Seth Eberlin, MD - Plastic Surgeon in Walnut Creek, California

Eva Sheie (00:03):
The purpose of this podcast is simple. We want you to get to know your doctor before meeting them in person because you're making a life-changing decision and time is scarce. The more you can learn about who your doctor is before you meet them, the better that first meeting will be. There is no substitute for an in-person appointment, but we hope this comes close. I'm your host, Eva Sheie, and you're listening to Meet the Doctor. Welcome back to Meet the Doctor. My guest today is board certified plastic surgeon, Seth Eberlin, who is in the beautiful city of Walnut Creek, California. Thank you for joining me.

Dr. Eberlin (00:41):
Yeah, thank you very much for having me.

Eva Sheie (00:43):
Why don't we just start with the usual. What's your practice and how do you think about aesthetics?

Dr. Eberlin (00:50):
So my practice is I kind of try to focus more on kind of quality over quantity. Where it's single surgeon, it's just me. I have a fairly small office, but I like to keep it that way because I don't want it to turn into something bigger than I feel like I can comfortably manage. I don't see myself as a really big micromanager, but I also know that there's certain ways I like to do things and certain things I like to make sure that go in the right direction. I think that's the easiest way to do it. But that also kind of leads itself into what I think about aesthetics, because I think just with the practice, it's really easy to let aesthetics get out of control, and that's something I hear a lot of where people come in and they're like, oh, everybody I've ever seen who's had this surgery done looks fake or it looks overdone, or anybody who's had filler, and that's not the case. So I think when we're looking at aesthetics, it's not about trying to change something so dramatically that it doesn't look like the patient anymore. I think it should look like the best version of you as opposed to somebody else.

Eva Sheie (01:51):
Well said. And did you know you were always going to end up in aesthetics? How did that happen?

Dr. Eberlin (01:58):
So yes, I got asked this question when I was interviewing for med school and for residency, and they said, what did you know you want to be a plastic surgeon? And I told 'em forever and most of 'em didn't believe me, but when I was little I always said I want to be the kind of doctor that puts things back together after an accident. That was something that interested me a lot. And I like working with my hands. I've always liked working with my hands. So going from saying, okay, I know I want to be a doctor, I know I want to work with my hands. But then there's the other side of it, the aesthetic side, which is much more, there's a lot more thought that goes into it. There's a lot more ambiguity and there's a lot more of a what's the right answer for this patient versus just what's the right answer for the textbook.

(02:41):
And I really like that part about it where sitting down with somebody and talking to 'em for a while and figuring out what that patient's goals are versus what somebody else's goals. I use the analogy I have. A lot of my friends live in New York City and one of 'em just bought an apartment in New York and he's super excited about it. I'm like, that's great. He showed me pictures and I was like that I would not like to live there at all, but he's super excited. I said, that's great. But it's the same thing with aesthetics. What one person looks at and says, I love this. Somebody else is going to say, that's not my look. And that's fine. I think it's my job to present options and give people the look that they want based on what their end goals are.

Eva Sheie (03:22):
You're reminding me of something I hear a lot, which is in marketing you see a lot of this natural results or you see patients say, I want it to look really natural, but natural is a completely subjective word.

Dr. Eberlin (03:37):
That part can be challenging because yeah, what one person sees as natural, somebody else might not. My barometer for that is especially with surgery, patients are like, oh, am I going to look different? Are people going to notice? And I said, look for friends and family people you see every day, they're probably going to know that something happened. They see you every day and there's going to be a change. But for somebody who you've never seen before, somebody you just meet on the street, that person shouldn't know that you've had anything done. That for me is where it starts to look unnatural. But again, it's like I kind of look at it, if you don't look different from what we did before surgery, then what the heck did we do it all for? But we want it to be better different, not just different.

Eva Sheie (04:19):
And I think even with people close to you after a while you forget what they looked like before. You just get used to the new whatever. And I had two friends who both had rhinoplasty within a month of each other this year, and they both look amazing.

Dr. Eberlin (04:33):
And that's a sign that whoever the surgeon was did a good job, fit their nose to their face and hopefully listened to what they wanted.

Eva Sheie (04:42):
They actually both had the same surgeon.

Dr. Eberlin (04:44):
There you go. Well, that surgeon did a good job.

Eva Sheie (04:46):
He did a good job.

Dr. Eberlin (04:46):
But it's definitely that whole thing where we kind of forget what we looked like. And I get that a lot where I'll do a facelift on somebody and they'll come in for their six month and they'll say, oh, can I see my pre-op pictures? And I'll show 'em the pre-op pictures of like, oh my God, I didn't realize that's what I looked like. I always thought I looked like this. I was like, that's great for most people, we tend to feel younger than we look, and I have a lot of patients in their sixties saying, God, I feel like I'm 40. It's just when I look in the mirror it doesn't reflect that. And all of a sudden you do a surgery, it's like, alright, now we're starting to match this a little bit better.

Eva Sheie (05:22):
And at any age I think we feel exactly the same inside those transformations. I think where we run into trouble is if we think that we're going to feel differently somehow because of something we changed on the outside and have an expectation that might not be realistic.

Dr. Eberlin (05:40):
Realistic expectations are important. And my wife as a psychologist and I have talked a lot about

Eva Sheie (05:47):
That's handy.

Dr. Eberlin (05:47):
Yeah, it's super helpful, but we talk a lot about that because we're trying to fix a concrete problem. I try to make sure that patients don't take that as a, it's going to fix this other aspect of my life or it's going to help me get this job. Or I'm in Walnut Creek, so I'm close to San Francisco and I have a fair number of patients who are in the tech industry. And the tech industry is a very heavily weighted industry towards younger professionals. And I've had people come in and they're 36 and they're like, I'm the oldest person in the office and I can't, I'm getting wrinkles and I can't do this. And I was like, look, we can treat things with Botox and do some skincare and maximize things, but you're still going to be 36 and you're still going to be working with a bunch of 22 year olds. So it's not going to dramatically change that. But if it makes you feel better, it makes you look better. Then we've reached our goal.

Eva Sheie (06:43):
Isn't it funny that we would think 22 year olds have some kind of edge at work? They don't know anything.

Dr. Eberlin (06:49):
They don't, but it's, sounds bad, but it's like when you get a group of 22 year olds together, it's like they think that this is how everything needs to be. And heck, like I said, it is like the mid 30 year olds, they're the oldest people in the office, so they're the ones with the most experience. And it's like, this is crazy because I didn't start my profession until I was in my early thirties. You're going through training and training and training, and most of my friends got out of college, got a job, and they started in the workplace at 22 and I was a full 10 years later because I decided to go into the longest training I could possibly find.

Eva Sheie (07:26):
I saw a stat recently that the most successful startups were ones that were started by people in their forties.

Dr. Eberlin (07:33):
Which I mean makes sense.

Eva Sheie (07:34):
Doesn't it? Already been through the battle? Yeah.

Dr. Eberlin (07:37):
Yeah, exactly. It was like it's either they've gone through it and had some unsuccessful ones and figured out a working formula or just in general they have more life experience and figure out what people want and what people need. But I kind of always knew what I wanted to do and it was a pretty clear path. I'm like, this is great. This is super fun. I really enjoy it and everything makes it easier. Waking up in the morning when you get to go do something fun.

Eva Sheie (08:00):
How'd you end up in Walnut Creek?

Dr. Eberlin (08:03):
Well, my wife grew up not too far from here and she has a fairly close knit family and everybody lives right in this area. So I did all my training in Los Angeles, but it was always the plan to move up to the Bay Area once that chapter of the life was over.

Eva Sheie (08:18):
And then were you always on your own or did you work somewhere else for a little while before you decided to take the leap?

Dr. Eberlin (08:24):
So I joined a single surgeon private practice when I first moved up here to Walnut Creek. And at the time when I joined him, the plan was to, I would work underneath him for five years, then I would take over the business, we'd work side by side for five years and then he'd retire. And that whole idea was number one, to make sure I felt comfortable running a business. And number two, to make sure he felt comfortable turning his business over or his practice over that he developed for 30 years. He wanted make sure he is turning it over to somebody who was going to maintain the reputation that he had developed. So what ended up happening was we worked together for about three years in a month and then he's like, you got this. You're doing great. You're going to take over the business.

(09:06):
It's like, oh, all right. So we did that and then about three months later he said, I'm going to retire. I'm like, what happened to five years? He's like, you got it. I'm good. I'm out of here. So that whole transition happened a heck of a lot faster than we expected. And it was really scary because you spend a decade of your life training to be a doctor and none of that training is how to run a business. So I was like, we're going to see how this goes. The medicine side of things feel super comfortable with the business side of things, not so much, but that part, I dunno, it kind of settled and figured itself out.

Eva Sheie (09:37):
Did that happen before Covid or after?

Dr. Eberlin (09:39):
Right before Covid.

Eva Sheie (09:41):
Oh yeah, good times.

Dr. Eberlin (09:41):
Yeah, so he actually texted me in April of 2020 and he was like, how's running a business going? Like, jokingly. But I was like, yeah, as well as everybody that we are shut down and waiting. So that was a small bump in the road, but things picked up afterwards. I mean, I did a number of facelifts on male lawyers and I think it's because they were doing stuff like this. They were on Zoom calls and they're seeing that little image of themselves and the camera and they're like, wait a minute, I don't like all this. So all of a sudden there was an influx of male patients saying, let's tighten this stuff up.

Eva Sheie (10:16):
You talked about facelifts a little bit, and in terms of procedures and things that you are doing, is there something you're becoming known for around there?

Dr. Eberlin (10:25):
The two things that I think I do the most of and I like doing a lot are breast surgery and face surgery. I did a lot of breast surgery in training, so I feel comfortable with it. It is always a challenge working on two different things and there's two different sides. So we're always working for symmetry, and so there's a lot of little manipulations that we do and I like that aspect of it. And face surgery, I kind of fell into that because the doctor who I used to work with as he kind of aged through his practice, his practice aged with him. So he had a lot of facelift patients, so just became known as a place where people go to get their faces done. So I have a lot of his patients coming back for secondary procedures or a lot of other basically friends of his patients who said, oh, Dr. Prescott did her my friend's surgery and she loves it, so I want to come to you. So those are the two things I probably do the most of. And there's lots of little iterations and nuances and we'll do breast surgery and tummy stuff or breast surgery and lipo or a facelift and eyelids where there's lots of other little, I don't want to say ancillary, but other procedures that you can do that kind of concurrently with it. But the biggest, most common ones I do are faces and breasts.

Eva Sheie (11:38):
So it's the Bay Area, everyone is in tech. Is there any tech that you use in the office that you particularly like and think is useful for patients?

Dr. Eberlin (11:48):
And that's a big thing because there's always something new and potentially exciting in plastics and it's kind of hard to parse out what is voodoo and what actually works. The two things that I like in my practice, and I use a fair amount, number one is called Renuvion, and it's a skin tightening device that basically uses helium plasma to cause collagen contraction under the skin. And I use that concurrently with liposuction at least half the time because it really helps to shrink wrap the skin down against the deeper tissue. And in some cases it can alleviate the need for actually cutting out the skin. And I tell people, look, it's not going to give you as dramatic a result as a tummy tuck would, but it's far better than just lipo alone. And that's an area of technology I think is advancing. It's like skin tightening without excision is the golden ticket.

Eva Sheie (12:38):
Can you do it as a standalone with nothing?

Dr. Eberlin (12:41):
Yeah, yeah. And like I said, it works great, but it's a nice stop gap between just liposuction and excision surgeries. So that's one. And then the other thing I have is called Emsculpt. And Emtsculpt gets very frequently confused with CoolSculpting, but what Emsculpt is is it basically it uses electric magnetic pulses to contract your muscles. The reason I bought it is because it was the only device that existed that helped to reduce what they call a rectus diastasis or separation of the abdominal muscles after pregnancy other than a tummy tuck. And for patients who don't want a tummy tuck or maybe it's not bad enough, they just want a little something that really helps. And I try really hard to do everything based on data and articles and true information as opposed to a rep showing you a picture and saying, look how much better this looks, because I feel like if I'm trying to convince my patients that there is a benefit, then it didn't work. I want patients coming in being like, oh my God, this is so much better. I don't want have to be telling them, yeah, you look better, I promise. I feel like it's just if they're not noticing a difference, it's not worthwhile.

Eva Sheie (13:48):
Have you done it yourself? The Emsculpt?

Dr. Eberlin (13:51):
Yeah. Oh yeah. This was five years ago. Long story short, hurt my back and had a muscle thing and it went on for a year and I did therapy, I did stretching, I did all these different things and couldn't get it to go away, and I did Emsculpt and my back pain disappeared. I was like, oh, this thing is amazing.

Eva Sheie (14:10):
I can't believe you're saying that right now. I just heard this little nugget, I mean so recently that Emsculpt could really help if you have back pain.

Dr. Eberlin (14:20):
Yeah, I don't use that as the selling point for it, but I just tell patients, I'm like, look, that part of my issue was obviously a lack of core strength. So I did that. And then it has been a non-issue, and Emsculpt, it's like you do it once, it's a four treatment package, and then I do it one 30 minute thing every year. So I usually do mine in June. When I did it the first time, it was like, do it 30 minutes every June and I haven't had my back pain come back.

Eva Sheie (14:45):
What does it feel like after you do it? Does it feel like you just had the worst workout of your life?

Dr. Eberlin (14:50):
Fortunately not, because each session is like 20,000 sit ups, and it's in 30 minutes, so it's like you would be destroyed if you actually did that in real life, but just the way that it works and it kind of flushes the lactic acid out. So the very first time I did it, I got a really deep soreness for about six hours, and it felt like I'd been kind of throwing up that really deep, kind of tight contraction, but after that it was nothing. It's awesome. I just got back from Palm Springs last week or this past weekend and before that a bunch of my family went down there. I think three members of my family came in and got Emsculpt done before, so I want to get tuned up. We're going to be in a bathing suit. So yeah, it's like why not?

Eva Sheie (15:32):
Does it work that fast? You're about to go to the pool?

Dr. Eberlin (15:35):
Yeah, you do see an immediate result, the best results you see in about six weeks, but you'll see a result after the, heck after the first session, but definitely after the last session. So it takes about two weeks or a week and a half to get through those four sessions. But yeah, you'll see a result.

Eva Sheie (15:49):
I can't figure out why it's not more popular. It's like has it been just battling against CoolSculpting for so long?

Dr. Eberlin (15:55):
I think so. The company that makes CoolSculpting came out with their own kind of pseudo version of Emsculpt, but it wasn't as good, but they had more advertising, but everybody I've ever treated with it has said, they're like, oh my gosh, I didn't realize what a difference this was going to make. Because on average, and this is just based on my patient population, on average, people lose about two and a half inches from their waist just from doing that. I had a woman who lost almost five inches. I lost an inch and a half. You do it, and it's like it really makes a significant difference. But again, that was something that I only bought it when they had good data and said, look, this is what we can show you. These are CT scans. This is clinically accurate stuff, as opposed to look at these two pictures, look how much better this one is.

Eva Sheie (16:46):
It's funny how the things change too, because the GLP ones are making people lose so much weight that CoolSculpting is basically dead because all it did was deal with fat, but that's not what Emsculpt's doing. It's actually really helpful.

Dr. Eberlin (17:00):
It's a very different thing altogether, and it does burn some fat cells just when it's doing it. It does get rid of some fat. But I tell people, I'm like, that's not the primary goal here. It focuses on muscle. The fat is an ancillary thing, but with the Ozempic drugs, they have definitely eliminated a lot of the nonsurgical fat reducing modules because they don't need 'em anymore. But the downside is, well, now you have people with Ozempic face where they've lost so much weight that their face looks really gaunt or they have too much loose skin and I don't know, Ozempic is like those GLP one antagonists. that's something I'm a little bit skeptical on because I want to see what the long-term effects of them are on how your body metabolizes food, how your body interacts with your appetite, how whole system comes back into homeostasis. So I'd much rather air on the sign of caution and play it safe.

Eva Sheie (17:55):
Are you seeing people around you starting to bring it in? Is it happening in Walnut Creek?

Dr. Eberlin (18:01):
A little bit. It doesn't have a really significant foothold, but as far as the physicians who are prescribing it, but I've definitely seen a significant uptick in the number of patients who are coming in after being treated with it, saying, alright, I don't like this or I don't like that because all of a sudden more loose skin, my face has gone, I've lost volume here, lost volume there just because you're dropping that weight fairly quickly.

Eva Sheie (18:28):
But they're happy people. They're happy people who need help. Yeah.

Dr. Eberlin (18:31):
Yeah, no, and especially when the significantly overweight population who their knees feel better, not carrying around more weight. They are off of their diabetes medication, their blood pressure is regulating all of these things. It's like, yeah, that's awesome. In a relatively health conscious area we live in, I also see some patients who lose weight that they probably didn't need to lose. And it's like now we're getting super skinny, and in my mind it just starts to look a little unhealthy. But yeah, that's a personal aesthetic thing.

Eva Sheie (19:06):
One thing's for sure is that we're not going to be done with it anytime soon unless something strange happens.

Dr. Eberlin (19:13):
No, I think they're around for good. It's just a matter of figuring out what the best use is.

Eva Sheie (19:21):
What do you think would help people make smart decisions in terms of finding information?

Dr. Eberlin (19:28):
I think proper research, which is very easily said, very challenging to do because there's so much stuff out there and people coming in, I saw this on TikTok. I'm like, don't do things based on TikTok, but I tell all my patients this, I'm like, look, I would love to be the one to do your surgery. Go talk to another board certified plastic surgeon, meet with a few people, because I feel like I'm very good. I know there's lots of other surgeons who are very good too, and you have to go to somebody who it kind of meshes well, and your aesthetic goals match with what their aesthetic goals are, and it's the same kind of mentality, and I think that's the best way to do it. So you're shopping, checking out different people and seeing which one clicks the best. But doing online research is great, don't get me wrong there, but it can't stop there. You have to go in and talk to somebody and actually have a conversation to see what's realistic, what's not, and what's just the newest trend on TikTok that doesn't do anything.

Eva Sheie (20:27):
Yeah. Do you see a trend in the age group that does look at TikTok and see stuff on TikTok?

Dr. Eberlin (20:35):
And at least my patients, it seems like they've gotten better at kind of parsing out what's crazy and what actually could be a real thing. And I feel very comfortable saying, I don't know, which is something I think is important. If somebody says, oh, what do you think about this? I'm like, I've never heard of that. Let me look it up and I will get back to you. But if it's something I'm like, I have no idea. And half the time, somebody has just put a weird name on something we've always been doing.

Eva Sheie (21:01):
Oh, yeah.

Dr. Eberlin (21:02):
And it's like, all right, well, yes, I know that is and that's fine, but it's just somebody trying to figure out a marketing a way to get more clicks.

Eva Sheie (21:10):
There's two moments in my life that I'll never forget about the younger generations with social, and one was with Instagram. This was a long time ago. This was in 2017 or 16 when I saw this. So that's like eight years ago. I can't believe how long that's been.

Dr. Eberlin (21:26):
Yeah.

Eva Sheie (21:26):
But, Instagram for me was sort of like, it's on my phone. I don't really use it. And we were at Disney on the shuttle, and I watched this girl going like this so fast, like lightning fast, dah, dah, dah, day. I'm saying to my friend, what's she doing? She's like, oh, she's double tapping what she likes.

Dr. Eberlin (21:49):
It gets hard because on Instagram, and this is something I'm honestly trying to force myself to get into because that I'm just, in general, I'm a fairly private person. I'm like, my life is not that interesting, but I understand the value of it and putting out good, accurate information, especially about the things that I do. And so I'm trying to get into that and it's like, oh, you have to be able to catch people's attention in the first, second or two. They'll just scroll right past you. Everything is so fast and so short term. So it's like how do we impart appropriate information to people who are going to be flying through it in seconds? And it's a challenge.

Eva Sheie (22:24):
The other thing that happened was this year we had a patient who had had a skinny BBL, and she told us to our faces, we said, how did you know you wanted a skinny BBL? And she said, well, I looked on TikTok. She was looking for a really legit thing on TikTok. I forget what it was now, but it was like TikTok was the only place she looked for anything, was our realization from what she said to us. And she said, I couldn't find anyone who's talking about skinny BBL recovery, so I decided to make it myself. And she made an entire channel for TikTok about skinny BBL recovery.

Dr. Eberlin (22:59):
How interesting.

Eva Sheie (23:00):
Because no one else had done it yet. I'm thinking to myself, that's not where you get medical information, but it is now.

Dr. Eberlin (23:08):
It is. That's the thing is it is now, and we kind of have to adapt to that. And I don't see myself taking the plunge into TikTok, but I have tried to embrace it as much as possible because I know that people come in talking about it all the time, and I'm like, look, I get it. I know this is just like Ozempic. It's not something that's going away. I may not agree with all of it, but we can appreciate it for the good parts and then the bad parts. We will deal with it as it comes.

Eva Sheie (23:35):
Okay. Well, we've learned a lot about you today, Dr. Eberlin, and I love your approach. We didn't talk about your training, but I can hear how valuable, just having heard a lot of stories of plastic surgeons that came out of LA, it has such a big impact. That particular training is so good.

Dr. Eberlin (23:58):
No, the training I think is an extremely important part because not only is that where you learn all the different surgical procedures, but you also learn how to deal with the things that go wrong. And one of the things that I was told in training was I said, look, if you don't want to get complications, don't operate. Everybody who operates gets complications. You have to be confident in dealing with them and not only dealing with the actual physical complication, but also dealing with the patients and making them feel comfortable, making them feel listened to and not running away from it. Because I see that not infrequently when something goes wrong and the patient's like, yeah, the doctor won't even call me back.

Eva Sheie (24:39):
Being heard is absolutely paramount.

Dr. Eberlin (24:42):
Yeah. Some of my most grateful patients are the ones who had the most challenging recoveries, and it's because I feel like I tried really hard to be there for them, be available for them, and kind of go through the process with them as opposed to saying, too bad, not my fault, which I think is a bad way to do it.

Eva Sheie (25:00):
You'll be happy to know the data supports what you're saying. If you can resolve a patient's issue successfully, they're actually twice as likely to recommend and refer you to their friends.

Dr. Eberlin (25:11):
That makes sense. That's what I saw.

Eva Sheie (25:14):
Yeeah. If someone's listening and they want to find out more about you, where do you think they should go look first?

Dr. Eberlin (25:19):
So my website is Golden Hills plastic surgery.com. You can also just Google my name. It'll come up there too. I'm also on Instagram at Dr. Seth Eberlin, working on being more active there. But the good thing is, like I said in the beginning, I have a fairly small office, which means we're very responsive. I tend to get back to people, especially via emails within 12 hours or 24 hours max. And the rest of my office staff is really, really good because I want, like you said, I don't want patients to feel like they've been ditched or left. We're with you through the whole thing, and that's being listened to is super important.

Eva Sheie (25:55):
Do you ever answer the phone yourself and pretend to be someone else?

Dr. Eberlin (25:58):
I used to answer the phone myself and pretended to be me. There was a period of time where we were transitioning the practice and we were in transitioning some of the staff, and at one point I was the only one here because two of my staff were out sick, and I was like, the phone rings, and I was like, yeah, I'm okay with that. It's just that's what needed to be done. But I didn't want patients to not get answered or not get called back. So I'm like, yeah, I'll answer the phone. It was interesting. They were surprised. They thought it was an answering machine. It's like, no, it's me, I'm here.

Eva Sheie (26:30):
I love asking that question, cuz the answers are always neat.

Dr. Eberlin (26:34):
Well, I will say when at first I was like, I'm going to be the only one in the office. Oh, should I pretend to like, oh, let me transfer you to Dr. Eberlin. I try to be as genuine as I can. It's like I'm not going down that road.

Eva Sheie (26:49):
That would make a good if we could record those calls somehow where the doctor pretends to be someone.

Dr. Eberlin (26:54):
Yeah, put 'em on TikTok.

Eva Sheie (26:56):
That would be funny. Well, thank you for sharing your story with us today. It was a privilege getting to know you.

Dr. Eberlin (27:02):
Of course. Yeah. Thanks so much. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Eva Sheie (27:09):
If you are considering making an appointment or are on your way to meet this doctor, be sure to let them know you heard them on the Meet the Doctor podcast. Check the show notes for links including the doctor's website and Instagram to learn more. Are you a doctor or do you know a doctor who'd like to be on the Meet the Doctor podcast? Book your free recording session at Meet the Doctor podcast.com. Meet the Doctor is Made with Love in Austin, Texas and is a production of The Axis, T-H-E-A-X-I-S.io.