As we grow older, our faces show many different signs of aging. Crow’s feet, spider-web wrinkles, deep laugh lines, sagging, and loss of elasticity contribute to making you look and feel old. Especially around the lips, these telltale signs can be difficult to cover up and stubbornly non-responsive to topical treatments. Non-surgical fillers may be the answer to helping you look and feel better and younger.
Wrinkles and Aging: A Primer
Each time you use a muscle in your face to smile, frown, squint, or make other facial expressions, a temporary groove forms beneath the surface of your skin.1 When you are young, your skin is flexible and quickly springs back to a smooth, even finish. As you get older, however, your skin loses this ability and the grooves start to become permanent features. Your skin also gets thinner and drier as it gets older.
When you are young, the fat in the face tends to be evenly distributed, with pockets that plump up the forehead, temples, cheeks, and areas around the eyes and mouth. As you age, that fat starts to lose volume, clump up, and shift downward, causing your cheeks and eyes to become loose and look hollow and your chin and neck to look saggy or jowly.
Over your lifetime, ultraviolet (UV) rays from natural sunlight or from artificial UV lights (like tanning beds) also break down the skin’s supportive structure of collagen and elastin fibers, causing your skin to become weaker and less flexible. This can cause it to droop and sag even more around expression lines, including around your mouth and nose. Other lifestyle factors can accelerate the development of wrinkles and sagging: smoking tobacco reduces the blood supply to the skin, and alcohol dehydrates the skin. Both of these effects make skin more susceptible to wrinkling and drooping.
What Are Fillers, and How Do They Help Diminish Wrinkles?
Injectable dermal fillers can help replace the youthful plumpness in cheeks, eyes, and lips. While they can be directly injected into the lips to restore volume, they can also be subtly injected into the skin around the lips to smooth and soften fine lines and wrinkles. Treatment is quick—usually between 15 and 60 minutes—and requires minimal recovery time. Many injectables contain lidocaine, a painkiller, and your provider may also use topical numbing agents to minimize any pain. (As a result, you may experience some residual numbness for a short period of time on the day of your procedure.)
Many different products have been approved by the FDA for dermal injection in adults. Some of these use hyaluronic acid, a substance that is naturally found in skin and helps keep it plump and hydrated. These fillers are soft and gel-like and have subtle, natural-looking results. The results are immediate and generally last from 6 to 12 months before your body gradually and naturally absorbs the particles.
Three of these hyaluronic acid fillers, Restylane Silk, Juvederm Ultra XC, and Juvederm Volbella XC, are especially appropriate for improving the youthful appearance of your lips. Juvederm can subtly increase volume and smooth the appearance of vertical lip lines. Restylane is particularly appropriate for sculpting precise definition around the lips and airbrushing the surrounding skin to a silky smooth finish.
Schedule a Consultation Today!
Urban Effects MedSpa in Des Moines, Iowa, offers a wide range of medical spa treatments and injectables in our skin wellness center to help you look and feel more youthful and healthy. For a complimentary consultation and evaluation of whether injectable dermal fillers are right for you, contact us online or call us at (515) 987-5188.
1. “Wrinkles.” Mayo Clinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research (MFMER), Web. Accessed 18 Jan 2018.
