STYLE : LOOKS : Putting Faces Through Their Paces

Do you loathe wrinkles, but are you scalpel-shy? Then you may want to know more about facial workouts. For $2,400, Carole Maggio of Scottsdale, Ariz., can coach you through four to five days of her Facercise routine and send you home with an individualized, 14-exercise plan. The regimen--including one move that calls for squinting and releasing the eye muscles to smooth the skin below--can be completed on the briefest of Los Angeles freeway commutes.

For $40, a no-frills video called “Facial Fitness” can give you pointers wherever you have access to a VCR. Produced by Jean Rosenbaum of Durango, Colo., a physician-turned-fitness guru, it leads viewers through 12 exercises with names like the Yoga Gasp (stick out your tongue and pretend you see a mouse), designed to smooth wrinkles from the eyebrows to the upper lip.

What’s the catch? you ask. While advocates say these above-the-neck sweat sessions can postpone or prevent the need for plastic surgery, opponents say the workouts--worse than being ineffective--may actually deepen wrinkles.

From behind his desk at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, plastic surgeon Larry Seifert scowls at the whole premise. Facercise and “Facial Fitness” are simply new versions of old ideas, he scoffs. Ticking off alternatives to surgery once touted in the past--acupuncture, massage and laser therapy--Seifert says he has never seen scientific proof that the workouts work.

Neither Rosenbaum nor Maggio has published such findings in medical journals, but they are steadfast in their belief that the exercises are beneficial. Says Rosenbaum: “We are discouraged, especially in the United States, from making facial expressions. If you don’t use the muscles, there’s a tendency to sag. We do not take care of our faces, and muscles atrophy.” Perform his exercises faithfully, he says, and you’ll start to look younger in two weeks.

“Do you go to the gym and exercise your body?” Maggio asks. “It’s the same thing. I teach the client to create a lactic-acid burn in the muscle, which gives it tone and contour instantly. I can change your face in five days. You either want your face changed in five days or you don’t.” Days after beginning the program, her clients, typically middle-income women in their late 40s or early 50s, receive comments about their more youthful look, Maggio says. “What concerns me about the anecdotal promotion of material like this is the total absence of the scientific method,” says Seifert, a spokesman for the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. “Where are the well-controlled before-and-after studies? Where is the careful, long-term photo documentation?

“Lines of facial expression and wrinkle lines are actually caused by the activity of underlying muscles,” Seifert says. “Their repeated contracture produces wrinkles.” The contention that our faces sag because we don’t exercise them enough is fallacy, he adds. “Our faces sag because there is a loss of elasticity, a normal aging phenomenon. (Exercises) might make the wrinkling worse.”

“It’s pretty hard not to use your facial muscles during every day,” says William Jarvis, president of the National Council Against Health Fraud in Loma Linda. “I’m not aware of any evidence that we can improve our facial tone by exercising.”

But not everyone is willing to condemn the concept. Lawrence Birnbaum, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, has met with Maggio, listened to her presentation and viewed before-and-after photos of her clients. He concludes that the exercises “might delay the need for plastic surgery.” Birnbaum also says: “I honestly believe if people did them diligently, they would reap the benefits (of facial rejuvenation). There’s nothing scientific in the literature to prove this works, but logic alone suggests it might help plump up the face. . . . But if you’re the type of person who buys an exercise bike, uses it for three weeks and puts it in the closet, this is probably not for you.”

So, to squint or not to squint? Whether the facial exercises are effective is a matter of debate, but most people--even Seifert--agree that all that repeated stretching and contracting “could be good for stress reduction.”

For more information about Facercise, call (602) 585-5131. To order “Facial Fitness,” call (800) 843-3611. For referrals by the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons, call (800) 635-0635.