David B. Reath MD, PLLC
109 S Northshore Dr #101
Knoxville, TN 38919
(865) 450-9253 Office
(865) 450-9949 Fax
+1-866-732-8401 Toll Free
Physicians’ Surgery Center
Fort Sanders Center for Advanced Medicine Building
1819 Clinch Ave #206
Knoxville, TN 37916
(865) 522-2949 Office
More people take some multi-vitamin or herbal supplement, but very few think to disclose their vitamins to their doctor and anesthesiologist before their surgery. After all, they’re just vitamins. They don’t count as a medication, right? Wrong!
You may not have given much thought to this but herbs, and products that contain them, are packaged as nutritional supplements and will not provide warnings, dosage information, or suggested usage instructions. As a result, many people incorrectly assume that “natural” medicines are inherently safer than pharmaceutical drugs.
This is not only untrue; it’s an assumption that can be dangerous if a person is facing any surgery, whether it’s plastic surgery or not. Many people planning plastic surgery fail to disclose their herbal supplement use out of fear of being ridiculed by their doctor. (Who would think that licorice could be dangerous?) The fact is, your doctors want and need to know what you are taking to ensure your safe recovery.
Below is a list of some commonly taken supplements that can interfere with your plastic surgery. How? Some cause post-surgical bleeding, worsen Inflammation, raise blood pressure, or alter your sugar levels. The best advice is to quit all herbal supplements three weeks before your plastic surgery procedure. If in doubt, don’t take it.
There are some recommended vitamins for plastic surgery, as well as some herbal supplements that can aid post-surgical healing and reduce bruising. This is what we prescribe.
Vitamins for Plastic Surgery: Start three weeks before your procedure
All the vitamins we carry in our store are from Vitamedica. This company only uses pharmaceutical-grade ingredients, as opposed to the “dietary supplement” ingredients and labs you find on the shelves of your grocery store. These drug standards have a higher level of scrutiny compared with those used in the dietary supplement industry. The FDA routinely inspects each of its facilities. If you are interested, we have a document on file which certifies their authenticity.
Since inception, all of their products, including the vitamins for plastic surgery, have been made in two facilities that are licensed to produce drugs, using manufacturing practices that parallel those adopted by the drug industry. That’s why we offer their products to our patients.
Many of our patients liked their surgical vitamins so much that they asked us how to get more of Vitamedica’s vitamins after their surgery. So we decided to carry their line of everyday vitamins. In our online store, we also have:
Visit the medical vitamins section of our online store.
Plastic SurgeryDownload our new eBook with 40-pages of everything you need to know about planning your plastic surgery and recovery.
In the Plastic Surgery Planner, we drill down into the nitty-gritty of how to prepare for your plastic surgery, and what to do to recover well and quickly. These are best practices that we have learned throughout the years, mainly by listening to our patients, but also in some cases, by having the procedures done ourselves.
Plastic Surgery Planner
Tips to Manage a Speedy Recovery
Whether you have your surgery with Dr. Reath, Dr. Walker, or another plastic surgeon, you’ll find these pages super-helpful.
From the Blog
For the last 35 years, I have enjoyed the practice of plastic surgery in Knoxville, Tennessee. It is my pleasure and privilege to have been entrusted with your care. In order for my practice to move ahead, I am partnering with a group of plastic surgeons in Charlotte, whom I respect and admire. This change … Read moreFrom the Blog
Back in November of 2009, I started my Facebook page, got my first smartphone, and wrote my first blog post. Since then, we have been honored with over 11,500 facebook fans, and our practice YouTube channel has 276 videos with over 950,000 views. Pretty amazing, right? Now, twelve years later, I have written over 300 blog … Read moreFrom the Blog
The majority of my plastic surgery practice here in Knoxville is body contouring surgery, which is changing the shape of my patient’s bodies. Inevitably this means dealing with fat. We all have it. We all need it. Some have less than they want; most of us have more than we want. Frequently we get questions … Read more