Editorial Policy

Renew You sits at an awkward, useful join: one person’s account of having a facelift, and the clinical facts a surgeon would stand behind. This policy explains how the two are kept apart and then put back together, so you can judge how far to trust what you read.

Who writes and who checks

The articles are written by Paula Winters, a facelift patient and the founder of this site, not a clinician. Everything that touches the medicine, how a SMAS lift differs from a deep-plane lift, what recovery involves, how long results last, what complications such as haematoma occur and how often, is reviewed by Mr Alexander Frost, Consultant Plastic Surgeon, FRCS (Plast), before it goes live. His job is to catch anything that does not match current practice or the published evidence. Where a page carries a reviewed date, that is the date a clinician last checked it.

The line between experience and advice

Lived experience and clinical guidance are not the same thing, and we never let them blur. When I describe my own swelling, bruising, or the slow reveal over months, that is one face and one recovery, marked as personal. When the page states what a facelift does, who it suits, or what the risks are, that is the reviewed clinical content. What happened to me is not a prediction of what will happen to you.

How figures and sources are handled

Numbers on this site, recovery timelines, how long results tend to last, complication rates, are drawn from authoritative bodies and peer-reviewed plastic-surgery literature, not from clinic marketing. We prefer national bodies and professional associations such as the NHS, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, BAAPS, and specialist journals. Where the evidence gives a range rather than a single answer, we write it as a range, for example “about 2 to 3 weeks”, and we say plainly when large reviews have not settled a question. We do not round a range up into a promise.

Independence

Nobody pays to appear here. We do not accept payment to recommend a surgeon, a clinic, a technique, or a product, and we do not run affiliate links to cosmetic sellers. The Resources page points only to independent bodies, not to anyone selling surgery.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, out of date, or unclear, we want to fix it. Tell us through the Contact page. Genuine errors of fact are corrected promptly, and where a correction is material we update the page and its dates so you can see it has changed.

What this policy is not

None of the above turns this site into medical advice, and review by a surgeon is not the same as being examined by one. Please read the Medical Disclaimer alongside this policy.