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Is It Your Face Shape, or Fluid That Never Drained? (And the Part of a Round Face That Isn't in Your Genes)

Your bone structure is the same at 7 a.m. and at 3 p.m. If your face isn't, the difference was never your face shape.

Courtney is 32. She's a hairstylist in Erie, Pennsylvania, and she knows every haircut that makes a round face look longer.

She's had all of them.

In sixth grade, a boy on her school bus started calling her Moon Face. By Christmas, the whole bus did.

Her mom put it more kindly. "You're not fat, honey. It's just our bone structure. You've got Grandma Dot's face."

At work she stands right behind her clients, so their heads hide her face in the mirror.

"My whole life, everybody told me it's just my face," she told me at our first session. "So I figured the only way to change it was to cut it."

In January she booked a March date for buccal fat removal, the surgery that takes fat out of the cheeks. The surgeon's office had asked for photos of her face.

In February her sister gave her a session with me. "Before anybody cuts your face," she said, "try this."

She showed me the photos she'd sent the surgeon. Every one was taken in her bathroom before 8 a.m. Her session was at 3 p.m., and the woman on my table didn't look like the woman in them.

Courtney's bones were the same at 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. Her face wasn't.

Some of her face really is Grandma Dot's. The part that changed by the afternoon isn't. I see this in my practice every week, and I'd bet some of it is happening to you.

Check the ones that sound like you:

Tap the ones that sound like you.

Courtney checked all six.

If you checked two or more, part of your "face shape" may be fluid.

Bones don't change by lunch. Fluid does.

You can test it tomorrow. Take a selfie when you wake up and another at 3 p.m., same window, same angle. Whatever changed between them isn't your face shape.

Your face doesn't have a drain of its own

Almost nobody is taught this.

The extra fluid in your cheeks and along your jaw leaves through your neck. About a third of the lymph nodes in your whole body, roughly 300 of them, sit in your head and neck, and that's the route out.

Lymph has no pump. Your heart pushes your blood, but lymph mostly moves when you move, breathe and turn your head.

So the hours you spend lying flat are the hours your face fills up. Add a neck that's tight from stress, clenching or bad sleep, and the route out gets narrow.

Courtney spends nine hours a day with her head tipped forward over a client's head. A laptop or a phone tightens your neck the same way.

That's why a round face looks roundest at 7 a.m. and less round by lunch.

Most people never learn this because nothing hurts. A clogged drain is obvious. A slow one just looks like your face shape, or your grandmother's.

And that's why none of this is your fault. Everyone told you to accept your face, and nobody told you to look at your neck.

Why the usual fixes fade

It also explains why nothing you've tried has stuck:

• Contour and long layers hide the roundness. The fluid is still under them.
• Sucking in your cheeks works for one photo at a time.
• Rollers and gua sha push fluid around your face, toward an exit that's still tight.
• Face yoga and jawline gadgets work on your face. The way out is in your neck.
• Dieting works on fat. It can't move water that's sitting still.
• Buccal fat removal takes out fat. It does nothing about the fluid that settles every night.

None of them work on the place your face drains through.

Courtney had tried all of them but the last, and that one cost $3,900.

What lymph therapists do first

In my training, the first rule of lymphatic work was simple: clear the neck before you touch the face. If the exit is narrow, pushing on the face just moves fluid in circles.

Hospitals teach patients the same order. Self-drainage handouts start at the neck and collarbone, not the cheeks.

Everything that drains from your scalp, face and mouth passes through the nodes in your neck.

Studies after jaw and wisdom-tooth surgery found that drainage which started at the neck brought facial swelling down faster.^{1, 2}

That's why I have never started a session on a client's face. Not once.

I see the same pattern in women called moon face at school, in college students saving up to have their cheeks done, and in women told at every family party that they've got Grandma's chin.

The trouble is that a session with me costs about what a nice dinner out costs, and the fluid comes back every night you lie down.

Most of my clients can't see me every week. Courtney certainly couldn't.

What they need is the neck step, at home, every day, without having to learn my technique.

The two-step routine

Do it before the 7 a.m. face meets the day, or at night before bed.

Ten minutes a day matters more than one long session a month, because the fluid comes back every night. That's why the routine has to live at home.

"I'm on my feet with my arms up from nine to six," Courtney told me. "I did the strokes for four nights. Then my arms quit on me."

That's the usual story. Doing it by hand takes good technique, two free hands and a few minutes you don't have at 6:30 a.m. Most of my clients stop within a couple of weeks.

Why I started Hizoo

That's the reason I started Hizoo. It's what I sent Courtney home with.

It's a heated neck pillow. You lie back on it for ten minutes, and it works the back and sides of your neck on the gentle setting. Nothing touches your face, and there's nothing to learn.

Courtney's first question was blunt: "Will it change my face shape?"

My answer: no. It won't touch your bones or your face. It works on your neck. What changes is the part of your face that comes and goes.

• It does the neck step for you, every day, in ten minutes lying down.
• It's built for the back and sides of the neck, where the tension sits.
• More than 3,000 people have reviewed it, at 4.9 stars. Here's what a few of them said about their faces.

What reviewers describe, week by week

• Nights 1 to 3Your neck feels looser. Your face may look the same.
• Weeks 1 to 2Your morning photos start to look more like your afternoon ones, often along the jaw first.
• Weeks 3 to 4The 7 a.m. face and the 3 p.m. face get closer to being the same face.

It won't remove fat, change your bone structure or shrink a chin you were born with. It works on the part that comes and goes.

Courtney started on a Monday, her day off.

On day 10 she texted me two photos with no caption: one she'd sent the surgeon in January, and one from that morning, same mirror, same hour.

Her face was still round. It just wasn't the face she'd sent the surgeon.

That week she postponed the surgery. She hasn't rescheduled.

She still has Grandma Dot's cheekbones and her mom's chin, and she's keeping them. What's gone is the roundness that showed up at 7 a.m. and left by lunch.

At work she doesn't hide behind her clients anymore. Last week one of them looked up in the mirror and asked who does her contour. She wasn't wearing any. "My grandmother," she said.

P.S. If you want it working before Thanksgiving, start this week. Then you'll have a few weeks of mornings behind you when somebody at the family photo says you've got Grandma's chin.