Meet Joe Hunstad. The Inventors of Aesthetics Series No. 4

Dr. Grant Stevens

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Technology of Beauty, where I have the opportunity to interview the movers and shakers of the beauty business. And today is no exception. Today is my dear friend, Dr. Joe Hunstead from Charlotte, North Carolina. Welcome Joe.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

Thank you Grant, it's a pleasure to be here. I'm excited!

Dr. Grant Stevens

It's great to have you, you came all the way from Charlotte here to beautiful, Manhattan beach. Unfortunately, it's a little bit foggy, a little bit cloudy. We call this June gloom, but thanks for making the effort to come out here.

I've been wanting to interview you for almost three years now since we started this program.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

I'm glad I could make it. Thanks for the invite. I appreciate that.

Dr. Grant Stevens

You're very welcome So let's start with the beginning. Where'd you grow up Joe?

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So I was born in Detroit and My dad worked for General Motors and they moved to the suburbs in Rochester 30 miles north and I grew up there until I finished high school. Then I went to a small liberal arts school in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Kalamazoo College.

Then went to medical school at Michigan State University. And then after that I had decided, hey, in medical school, I figured it out. I needed to be, wanted to be, and needed to be a plastic surgeon.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Before we go there, what'd you major in in college besides girls?

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So, ha ha ha. So my major was health science because I was focused on pre med ever since I was in eighth grade.

Eighth grade, for some reason, we had a wonderful series of kind of career days, and I first thought I wanted to be an airline pilot, then an oceanographer, but then I figured it out. Wait a minute. I'm pretty good at math, science. I like all that stuff. Being a doctor makes sense. So that's, I decided that in eighth grade.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Okay, so off to college, pre health sciences. You knew you wanted to be a doctor, then you applied to med school. How soon in med school did you decide you wanted to be a surgeon? And then a plastic surgeon.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So, as you know, when you go to medical school, you're gonna basically be one of two tracks.

You're gonna be a medicine doctor or a surgical doctor. There are lots of different surgical fields. And at one time I thought I wanted to do burn surgery. I had some severe burns when I was in high school and I was just intrigued by the whole thing. But during my second rotation on the burn unit, the head of the burn unit, who was a plastic surgeon, saw that I was coming back for a second rotation, which was kind of unheard of. I had the, the unit in great shape. He goes, you come down and operate with me. And I hate to say it, but I said, thank you, sir. I'd be happy to, but in the back of my mind, I thought, wait a minute, plastic surgery, that's for wimps.

But that day we took care of a complex hand injury, a child with a cleft lip and a cosmetic procedure. And it was absolutely... I realized that moment that this is for me, this is what I wanted to do. And then I took it from there.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Okay, so you're at Michigan State, Spartans, right?

Dr. Joe Hunstad

Sparty, yes.

Dr. Grant Stevens

You decide you want to be a plastic surgeon.

Did you do a sub-I in plastics on your fourth year?

Dr. Joe Hunstad

Yes I did.

Dr. Grant Stevens

That's a sub internship.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

When I decided that I don't want to be a general surgeon, I want to be a plastic surgeon. I was behind. I was late. And because the process of selection was already going on and I went, okay. So I looked at a number of programs.

There were two in Michigan that were a combined program, which was rare. Stanford had one here in California and there were just a couple others in the country where you could go from day one and be slotted into plastic surgery. Very unusual. So I went to those two programs and did a sub internship and nobody worked harder than me that day.

And I'll tell you what, it was amazing because by the end of my month, one of the doctors I was scrubbing in with actually let me do part of the procedure, and the chairman of the program said, how are you going to rank us? And I said, "Oh sir, this is where I want to go. I'm ranking you number one."

He goes, we're going to rank you number one too. And I was like,

yes!

Dr. Grant Stevens

Congratulations. That was great.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So it was great.

Dr. Grant Stevens

So you did a combined five year or six year?

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So it was six years, but it was three years of general surgery, two years of plastic surgery, and then there was an area in plastic surgery that I just didn't feel totally comfortable with - it was microsurgery. I went down to Houston, Texas at the Texas Medical Center, was able to be accepted into a coveted fellowship program of reconstructive microsurgery and, ironically, cosmetic surgery.

So the entire year I did two things. Reconstructive microsurgery and cosmetic surgery was an amazing combination, but it really set me up well for the future.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Was that with Dr. Mel Spira?

Dr. Joe Hunstad

I was with Dr. Spira, Dr. Shenaq, Dr. Withers, Dr. Stal, great, great, great

people.

Dr. Grant Stevens

That's fantastic. Okay, you finish up and where did you locate?

You're fresh out of plastics residency, you've done micro and you've done aesthetics, where'd you go?

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So my fiancé at the time, Sherry, we literally grabbed a Rand McNally map and said, okay, where can we go? We want four seasons, but a mild winter. We want a really nice lake cause we love boating and sailing and skiing and everything, and we want a great airport.

Because we love to travel and we looked at every major city in South, North Carolina and Virginia, and by far hands down Charlotte was the place. We moved there in August of '87 and it was a great decision we actually chose Charlotte before I had a job, but that's where we were gonna go and it worked out great

Dr. Grant Stevens

That was bold.

You don't hear that very often nowadays. So you show up with your U Haul trailer or however you are moving your stuff to Charlotte and then you start looking for a job? It's a little backwards.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So actually when we decided on Charlotte I took some time and I met with every plastic surgeon in the Charlotte area that would meet with me that would tolerate seeing this new guy that wants to come to town, and I said, I'm coming to town, if I can be of any help, please let me know, I'm really eager to do this. Well, the biggest group in town said, Hey, we want to fly you back. And all of us interview you, there are five doctors in that group. Because plastic surgeons, very few are in big groups. Most are in solo practice. And this was a big group and they flew me back and said, yeah, we want you to be part of us.

And I went, okay. So that's what I did, yeah. And I was with that group for seven and a half years. It was a very good group. Great people. But I wanted to do more. I was never satisfied with what we were doing. I wanted better outcomes, better results, better patient experience, and I really needed to go on my own.

And so in 95, I went out and established my own private individual practice. And I was in solo practice for 15 years until I brought in my first associate, Bill Korteses. Subsequently, we've got Guarav Bharti. And my practice has grown quite dramatically, because right now the practice comprises nine centers and 13 doctors.

So it's been quite a success story.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And we're going to get back. We're going to get to that. But I want to go back to that 15 years when you were in private practice. Was it all aesthetic? Was it recon? Was it burns? What did that practice look like, say, in the first five, second five, third five of that 15 years?

Dr. Joe Hunstad

Because I had come with very good experience with microsurgery, the first hospital I was going to work with bought me a microscope, and I did replantation of amputated fingers, hands, terrible complex injuries. It was virtually 90 percent traumatic injury was my first year.

And it was great for me, because we had really good successes. We established the first hand clinic in the area, the first occupational therapy unit in the area. And it really took off and grew. But by the end of my second year, my practice had evolved and it had become almost exclusively aesthetic or cosmetic plastic surgery.

I didn't push the arrow that way. It just kind of happened to me and what I did most commonly were Tummy tucks, breast augmentation, and liposuction. It was amazing. And since that time, um, the practice basically became purely aesthetic surgery, particularly after I went on my own, and basically focused on that.

And that's what my practice, the HKB Center (H is for Hunstead), that's what it's continuing to do.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Now you mentioned liposuction, I know. And you mentioned the tummy tucks and so forth. I know you, your name is on a number of instruments. Tell us about the instruments you invented.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So in 1992, I was elected to be on the board of directors of the Lipoplasty Society.

It was pretty fantastic. I was the youngest guy ever to be on the board. And I became aware of a lot of innovations in plastic surgery. And one was: a complete shift in the mentality of how to do liposuction. Change something that required blood transfusions in almost every patient to one where the need for blood transfusion almost disappeared.

That's known as the tumescent technique. It was initially defined by a dermatologist who I know very well, Jeff Klein, but it became really in the domain of plastic surgery because we just do so much more of that. But there were no good instrumentation to put this large volume of fluid in, in an efficient manner.

So I worked with actually two of the companies that are making, liposuction plastic surgery instruments, one in particular, and we created this line that we stamped my name on, the Hunstad line of tumescent infiltration handle, cannulas, and a variety of other things. And, ironically, although it's gone through a number of iterations, it's better today than it was in 92 when I first developed it.

It's still a top seller and used worldwide.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Thirty one years ago you invented that.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

Amazing. Yeah.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Crazy. We all use it.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

Yeah, because it's simple and it works.

Dr. Grant Stevens

It made it easy and fast.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

And faster, for sure.

Dr. Grant Stevens

That's right. Okay, so when did you get involved in the lecture circuit? He's an internationally renowned speaker.

So he goes around the world, as well as the United States, but when did you start venturing out of Charlotte and sharing your knowledge and your experience with other surgeons around the world?

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So, during that time when my practice had become aesthetic cosmetic plastic surgery, I started to see more and more and more people who had had very massive weight loss. And there really weren't great procedures to take care of these deformities. And so I started by caring for these patients and beginning to do a circumferential all the way around. A tummy tuck, a body lift, and I remember one of my partners at the time came to me and said, is this safe?

And it was absolutely safe, because we could do these procedures with literally zero bleeding and with a very fast, safe outcome. And I started to generate this series of body lifts, circumferential, and nobody else was doing it. So I took my series, presented it, And I remember one of the first times I presented it, I was in an international meeting in New York city and the head of the Royal Society of Plastic Surgery of Belgium, Dr.

Madeline Lejour, after I was done speaking ran up to me and said, you must come to Belgium. You must do this surgery. We must see it. So that was the first time that I got to go internationally, do live surgery. And it just kept growing from there. It's pretty amazing.

Dr. Grant Stevens

I know you've written a number of articles and books and book chapters.

When did you write your body contouring book that you sent to me, actually, that I have all my residents and fellows read?

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So, that book came out in 2008, the end of 2008/2009 and it was the Atlas of Abdominoplasty. Interestingly, it was published in English, Spanish, and Chinese. It was fantastic, at one of the meetings, this very wonderful Asian woman, very politely came to me and introduced herself as the doctor that translated my book.

It was so cool, it was a big seller and it actually sold out, it was a very popular, popular book. It helped a lot of people. And in that book were also ancillary procedures that I had worked on and developed bra line back lift, purse string gluteoplasty, vertical thigh, all these different operations. That I was able to publish and share and people have picked up and are using worldwide, which is fantastic.

Dr. Grant Stevens

How many operations would you estimate or would you state that you invented?

Dr. Joe Hunstad

Dr. Grant Stevens

Seven unique operations that Dr. Hunstead has actually invented and refined and are used all over the world.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

Dr. Grant Stevens

That's a home run.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

Pretty hard to beat it. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Tell us a little bit about the bra line back lift, because I'm sure most people have never heard of it.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So. Over time, massive weight loss patients, but also normal weight patients, develop laxity, rolls and folds above, at, and below the bra line. And it's, it's very very, upsetting to a lot of patients to have all that redundant skin. And there's really virtually no procedure that had ever been developed to do this.

Interestingly, one of my long term patients came in to see me and she grabbed her skin back there and she says, I hate this. And I said, well, you know there's really not a procedure developed to do this. She goes, you'll figure it out. So I thought, okay, could you tolerate a scar that's hidden below, like a string bikini below your bra, but that gets rid of all of this skin and I think you can get tightening literally from your neck all the way down to your buttocks.

She went, let's do it. We did it. It was a home run. It appeared in England in the daily news. I mean, I was on TV, ironically here in LA. It was amazing to see people from all over the world coming for this procedure. So it's pretty good. It works, does leave a scar, but typically the scar heals pretty narrowly and is easy to conceal even beneath a string bikini.

Dr. Grant Stevens

I've done plenty of them. You taught me how to do them and my patients are very happy. How about a few words about a purse string gluteoplasty? There's a lot of stuff in the news about BBLs, Brazilian butt lifts, and big fat injection butts. Tell everybody what a purse string gluteoplasty is.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So, because I was caring for a lot of patients who'd experienced, or who were at a successful massive weight loss, One of their frustrations, not only is this redundant folds and sheets of skin, but it was like a loss of volume of the buttocks and a droop of the buttocks.

And if there was a method to correct all those things in one operation, I wanted to do it. There were a number of procedures that had been developed taking the tissue you would normally remove when you're lifting and tightening and rotate it and shift it, but they were not very reliable. They were not, they didn't have a very robust or predictable blood supply.

So I did those, I did those published articles, and I had complications and I was so frustrated. So I had a dream about how this could be done properly. And I knew that if we marked out in the ideal location for maximum buttocks projection, a pattern that we could protect and preserve, we could then shape it, tighten it, and have complete maintenance of vascularity, which was the big culprit.

So this works well. And it was amazing, the first time I did it, I put a permanent suture in this tissue and literally when I tightened it and shaped it the very first time, I couldn't believe it. I mean, It looked exactly like a buttocks implant. Matter of fact, we got a sterile buttocks tester implant and put it side by side, photographed them, they look the same.

And so that has been a good one too.

Dr. Grant Stevens

And that's the first thing that takes the graft. It's on the patient, the purse string goes around, we pull it tight, and tighten it up, and I say it kind of looks like a football for me, and then there you have it, it's a buttocks implant, and it's the patient's own tissue.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

And it does great things because it narrows the buttocks and gives projection, and it fills that skin envelope up, gives a beautiful shape, takes care of all the things of getting rid of excess skin, sagging, volume loss. All in one shot.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Rejection. And maintain vascularity.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

Yeah, it's been a good one.

Dr. Grant Stevens

I think that was one of the finest operations you ever invented. Okay, so then, the international circuit, you continue to travel the world, I ran into you all over the place, and teaching everybody. You've certainly enjoyed that. You've been on many international podiums. Any comments about that?

Dr. Joe Hunstad

Dr. Grant Stevens

São Paulo

Dr. Joe Hunstad

São Paulo

Dr. Grant Stevens

Kyoto

Dr. Joe Hunstad

Barcelona, Rome. Yeah. Anyway, when you start to publish these different procedures, people from other countries read that and particularly because we were putting them in the leading journal at the time, plastic and reconstructive surgery, and people see that and invite you to come and do surgery.

I've had the opportunity to actually do surgery live in 23 countries, which is pretty amazing. And then sharing that information free. There's no proprietary surgical procedure. We don't patent anything. I mean, this knowledge is for everybody to know. And our goal is to teach it, share it, not be selfish with it, I mean, that's what we do as physicians.

And, I know that you and I have lectured together virtually worldwide on land and at sea.

Dr. Grant Stevens

That's right. That's been a ton of fun. So, I think it's time you share with our listeners and our watchers just what you're doing now. So we've talked about the Charlotte practice. We've talked about how you and the guys you brought in have acquired more practices.

What are you doing today, Dr. Hunstead?

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So I am retired and I've been retired for a little more than a year. And right now I'm doing hobby farming, woodworking, metalworking, a lot of travel and enjoying the success of my daughters. I have two daughters, one, a very prominent attorney in Charlotte doing intellectual property, trademark law.

And my other daughter is a physician assistant doing, Interventional radiology in Charlotte. They've both done great. Love that. My oldest daughter has gotten married about a year ago. Love her husband, Michael's fabulous, and enjoying the family has been great. So one thing I did want to mention is that you've had a successful fellowship training other doctors.

In 2001, I started our fellowship too, and we've had over, about 40 fellows come through our program and we've created this fellowship family that at every Aesthetic society meeting, we have a get together of all our fellows It's like a fellowship reunion and it is so wonderful to see people that you've trained one on one Be so successful and you've had that.

Dr. Grant Stevens

It's a blast. That's the highlight of my career... besides the technology of beauty, of course. Okay. Well, when you say you're retired, I can only smile and laugh because you're doing all these things, but you've left one thing out that you're doing.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So I do have a YouTube channel, and it's called Adventures with Dr.

Joe, and it began as a series of videos of these procedures that we develop. So I'd give a teaching course, speak to the plastic surgeons, take it and say, before you do that operation, go to my YouTube channel. You'll be able to see that video in great detail. Please review it. So you won't have any mistakes, any complications, any surprises. But then,

I started to do other videos of the things that I like and care for and I'm doing today and now I'm getting close to 5 000 subscribers sharing the things I do on a routine basis and it's wonderful. I was sharing with you this morning. Great comments coming back. Thank you for your video.

It explained this and that. It made it easy for me. That makes me happy.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Tell them the types of things that you're explaining though. They're not plastic surgery.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

No, we've gone a little ways away from plastic surgery. It's the things I do now. It's with farming, it's with welding, it's with woodworking, it's with electrical components.

It's with wiring, you know, putting a light bar on my Ranger. I mean, it's how to put, you know, a rear winch on my UTV, I mean, things like that. It's the things I'm doing on a daily basis that are fun.

Dr. Grant Stevens

How do we watch your YouTube videos? How do we subscribe? What's the address?

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So I'd encourage everyone to take a look at it because there's quite a, quite a variety on there. Just go to YouTube and look for "adventures with Dr. Joe".

Dr. Grant Stevens

I mean, this morning, you were telling me about you're approaching 5, 000 subscribers and many more viewers than that even. So that's really exciting. So you're not doing plastic surgery yet, but you're still immersed. I know, for instance, you are chairing The Aesthetic Society Cruise, the last one. And you're working with Dr.

Tim Papadopoulos on the next one for next summer, right? And you were just asked to speak at the Aesthetic Society meeting, which is coming up and international meeting. So retired is sort of a euphemistic term. You're just not cutting and sewing right now.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

I'm mostly retired.

Dr. Grant Stevens

Yeah, you're still teaching.

So with that in mind. I'd like you to look into your crystal ball that I see you brought here in your beautiful leather jacket. And could you tell us what the future looks like? You've been doing this for 30 years. You've invented multiple procedures. You've written over a hundred publications, many books, many book chapters.

You've taught many fellows, over 40. Internationally, you've taught thousands of surgeons. What are we going to see over the next 3 years, 5 years, and 10 years, if you want to touch on it?

Dr. Joe Hunstad

So, again, I think it's an honor, and I know it's an honor, to be a plastic surgeon. I think we both feel that. Plastic surgery is such a creative, innovative field.

It began as problem solving. What other people couldn't figure out to do, that's where plastic surgery got its origins. And we've remained that way. Super creative, super innovative. With you, Grant, your technology of beauty brings forth those in the field that are the most prominent, most successful, the movers and shakers, the leaders, and that really promotes that.

And I've had the opportunity to view a number of your broadcasts, they're excellent, but I think the big, I think technology is going to pave the way. We're still going to be cutting and sewing. But with greater instrumentation, faster healing, less invasive procedures, this is going to continue to evolve.

I think the future is super bright for plastic surgery and doing things that we can't even imagine today. It's going to be even in the near future. So, you know, skin care has exploded and gone incredibly well. The surgical procedures, the endoscopic procedures, all of these technologies are going to continue to evolve.

We're going to have better results, less morbidity, faster recovery in virtually everything we do.

Dr. Grant Stevens

I agree entirely. Thank you very much for joining us, again, safe travels back to Charlotte. And as always, it's a pleasure. And I'd like to thank all of you also for joining us on this episode of the Technology of Beauty.

And you can see why Joe is a mover and shaker of the beauty business. We'll see you next week. Thanks, Joe.

Dr. Joe Hunstad

Thank you, Grant.