery process after the surgery? As in how quickly can they go work out? I already know the question to this. What exercises should they stay away from specifically? And is that long-term, should they not work out those specific exercises?
Dr. Linder:
So anyone who’s really die hard fitness, in the IFFB or NPC, I tell them, don’t work out your chest muscles ever again. There’s no advantageous reason to do pectoralis chest muscle exercises, which can include push-ups, bench pressing, anything that causes the chest muscles to contract over and over and over. It really is not great for an implant, any prosthetic device under the muscle. What it’s doing is it’s causing constriction, contraction, and scar tissue formation, which leads to malposition and the implants go off to the side.
Alicia:
They spread, right?
Dr. Linder:
You do tons of push-ups, sternal head of the pec is pushing the implants out, and over time, you’re going to lose your cleavage and then you’re going to end up with scar tissue and they go, why do they look kind of weird in the form? Because you’ve been working out your pecs. Think about it, I mean, why would you want to work out your chest muscles if you want to have a beautiful appearance of your implant. Thick, hard, rock-hard pec major on top of a round ball, it doesn’t really look good and it doesn’t give you a feminine appearance.
I’ve been working with NPC superstars for over 25 years who do fitness, do world champion fitness, experts all over the country. And I tell them, don’t work out your chest. Oh, I like working out my… There’s no reason to do it. It’s not going to lose you a competition. It’s actually going to make your breasts look more feminine, which is really what the judges want to see. They don’t see a thick, hard muscle breast. They want the rest of your body to be really defined, but your chest needs to have a beautiful shape of that implant. So just leave your chest muscles alone.
Alicia:
Yeah. And I think that’s what happened to me on my first go around is I wasn’t so much into more so like powerlifting. So I was doing a lot of benching. I was doing a lot of the pushups. I was doing a lot of movements that incorporated my chest muscles, and I wasn’t realizing that. Being a trainer, I should have known. Right? But you don’t think about the implications when it comes to your implants. Over time you just kind of forget about it. So that did happen to me.
Dr. Linder:
Well, it’s not your fault. I mean, all women who are huge into bodybuilding and training, they don’t even think about it. Most of them are still doing it, but my patients, I try to tell them to just lay off the chest, go crazy everywhere, but leave the chest alone.
Alicia:
Yeah. Just stick to the booty and the legs, right?
Dr. Linder:
You know what you’re doing. So in terms of the question, how long do they have to recover?
Alicia:
Yeah, how long is the recovery process?
Dr. Linder:
It’s at least six weeks.
Alicia:
Just for everything. Okay.
Dr. Linder:
It six to eight weeks. Because see, what happens is when you have an implant or you have the revision and you put an implant under the muscle or even above the muscle, the body forms a capsule around the implant. And that capsule takes four to five weeks to form, and that’s normal. The body creates a collagen capsule around the prosthetic device because the implant is an antigen. Anything that is foreign to your body will create a reactive capsule formation, and it takes about four to six weeks. All the studies have shown that for a capsule to form and you need a nice soft capsule to form. So until it forms you really shouldn’t be disrupting that breast. You should leave it alone so that it doesn’t tear the capsule that’s forming and lead to scar tissue hardening or things like that.
Alicia:
Okay. So I hope you listen to that, ladies, for us that are very stubborn and very eager to get back into it. I’ve been taking my time because I’ve been lifting for over 10 years now. So many people are like, are you going to be able to take the rest and recovery? And this time around, it’s been very nice. It’s been easy. I’ve allowed my body to rest. So for you ladies that are scared to take that recovery time, please do. Your body will thank you for it. Your breasts will look amazing afterwards as well. So just listen and listen to your body and do what you need to do, the recovery formalities. So yeah.
Dr. Linder:
Yes. That’s right.
Alicia:
I have an interesting question. I have a lady that asked. She says, I’m interested in getting mine done, but I have lupus and autoimmune problems. Is this a problem? So have you operated on women that have autoimmune issues?
Dr. Linder:
That’s a really awesome question, and it’s really a good one. It’s very important. And I’ve been dealing with patients with autoimmune issues like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis for, geez, quarter of a century. And if it’s a really, really serious issue, I will get the-
Alicia:
Rheumatologist.
Dr. Linder:
Yeah, I’ll get the rheumatologist to give me a clearance as well. But I don’t like to put silicone implants specifically in patients with severe autoimmune disease. I don’t.
Alicia:
Can you explain the difference why that is?
Dr. Linder:
There’s no really specific, I don’t think, causal relationships of silicone causing any type of autoimmune issues specifically, but I just prefer not to put silicone, which can bleed silicone in a patient with a very severe chronic arthritic or rheumatoid type of disorder.
I just think it’s a little bit of a disservice. So I personally try to guide my patients who have rheumatoid arthritis to saline implants because the shells, they’re not biodegradable. They are made of dimethylsiloxate, which is an elastomer of silicate, but they’re not oozing silicone like what can happen from inside a bag. So I have no issues doing breast augmentation in a patient with rheumatoid arthritis, but preferably, I like to use saline implants.
Alicia:
Saline, you would say would be the smarter choice to go.
Dr. Linder:
And the rheumatologists who I’ve spoken to through the last 25 years have all agreed. I haven’t had one rheumatologist in 25 years say, oh, don’t use saline implants, it’s dangerous. No, they say, yeah, you can even do silicone, but I would prefer you do saline.
Alicia:
Right. All right. Well, it’s nice that you get the whole team on board. So there’s that. So that’s good. Let’s see. So someone asked, how has the industry changed in the past 10 or 15 years? I think this is coming from somebody who’s probably in their forties or fifties. So how have you seen it changed and evolved over the last two decades or decade or so?
Dr. Linder:
So with breast augmentation and breast revision, so forth, there are two main factors that have changed in the last 10 years. One is the implants, the silicone, forget saline. Saline are the same. Saline implants haven’t changed since 2002.
Alicia:
Wow.
Dr. Linder:
Before 2002, they were all low profile, smooth saline. Round and teardrop. Teardrop were fuzzy coated. We try not to use textured implants any longer. So the non-round implants are pretty much gone. So when you’re doing saline, it’s smooth round and there’s low, medium, and high profile. Before 2002, there was just low profile. Now we have a choice of low, moderate, and high profile. So that’s it. There’s no other change with the saline.
Alicia:
Can you describe the difference between, I think. So when I got mine done, I didn’t know the difference at all. And I feel like he kind of just slapped them in. And when I was looking at other women and I was seeing how they just sit so nicely, and that’s when I went to you and I described exactly what I pictured in my mind and what I liked realistically. Right? And that’s exactly what you gave me. So can you describe the difference between the high, mid and low profile?
Dr. Linder:
Correct. So I wish I had brought my implants, but unfortunately I’m at home. But a low profile is a flat wide implant. Can you see, it’s like that? It’s flat and it’s wide. I don’t ever use low profiles. I haven’t used one in 20 years. Forget about it. Never choose a low profile.
Alicia:
Forget about it. Right.
Dr. Linder:
Forget about it. So the low profile’s flat, wide, makes women look matronly and fat, and you would have no projection coming out this way. So take it off the table. You’re left with a moderate plus and a high profile. High profiles are the roundest implant, narrow base and the most projection this way. And I like those a lot. And I use those in 90% of my cases because high profile makes women look tapered, not wide or heavy on the lateral side. And it gives you more AP projection with a smaller bag. So it’s a win-win.
Alicia:
It makes your waist look tinier.
Dr. Linder:
It makes you look thinner because they’re not wide. They’re a narrower based diameter implant. A moderate plus is a good implant in a really, really, really thin woman who has no breast tissue that doesn’t want to look too fake. We put a moderate plus under the muscle, whether it’s silicone or saline, and they give a more natural appearance.
Alicia:
They’re more natural.
Dr. Linder:
Those are excellent implants for very thin women who we call ectomorphic, meaning you can see their ribs. You can see they have no breasts. They’re flat, they have costochondral junction is really prominent. They may not want to look like two round balls. They want to look more natural. So we do a moderate plus under the muscle. Saline and, or a silicone. With silicone, the new trend and the new innovations with silicone are what we call gummy bears. And everyone’s heard, oh, gummy bears. What is that? So all it means is that the implants are really cohesive, that the cross-linking of the silicone gel is really, really, really thick. So it’s more viscous. And if you slice open the implant, it doesn’t leak out.
Alicia:
It just stays. It’s just congealed in there.
Dr. Linder:
Yeah, it sits in that shell and it just sits there. It doesn’t leak out like liquid silicone or the old, the early 2000s. 2010 and ’12, and before 2015, all those implants were low cohesive. So they were liquid. And if they break, you get silicone just everywhere. So these are called gummy bears because they’re very, very, very cohesive. They’re very thick and they’re much safer in case they crack or break because they don’t leak out as quickly. They’re what we call form stabilized, meaning that they stay within the shell in the confines of the bag, even if it cracks.
Alicia:
So let’s say a bag burst, you’re able to easily go in there and scrape it all out and take it out.
Dr. Linder:
Clean it out yeah, and there’s very little residue all over the place. If it’s ruptured in the last year or two, if it’s 10 years out, you never know what it’s going to look like. But in general, the newer silicones by both Mentor, which are called memory gel, and I love them. I love Mentor memory gel.
Alicia:
That’s what you put?
Dr. Linder:
In yours?
Alicia:
Right. Yeah.
Dr. Linder:
They’re fantastic. The memory gel, high profiles are so beautiful. They’re a thicker, cohesive, they’re really strong, thick shells, they’re very safe, and they just hold their form. So they ripple less. There’s less visibility in the bag. And women love those implants. I use a lot of those in our patients from Vegas. I also have a license in Nevada, as Nevada and California license. I do a significant number of women coming in from Las Vegas from the casinos, and they’re reduced and revisions mostly. And you got to use those memory gels because they just look so good, and maybe they get more tips, as well.
Alicia:
Yeah. Can you say the brand again? It was Mentor, right?
Dr. Linder:
Mentor memory gel. Yeah.
Alicia:
Mentor memory gel.
Dr. Linder:
The others are Allergan, which are excellent as well. Those are called the SCX which are cohesive extra high profiles. And those are really, really beautiful. And those are state-of-the-art as well. Both implants are really good, but my go-to, number one implant for women-
Alicia:
The Mentor.
Dr. Linder:
I usually do the Mentor memory gels.
Alicia:
Okay, cool.
Dr. Linder:
I like those.
Alicia:
So when you were talking about ectomorphs, I have someone that wrote in and asked, is there a difference between operating on a patient who’s heavier as opposed to someone who is more leaner, more skinnier?
Dr. Linder:
And the most important thing is this, what we discussed at the beginning of the podcast, which has to do with how much breast tissue does a woman have. I don’t care how tall they are, that doesn’t matter to me. That matters on volume. How tall a woman is important, as well as how wide their inframammary fold is. The bottom of the breast. As to the size of the bag, now whether we go above or below is, specifically, not on your height, it’s on how much breast tissue you’re starting with.
If you have a C or bigger, you got to go above. You can’t slip it under. It looks so bad. I mean, patients are so unhappy with a submuscular implant when they have a tremendous amount of native breast tissue because you don’t see the bag. They want to see the shape of the implant, not just a saggy breast. They want to see the fullness of that implant. And so for a woman who’s an endomorph or a barrel chest with thick, thick muscle and real thick breast tissue, we most reasonably will go subglandular. We’ll go above the muscle.
Alicia:
That makes sense. Yeah. I did not know that information before. Now, when it comes to, let’s say, your ratio of patients that come in botched as opposed to ones that aren’t, do you see more botched patients these days as opposed to just patients that walk in and just want new breast implants for the first time?
Dr. Linder:
Yeah, I do even more revisions.
Alicia:
I was going to ask you if that’s.
Dr. Linder:
I love… Revisions are my number one forte, my favorite operation. Primaries are great. They’re easy. It’s like a two-foot putt, but the revisions are like a 15-foot putt, and they’re hard sometimes. Because you got to really be creative. Where are you going to put the implant? Are you going to change the pocket? Are you going to use ADM graft? Are you going to put dermal graft material in there? If it’s a redo, redo and there’s not enough breast tissue, are you going to do a breast lift at the same time? Are you going to do a capsule sling at the bottom of the breast to tighten up the fold that it may be the implant is bottomed out and we got to get that to stay up?
So there’s a lot of factors involved in redos, and it’s pretty satisfying, but I never like to use that word botched. Yeah, I don’t like that word because there’s many things going to cause a woman to have a bad or poor outcome. Number one is maybe they had a decent result, but over 10, 15 years they got pregnant and they lost a lot of weight, and now the implant is mal-positioned and everything. So I don’t like to blame other doctors and surgeons. I never do that. I don’t even care who did the last surgery. If I can get an op-report or the implant card information, that’s all I want.
I don’t speak to the other surgeon. I don’t need to badmouth someone. And if it is a poor result, all right, well, let’s see if we can make it better. But who needs to talk about botched? Let’s just talk about fixing it and things to look pretty or normal. Especially with cancer patients. Let’s make things look normal. When a woman loses her breast and has radiation. What a horrible experience. We just want her to look normal
Alicia:
Yeah. Can you talk about that, actually? No one wrote about that, but that must be very interesting.
Dr. Linder:
Yeah, those are very difficult because radiated breast tissue and when you’re putting an implant in is very high risk for just horrible scar tissue because there’s not as much blood supply because you’ve radiated it. So it’s a high risk for all types of problems down the road with implants under radiated breasts. Scar tissue, malformation, implant exposure, just such a high rate of complications. But those are the women who really, really, really, really need surgery. Because they’ve lost their breasts for cancer. And so we don’t want to exclude. We want to give them their best possible result. But again, they’re much higher risk for complications, especially if they’ve had radiation. If they haven’t had radiation, then we’re fine. It’s soft tissue good blood supply, we’re okay. But if they’ve had that radiation, then…
Alicia:
A little bit more of a challenge.
Dr. Linder:
And the recurrence rate of scar tissue hardening capsular contracture is really high. So it’s unfortunate.
Alicia:
Yeah. Because you spoke about how you specifically chose this field of surgery, of breast augmentation. Why that over facial reconstruction or facial plastic surgery?
Dr. Linder:
Really, it’s a wonderful question. So in 1997, I graduated. I became a plastic surgeon. I became board certified with the American Board of Plastic Surgery in 1999. I’m a diplomat of both the American Board of Plastic Surgery as well as the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Those are the two highest honors in the world as a plastic surgeon. For the first three years of my practice, I did everything. I did eyelids and face lifts and necks, breasts and tummies and Botox.
But after two years, I said, I don’t like the facial stuff. I don’t really enjoy doing eyelids. I mean, it’s kind of fun, but not really, and I don’t want to make people look really weird. Sometimes with the face lifts, they’re pulled too tight and they’re unnatural. Just totally bizarre. And so I’m like, you know what? I just came to a reckoning with myself and from my third year in private practice, the year 2000, that was 24 years ago, third year in practice, I’m giving up everything above the neck. I don’t care. I don’t give a shit. I’m just going to be the body guy. I’m a body sculptist. I do tummy tuck and lipo every week too. But I’m world renowned for breasts because that’s the highest demand surgery and that’s what I’m known for.
It’s fun for me, knock on wood, I’m good at it. I’ve done so many thousands and thousands that it comes innately for me. It’s not too difficult. There aren’t that many cases I find that are like, oh my God, what am I going to do here? There are some, but not too often,. Because I don’t know if I can really fix this or this is a really high risk patient, but breast surgery for me, it’s just easy. It’s natural. It comes innately.
Alicia:
I saw that going into your office and seeing all the posters of all the models in there and your work and all that, that spoke for itself. So you’re being very humble when you say you’re good at it, you’re very, very good at it. Your work speaks for itself.
Dr. Linder:
I appreciate that.
Alicia:
Of course.
Dr. Linder:
But there’s really a saying as well in surgery, in general, all surgery, you’re only as good as your last surgery. So you can’t get cocky or arrogant as a doctor, as any surgeon, general, plastics, cardiac surgeon, you have to be humble and go into every case with humility and go in there with respect to do really good work. And you can’t put your laurels on my last 15,000 surgeries. That’s irrelevant. You could fuck somebody up, excuse my language, really bad in the next case. And you have to treat that patient as the most important surgery you’re ever going to do, is each case that you’re doing at that time. The next case, it doesn’t matter what you did in the past, what matters is what you’re doing today or tomorrow. So you can’t get lax.
Alicia:
I know that.
Dr. Linder:
And this is a human body and a human person, and each person expects you to do their best, and they put your trust in you. I mean, come on. That’s a huge responsibility, right?
Alicia:
Yeah, it is.
Dr. Linder:
Plastic surgeon. And there’s another thing that a professor taught me when I was in San Francisco on plastic surgery. He says, you have to have big, you know what? Because you’re taking somebody totally normal and you’re trying to make them better. It’s not like you’re-
Alicia:
Playing with Legos over there.
Dr. Linder:
Or it’s not like you’re a liver transplant surgeon and you’re going to save a life doing a liver transplant, which is incredible. You’re taking a normal person and you’re putting implants in her, and you’re trying to make her look better. So if you don’t have some ego, a little bit, good luck trying to do this, because again, you’re taking normal and you’re trying to make them better. It takes a mindset to be able to do that as well. You have to have be, what’s the word? You never want to be arrogant, but you have to have confidence to know that you can do it and you going to do it. So confidence and arrogance are completely different.
Alicia:
Very different. In the fitness industry as well. Absolutely. There’s a fine line between being confident in your work and then being very arrogant to the point where you just turn people away.
Dr. Linder:
You can’t do that.
Alicia:
No. No, you can’t. All right. So that brings me to my next question. How competitive is this? I think I already know the answer to it, but I mean, you’re in Beverly Hills. You’re in the it place of where people want to go and get reconstructed and look the best they can. How competitive is that?
Dr. Linder:
It’s very, very, very competitive in Beverly Hills. There are so many great talented surgeons here. Phenomenal surgeons, excellent plastic surgeons. Some of the best in the world are right on my block. I have tremendous respect for all of them, and most are just really nice. Nobody talks bad of each other. We just all do our work and we respect each other. You’re going to have sometimes really, really crazy busy months, and some months may slow down. It is what it is. But we’re always going to be busy. In life, if you do really good work and you’re a good person and whatever you do, you’re going to have a good practice and whatever you do.
But I don’t look at competition around me. There’s always older people retiring, and there’s younger lads coming in town, and I welcome them to observe me in my surgeries. I don’t care. I’m not worried. I mean, I’m happy for them. There’s got to be new blood coming through the system. But the people in general, the other plastic surgeons are pretty darn nice. Heard that from a lot of my colleagues too. Nobody disrespects each other. Nobody.
Alicia:
That’s nice.
Dr. Linder:
In 25 years, I haven’t heard anybody really saying oh, Linder… I mean, especially if they’re from Beverly, Hills, maybe some guy in a different town or even a different state may say some rude comment, but who cares? It’s hate. There’s always going to be haters, and that’s what life is all about. But in our 90210, people and other docs are really cool in general.
Alicia:
Adult. Mature.
Dr. Linder:
They’re all mature and everybody is… they’re secure with who they are.
Alicia:
Yeah. So I was curious about this. When it came to the pandemic during COVID shutdowns, how was that for you? Because I know we struggled with the gym and we stayed open. So what did you do? How did you manage through it?
Dr. Linder:
Yeah, well, we did what was required by the law and the DHS, Department of Health Services. They shut down every surgery center for six weeks. And I think it was like May and June, and we were just closed, and we abide by the law. They said, that’s it. You’re closed. So we were closed and we did nothing for six weeks. But when the six weeks ended, oh my God, were we busy.
Alicia:
I bet you were.
Dr. Linder:
Crazy. We were going crazy because the demand is still there, but there was no way to operate. Yeah, I mean, legally we do what’s correct. You don’t operate. You don’t do elective surgeries in a pandemic, and you do things correctly. And we did, and that’s fine. But yeah, it was a bizarre period for everybody. We didn’t know what to do for six weeks. We were bored out of our mind.
Alicia:
Yeah, so were we.
Dr. Linder:
But it’s over. Thank God.
Alicia:
Yeah, thank God. Well, let me see. I think there was one other question. No, I think we covered it all. I think we covered it all. So, well, I’ll say, I just kind of want to go over, because I’ve had a lot of girls that asked me what specifically did I get done? Do you remember exactly what you performed on me? I know you revised basically everything. My areolas, you lifted things up again, you revised everything. So do you remember?
Dr. Linder:
I don’t remember how many CCs. I don’t remember what you had originally. I didn’t know we were going to go personally into your records, so I didn’t go into your chart.
Alicia:
Yeah, no, I think what we did is you did a lateral something or other, but I’ve had many, many girls, many women. I have a couple of girls that are going to be going your way actually next month.
Dr. Linder:
Well, I appreciate that. I thank you. No, it’s fun. Thank you for bringing me on. I was just with Mario Lopez doing some podcasts over there on Access Hollywood.
Alicia:
I saw that.
Dr. Linder:
We have eight segments coming out. I always enjoy. The most important thing about a podcast, in my opinion, for me, not for you, but for me, is the word education. I’m not here to promote myself. It’s nice if I can get some folks coming through, but education is the key. If I can help patients out there, whether they’re here or in Missouri or in Kansas City or Montana or Palm Beach, Florida, whatever, it doesn’t matter. If I can give you some education as to maybe how to consider doing your surgery. If you’re a fitness expert and trainer or just heavily into bodybuilding and you want to get a nice result, these are some of the things you have to consider. And hopefully some of the things we discussed will be useful on their journey. Yeah.
Alicia:
I have a lot of girls here in the 805 that you’d be surprised by. They’re just so unhappy, and we won’t say the surgeon, but he did a lot of them in the area. So like you said, it’s educating people on finding the right surgeon as well, the right one for you, and they know what to do. So I think that’s very important because like you said, it’s your body. It’s something foreign going into your body. You want to make sure you have the right person that knows what they’re doing and they’re confident in their work.
Dr. Linder:
Yeah. I mean, wherever you are in the United States, it’s really important. Let me give you a few final points.
Alicia:
Please.
Dr. Linder:
The doctor needs to be board certified with the American Board of Plastic Surgery. There are no substitutes. American Board of Plastic Surgery.
Alicia:
American Board of Plastic Surgery.
Dr. Linder:
It has to say that. The anesthesiologist, you should have a board certified anesthesiologist putting you to sleep. That’s an MD, just in case something goes wrong. They know how to take care of you. If you have a reaction to the anesthetic or something’s weird under anesthesia, you want a board certified anesthesiologist, MD. And then whenever you’re considering plastic surgery, really do your due diligence, do your homework, and look for a specialist in what you want to have done. A lot of doctors and plastic surgeons are jack-of-all-trades, and they do facelift tomorrow. Then two days after, they’ll do a Rhino and three days later they do a breast implant.
You want to go to a breast surgeon who does breast every week, 50 weeks a year, hundreds of breast surgeries a year, and has done it for over 10, 20, 25 years. You don’t want to play gamble roulette, and sure, you got to look at costs and price and things, and if you do sometimes find the lowest and the cheapest price. I always used to say, when I was due segments on CBS, I worked as contributor for many years on Access Hollywood, on the Insider and Entertainment Tonight.
Did so many segments with them. It’s not like buying a pair of shoes or a Gucci bag. Let’s say you just don’t like it. You can return that bag or you can return those shoes. They suck. I decide I don’t want it. You go to a low ball surgeon for a really low price and they just butcher and massacre you. It may not be reparable. You may be screwed for life. So think about saving your money and waiting longer to get quality of work wherever you decide to go, because this is your body. Again, it’s not like a pair of shoes you can return the next day. If it’s done completely wrong, there may be no way of fixing it completely. So that’s my point.
Alicia:
As the saying goes, you get what you pay for, essentially.
Dr. Linder:
That’s the final point, yeah.
Alicia:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Dr. Linder, I really appreciate you being on here and educating men and women because when it comes to it, usually women will go with their partners and they want security as well. So thank you again for being on here and explaining your work and what you do. Educating us, and thank you so much. I’ll put your information in here and I’ll have girls reach out to you probably in the very near future.
Dr. Linder:
Thank you.