Michael Persky, MD - Facial Plastic Surgeon in Encino, 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's 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 Today, my guest on Meet the Doctor is Michael Persky. He's a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, and I'm so pleased to have you here. Welcome to the show. 

Dr. Persky (00:40):
Thank you. And, uh, it's my privilege and honor to be here with you this morning. Thank you. 

Eva Sheie (00:47):
Tell us a little bit about yourself. Let's start there. 

Dr. Persky (00:51):
Okay. <laugh>, I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Uh, I was the first in my family to go to college. I went to UCLA, uh, graduated with a degree in psychobiology and then went to medical school at Emory in Atlanta, Georgia. Did my residency back here in Los Angeles at LA County General Hospital in otolaryngology, head and neck surgery and facial plastic surgery. I've practiced facial plastic surgery in Encino, California, which is the Beverly Hills of the San Fernando Valley since 1985. In the same location I've been in solo practice the majority of that time. I've had a couple of associates and, but uh, currently I'm, I'm practicing about three days a week in Encino, doing exclusively facial aesthetics. And I did surgery for many, many years. Approximately three years ago, I stopped doing surgeries in the operating room. I only do upper eyelids and otoplasty and little things on the face in the office under local anesthesia. And I do a lot of, uh, facial rejuvenation with devices and fillers and toxins and, uh, keep my office busy with that. 

Eva Sheie (02:22):
Is there something that you're particularly known for that people seek you out? 

Dr. Persky (02:28):
Uh, my personality <laugh>. 

Eva Sheie (02:30):
Oh yes.

Dr. Persky (02:31):
No. 

Eva Sheie (02:32):
Definitely. 

Dr. Persky (02:32):
Yeah, I, um, so I've been at the forefront of non-surgical facial rejuvenation. So people seek me out from around the country, around the world if they want to maximize their treatment and results just under having surgery. So for patients who aren't interested in a surgical rejuvenation, I can max them out with nonsurgical treatments to make them look the best they can look. 

Eva Sheie (03:07):
I want to go back to the beginning for a second because you said it's something I'd never heard of, which was psychobiology. What is that? 

Dr. Persky (03:16):
So psychobiology is a combination of psychology as well as biology. So the, the psychology of when you're at the beach and you're looking at the seagulls, squawking at each other, there's a certain psychology to that biology of the seagulls going at each other. It was a lot of scientific American articles and a lot of Psychology Today articles. And I liked, I loved them both. So it was a nice, a nice hybrid major. 

Eva Sheie (03:51):
Is that, uh, a field that is still studied today or is that something that was sort of, uh, of your era? 

Dr. Persky (03:58):
No, I think that's still available at UCLA and other institutions. 

Eva Sheie (04:04):
Oh, interesting. What impact did that field of study have on your approach to plastic surgery? Is there a connection there? 

Dr. Persky (04:13):
Oh, there, there certainly is. Um, every time that there's a doctor-patient interaction, the patient is basically interviewing me, particularly the first, the first meeting to see whether I'm the physician for them. And I'm also evaluating them to make sure that psychologically they're a patient that I will like having in my practice. So there's the, the psychological aspect of it that comes into play every day. The biological aspect is, is kind of the science of medicine that we use. 

Eva Sheie (04:54):
You also said you were the first in your family to go to college. So what were your parents doing and why didn't they go? 

Dr. Persky (05:02):
So my, my mother immigrated to the US when she was 11 years old from Poland. They escaped World War ii, uh, most of the families. She did lose some siblings in World War II on concentration camps. My father was born in New York. He was the first of Russian immigrants. And, um, they met in New York when she was hanging up her laundry on a balcony in New York City. And one of her bras dropped to the floor and he found it and saw her up there and went up and returned it. And so they got married, they lived in New York, they moved to Los Angeles in the fifties. And, uh, my mother basically never finished junior high school and she was always a housewife, never really worked, was always there for us, most loving. I attribute my confidence and self-esteem to always having somebody there at home. When I came home from school or wherever I was, my father worked as a auto top and seat cover maker and was very blue collar and they did everything for their children. I have two older sisters that are 10 and 12 years older than me. So it was a, a very nice family and lots of love. Not a lot of material things, but they always did their best for us. 

Eva Sheie (06:34):
So your sisters, did they dress you up and play with you like you were their toy? 

Dr. Persky (06:38):
Yes. As a matter of fact, there are many pictures of me dressed up in dresses and, uh, being tossed between their, they, so we grew up in a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment. And until one of my sisters got married, I stayed in my parents' room and my sisters and their twin beds would throw me back and forth, dropping me occasionally on the hardwood floor. 

Eva Sheie (07:01):
It's all starting to make sense. 

Dr. Persky (07:03):
<laugh>, You're right. <laugh>. 

Eva Sheie (07:05):
<laugh>. And this was all in LA. So what prompted the move from New York to Los Angeles? 

Dr. Persky (07:12):
My uncle had moved to Hollywood and had an auto top shop there, and that's how my father got into it. He moved here first and worked for him and then the family moved. 

Eva Sheie (07:26):
Family. And probably weather, I'm guessing. 

Dr. Persky (07:29):
Uh, yeah, probably too. Yeah. 

Eva Sheie (07:33):
And so at some point you decided I'm gonna go to college or I'm gonna be a doctor. How did that happen? 

Dr. Persky (07:41):
Well, actually in high school I played baseball and I was actually offered a professional contract coming out of high school by the Montreal Expos to play for $500 a month in Billings, Montana. And 

Eva Sheie (07:58):
Wow.

Dr. Persky (07:58):
my family, my brother-in-laws actually advised me, which, you know, don't give up going to college, you got into UCLA. Go to UCLA, you can walk on there and play baseball there if you want to. And, and then I, I thought I was gonna be a professional baseball player and uh, had to choose a major and I didn't know what I was gonna do, but I liked mathematics and science. So, uh, my parents always said, do what what you would love. We don't care what you do as long as you love it, but it wouldn't be bad if you were a doctor or a lawyer. So I couldn't, I couldn't choose law cuz um, the truth is a big value of mine. And I know that lawyers sometimes have to bend the truth.  

Eva Sheie (08:43):
Yeah. Truth is a value. So you couldn't become a lawyer. 

Dr. Persky (08:46):
And it's also, so truth is an important value in my practice too. I think people do come to me because they value my opinion. They value my truth. So a lot of times patients will say, do you ever tell patients that you don't need this or you don't need that, or it's, you're not ready for it yet. And I do that all the time. I have, um, Bruno Mars lyrics to, um, you're beautiful just the way you are in one of my drawers in the consult room. And I pull that out once in a while and I have to convince a patient that they don't need something yet. 

Eva Sheie (09:22):
Do they sometimes go somewhere else where they're gonna hear what they wanna hear? Oh yeah. 

Dr. Persky (09:26):
Yeah. And they'll come back. Those, those are the sad cases when they come back and they go,  I should have listened to you. So when I was an undergraduate at UCLA and when baseball panned out and uh, my grades were good enough to get into medical school, I decided I was gonna take that route and become a doctor. My sister had married an otolaryngologist facial plastic surgeon and I had seen his work and what his life was like and I thought this is a, a good field to go into. During medical school when I was exposed to all the specialties, I felt that ob g y n was the greatest. There was nothing like handing a new life to new parents. I loved it, but I couldn't see myself raising my family, which at the time was a dream I couldn't see raising my family, leaving every night to deliver babies. And I, and I'm the type of person that can't follow somebody for nine months and then not be there when they're delivering their baby. 

Eva Sheie (10:35):
Isn't it funny that you sort of know that they're coming, like you know that your family is in the future, you just don't know them yet. 

Dr. Persky (10:43):
Right. 

Eva Sheie (10:44):
And so you're making these decisions about your life based on something that doesn't exist yet, but you still somehow know. 

Dr. Persky (10:51):
Well, I grew up, I grew up very family oriented and like if somebody said, what's your greatest achievement now? I would say it's, it's raising my two daughters. And that's always been a priority in my life to have a family and to pass on to future generations our values. And it's what gives me meaning in my life. 

Eva Sheie (11:15):
I talked to a lot of doctors and then there's a pattern that starts to emerge sometimes there's like this, there's the people who knew they were gonna be a doctor from a very early age, like they were five or whatever. One of mine might be like that cuz she plays doctor every single day. She puts her doctor coat on and she gets out this stethoscope and she checks us constantly. But then there's other people who are like going along being something like you, you were a baseball player and then something happens and all of a sudden they're like a switch. Like now I'm gonna be a doctor. Do you remember what it was like to shift your internal identity from, I'm a baseball player too now I'm gonna be a doctor <laugh>. 

Dr. Persky (11:56):
So again, I was very naive. As I said, I was the first in my family to go to college and I didn't have a lot of guidance. I had very loving parents, but they didn't have higher education. And so I was just kind of like, Mr. McGoo going  along, I'm gonna play baseball. And, and I I always had good grades. And 

Eva Sheie (12:19):
Did they have high expectations for you though? They held a high bar for you to meet. 

Dr. Persky (12:24):
My folks? 

Eva Sheie (12:26):
Yeah. 

Dr. Persky (12:27):
Well again, my mother and father always said, just, you know, we don't care what you do as long as you love doing something and that you're a good person. And I passed that on to my children from kindergarten on. When they left for school, I said, I don't care what your grades are, I just want to hear that you were good to your fellow classmates and that you helped them and I'd, I'd rather you come home with a C or a D and hear that you were good than come home with an A and that you were mean to people or didn't help them. And that's kind of the way my parents raised me. But I was motivated to do well and, and I just always, I loved life and I always, I always looked at life as what a joy and privilege we have to be in this amazing place. 

(13:12)
And just took it as it came. And I wasn't sure that I would love medicine even when I, when it was, particularly when I was pre-med, I just liked the topics I was studying. But then when I got to medical school, I, I was someone who didn't like the sight of blood before I got into medical school. And the question of that first surgery was like, am I gonna pass out? And fortunately I didn't and I went on to become a surgeon, but I didn't have that, oh, I'm always gonna be a doc. I, I always felt that I was gonna be successful and although my parents again didn't go to higher education, my mother was a very proud person and she always raised us to, you know, hold your head high and you know, you're a Persky and you're gonna do well. So I always had that confidence. 

Eva Sheie (13:57):
Did they get to see you become a doctor? Were they still here? Yes, yes they did. Yeah. 

Dr. Persky (14:01):
And their grandchildren. 

Eva Sheie (14:03):
And their, are they still with us now or not? Not anymore?

Dr. Persky (14:06):
No. Uh, my father lived to close at 98 and my mother was 87 when she passed. So there's good genes there. 

Eva Sheie (14:14):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yes. 

Dr. Persky (14:16):
So I could go on and work for a long time and not retire, but yeah. 

Eva Sheie (14:20):
So how much longer do you think you're gonna keep working? Not that you'll ever stop working, working, but like 

Dr. Persky (14:27):
Right. 

Eva Sheie (14:27):
Going to the office every day. 

Dr. Persky (14:29):
So I'm working three and a half days a week right now. Probably cut it down to three days a week and over the next probably five years I may transition to where I'm doing consulting work or bring bringing in a new physician into the office or working under a venture capital type of setup. I love doing what I do and I love the innovations that are before us. But you know, at a certain point I see other physicians say at the country club who are hobbled and they worked a little too long to enjoy their life and, you know, 

Eva Sheie (15:07):
Hobbled. You mean physically they're just in bad shape?  

Dr. Persky (15:10):
Yeah, yeah. Physically like, you know, they could barely walk and now they're retired. So I want to, I wanna be able to enjoy life and also I think it's a disservice to patients when doctors work too long cuz they, they kind of lose their steadiness of their hand. It's still steady <laugh>. 

Eva Sheie (15:31):
They might never lose the steadiness of their hand, but sometimes the ability to stand up for long stretches of time is the thing that goes first. 

Dr. Persky (15:39):
Right, right. 

Eva Sheie (15:40):
Yeah. When you're not at work, what kinds of things do you like to do? Other than grandkids? You have grandkids? 

Dr. Persky (15:49):
Not yet. 

Eva Sheie (15:50):
Not yet. Other than pester your daughters about having grandkids, what else do you like to do? 

Dr. Persky (15:55):
That's my wife's job. <laugh>. I stay away from that <laugh>. I, I try to keep it so that I do nothing to, to jeopardize our ability to see our grandchild children after they're born. 

Eva Sheie (16:08):
<laugh>. 

Dr. Persky (16:09):
So I love golfing, I love walking our dogs in the park, taking 'em to the dog park and watching the dog interactions. That's, I think it's dog heaven and people heaven. It's very therapeutic to be around just the, uh, the dogs. I love writing, I love painting. So there's a lot, lot of things that I'm gonna be doing when I stop working. 

Eva Sheie (16:33):
Have you sort of always done these things or some of your hobbies new? 

Dr. Persky (16:38):
I've kind of always, always done those things, but not formally. And because I've always, with the education and the work, I haven't had a lot of, I, I also like to relax a lot in my spare time. So whether that's in a jacuzzi or taking, you know, reading a book, I love reading. There just wasn't a lot of time to dive into those hobbies. 

Eva Sheie (17:01):
Yeah. I think the way the pandemic hit a lot of us made us really thoughtful about how we spend our time, sort of look back on that stretch and be grateful for that piece of it, even when most of it was pretty horrible. But I do have a different approach to where I spend my time and my energy now than I did before that. Something that's been on my mind a lot is that if someone's approaching middle age and starting to think about their face in terms of not maybe not losing any ground, usually the first thing that people say is, oh, you need some filler. But not everyone wants to have artificial filler in their face. And so I've been questioning is there a way or are there ways, there's probably multiple approaches to preventing aging and keeping that sort of, you know, holding back the <laugh> the tide without putting filler in your face or without doing a lot of injections That what, what are our options there? 

Dr. Persky (18:08):
That's a great question cuz a lot of patients do come in and they don't want toxins, they don't want fillers, they want natural products. And so there's a new product that we've actually just brought into our practice, it's called Easy Gel. And what it is, is, um, it's using the patient's own material to reinject into the face. So when a patient comes to the office, we draw two tubes of blood, we centrifuge it, the, the plasma is rich in platelets. We take that out, we add fibrin to it, we heat it, and it turns into a gel. And when it's all mixed together, this is easily injected back into the face. It's particularly good for those hard to treat lines, I guess. Uh, I don't have 'em because I have a nice beard here, but the hard to treat lines around the lips and chin the cheeks and also under the eyes. 

(19:09)
It's a beautiful filler in those areas. It, it takes care of the lines and it really makes the skin quality great and it's longlasting. So that's one thing that could be treat used. Also, there's a lot of devices that can be used that lift and tighten the skin by stimulating collagen and elastin. And lastly, one of my favorites is using a natural sugar l polylactic acid. It's the same material that absorbable stitches are made of, it's called sculptura. And it's injected deep underneath the muscles over the bone to build that table up. And as the facial bone structure comes up, everything over it, the tablecloth comes up and tightens and comes into place in a natural way. And that's something that has been great in our practice. And a lot of patients that don't want fillers, regular fillers, hyaluronic acid or calcium hydroxyapatite will go on and, and they really love sculptura. Plus sculptura comes in gradually over time. So you can only do so much at one time and it's reevaluated about two to three months after it's put in. And at that point you can decide where else you might wanna put it. 

Eva Sheie (20:36):
How long does this Easy Gel last? 

Dr. Persky (20:38):
So patients get one treatment and then they come back three months later and get a second treatment and then it's good for at least a year or two and it's their own material. 

Eva Sheie (20:54):
Is the cost comparable to what you would do with other fillers? 

Dr. Persky (20:59):
Yes, it's pretty comparable. 

Eva Sheie (21:01):
Yeah. Are you starting to see more people ask to go that direction? 

Dr. Persky (21:06):
Um, no. I love it because there's, there hasn't been a really good answer to those hard to treat areas around here. Oh, and under the eyes, fillers under the eyes can cause swelling and edema and we found that people getting filler under their eyes, filler's found their years and years later and sometimes it migrates. So if we have a, a better choice of a natural product, that's great. Also, the lines in this area, the fine lines are really hard to treat. Even when people do facelifts or lasers, they come back. So 

Eva Sheie (21:45):
You mean the saran wrap looking ones? 

Dr. Persky (21:47):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Saran wrap, <laugh> 

Eva Sheie (21:50):
<laugh>. One day you just noticed them and you go, where did those come from? 

Dr. Persky (21:55):
I know. And they're not just on the face. You go, you look at your your cab, you go, what? When did that happen? <laugh>? 

Eva Sheie (22:04):
Now you're dating yourself. 

Dr. Persky (22:05):
Exactly. 

Eva Sheie (22:06):
<laugh>. 

Dr. Persky (22:08):
Well, for a man, I, I'll tell you, I'll give you another hint. For a man who wants to lose 10 years from the his appearance, shave.

Eva Sheie (22:16):
Grow a beard. Oh, shave.

Dr. Persky (22:16):
Shave, shave, shave the beard. Next, next podcast I'll be shaven. You'll, you'll see the before and after. 

Eva Sheie (22:23):
And I'll say, what did you do? You look so much younger. 

Dr. Persky (22:25):
Exactly. 

Eva Sheie (22:26):
Instant facelift. When someone is not a patient of yours yet and comes to see you for the first time, you know, tell us a little bit about what they might expect from that appointment. 

Dr. Persky (22:40):
Well, they could expect pretty much the same person that they're listening to and saying on this podcast, I like to get to know the patients and establish a relationship. I always tell my patients that I'm privileged to be in the position to help them achieve and maintain their set of goals over many years. So we might just do Botox the first time and have a plan over a long time period to help them achieve their goals. And also being truthful, my patients can always count on me to be truthful and give them the best advice. Like we talked about earlier, we have Bruno Mars lyrics to your beautiful, just the way you are for those patients who come in and I feel don't need bigger lips or bigger cheeks or something. And if they need a facelift though, I'm not doing that surgery anymore, I will refer them to somebody else rather than trying to fit our non-surgical rejuvenation into them. 

(23:47)
I think establishing realistic expectations is very important in any doctor-patient relationship. And so I, and, and I'm open to my patients and I'm, I'm there for them. So that's what they expect. I think that the best three words that any aesthetic physician can hear or any physician in any specialty can hear, the three words are, I trust you. And once that trust is established, I feel it's, it's my obligation to maintain that and I take it very seriously. So I, I appreciate and value and I'm very grateful for patients coming to my office and I think that we need to have a, a relationship going forward. 

Eva Sheie (24:35):
And certainly you're not doing this all by yourself. So who, who is on your team that they might also encounter when they come to see you? 

Dr. Persky (24:42):
Yeah, so, uh, our office staffing probably when people talk about like what was, what's your greatest challenge in, in running a practice? It's, it's your staff. And so we both socially for me, when I was growing up, I was always someone who had, I had a girlfriend, it was for two or three years or four years. And with staff in my practice it's carried over to that where for long stretches, I've had staff that have been with me for eight, 10 years. The lockdown obviously affected that and there was a great turnover in our staff. And fortunately at this point, after about a year, we have a really good staff that's now been with us for two, three years. And I have a small office in terms of basically I do everything with my patients. I don't have any injectors, I don't have any, anybody taking care of my patients other than myself. I, you know, I, I only trust what I do to patients. I don't trust anybody else touching them. So my staff is basically, I have a, a medical assistant, I have my office manager who's great and a receptionist. And so there's three of us. And sometimes my wife's in the office doing some writing checks and cashing checks and that's it. So it's a, it's a small boutique office and my patients can expect to have nice relationships with all of my staff. 

Eva Sheie (26:20):
If someone wants to learn more about your practice and where to find you, where should they go online to do that? 

Dr. Persky (26:27):
They can go to dr persky.com. That's my website. I'm on Instagram. I'm not a big social media person. That's been one of my pet peeves actually, of, I just read last night, a doctor in Ohio's having license taken away for dancing in the operating room on Instagram. And while the patient's, I, I think a lot of the current Instagram doctor posts are becoming very unprofessional. So I don't, I'm not, I'm not real active on, on those sites. But 

Eva Sheie (27:05):
I see you have a 11 posts on your Instagram. I can count them all on one screen. 

Dr. Persky (27:12):
Oh really? 

Eva Sheie (27:14):
Unless that's not you. 

Dr. Persky (27:15):
It might not be me. I think I have one. 

Eva Sheie (27:17):
It might be a dup 

Dr. Persky (27:18):
Cuz I have some dogs and I have other things like, you know, there's lots of 

Eva Sheie (27:22):
Oh, there's an imposter.

Dr. Persky (27:24):
An imposter. 

Eva Sheie (27:26):
It doesn't look dangerous, but it's probably not you. 

Dr. Persky (27:29):
Okay. I'm gonna have to check that out. 

Eva Sheie (27:33):
Yeah, you never know what I'm gonna find. 

Dr. Persky (27:35):
Yeah. 

Eva Sheie (27:35):
Oh, there you are. Yeah. I mean, not very large, but you have 6,300 followers, which is respectable for not trying. 

Dr. Persky (27:43):
Yeah. <laugh> <laugh>. Well, Mr. McGoo. 

Eva Sheie (27:48):
And your personality is definitely coming through. I can see it. 

Dr. Persky (27:53):
<laugh>. 

Eva Sheie (27:54):
It's great. Well, thank you for telling your story to us today. We're so glad that we had a chance to catch up with you. 

Dr. Persky (28:01):
Thank you so much and for getting me into this, this is my first podcast and I look forward to doing them in the future. It's been so nice always talking. It's always nice talking with you and you're, you're so such a good podcast interviewer. 

Eva Sheie (28:17):
Thank you. 

Dr. Persky (28:18):
All right, well thank you very much. Have a great rest of the week. 

Eva Sheie (28:21):
Thank you Dr. Persky. 

(28:27)
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.