Our looks are an intrinsic part of our being and looking good and contribute to our general feel-good factor and well-being. But when imperfections take over with age or due to specific health conditions, illness or accident, the face looking back at us in the mirror may not be quite what we bargained for. Short of feeling miserable and self-conscious, aesthetic medicine has provided doable, possible and effective solutions.

Meeting well-known aesthetic physician Dr Joanna Delia turns out to provide more than just an interview. She is a constant source of knowledge on all things beautiful, providing ready and steady answers to all my questions, even the most sceptical and dubious of them. She strongly believes in the importance of drawing upon the findings of hard-core science to achieve optimum aesthetic results. "I advocate what I like to call 'the confidence revolution', because our work is ultimately about restoring personal confidence, putting a physical chip on people's shoulder. The people who come to me believe that they come here to treat physical issues, but in reality, these issues are all related to a lack of self-confidence and self-doubt."

Dr Delia, explains how very often clients seeking her services typically tend to be very conscious of some part of their face or body. They cover themselves, their faces, their mouths, because they have a specific and negative perception of how the world looks at them and judges them. Since beauty is an extremely individual issue, each person has very specific ideas on how he or she should look and on what they want to improve upon in their appearance. The undercurrent is that this physical change would subsequently also help them transform their life.

"Nowadays aesthetic medicine and cosmetic dermatology are very non-invasive but a lot of people remain dubious about these treatments. Many times this is due to the several weird looking celebrities we see on public media, personalities with over-blown lips, strange looking faces and the such. I personally have limits, and I respect my limits and my clients. I refuse to carry out excessive interventions and always use good taste to create subtle changes which result in pleasantness, rather than bizarreness. I consider excessive interventions as being malpractice and I always encourage people to check a professional person's credentials before submitting to any sort of aesthetic treatment."

Enjoying a healthy public following thanks to her regular appearances on the media, Dr Joanna, as her clients know her, likes to explain how fillers can be used to improve texture and to firm facial skin, how certain interventions can slowly solve problems related to skin marking, pigmentation, acne, and excessively dry skin. "When the face grows older, it tends to not only develop wrinkles but also succumb to hollowness caused by the loss of fat around the face. Cosmetic dermatology is also about restoring good looks, and because aesthetics are of primordial value, people generally start looking taller once they start feeling more beautiful. Nowadays we have definitely veered away from 'freezing' people's faces.  Botulinum toxin has been around for almost 30 years now and the ways it is administered have also developed significantly. For the benefit of those who think this is a nasty and alien ingredient, I would like to point out it is used constantly in hospitals to treat varied neurological problems, the simplest of which are chronic headaches."

She insists on the importance of regular training updates which any medical professional should undergo, more so in her extremely fast-paced speciality. Dr Delia herself has trained extensively both in the UK and in Paris and takes several regular trips abroad in order to upgrade training and increasingly refine her expertise. "Not every Tom, Dick and Harry can do these interventions, I am literally obsessed with training and I seek out top-up courses to help me understand better the nature of my work. The confidence revolution is backed by a constant updating of techniques, products and equipment that all have the common aim of letting each one of us shine."