Botox – Lower Face Treatments

Adrian Richards, Leading Plastic Surgeon for Aurora Clinics explains how Botox is used for Lower Face Treatments. For more information or should you wish to book a FREE Consultation with our specialist plastic surgeon, please call us on 01844 214362.

Botox – Lower Face Treatments

Hello. My name’s Adrian Richards and I’m a plastic and cosmetic surgeon. I’m the Medical Director of Aurora Clinics. Today I’m going to be talking a little bit about lower face Botox. This is really a continuation of the series of videos on Botox treatment.

What do we mean by lower face? Well, it’s basically anything below the eyes. Upper face Botox is really frown lines, raising eyebrow lines, and crow’s feet lines. By lower face Botox, we mean from the eyes down.

Lower face Botox has really come of age in the last ten years, and it’s a bit more complicated than upper face Botox. The reason for this is there are many more muscles in the lower face. There are muscles for speaking, smiling, eating. Botox, basically, weakens muscles. We’ve got to be very careful which muscles we weaken. It isn’t so much a problem in the upper face, but in the lower face it can be a problem. The potential side effects from Botox are more common and it’s important you’re aware of that.

Which areas can be treated? Well, I’m going to work down the face. So the first one is the so-called bunny lines on the nose. These are the scrunch lines that you get on the nose which are very prevalent on some people. Some people like them. They’re associated with happiness and with smiling. Some people don’t like them and they would like them reduced. We can do a very small injection in that area into a muscle called the nasalis muscle, just to weaken those areas. It’s relatively safe because there aren’t many muscles, really important muscles, in the area associated with smiling.

Working down the face, we can treat the muscle which turns down the corner of the mouth, which is called the depressor anguli oris. This is the muscle which just pulls the corner of the mouth down, and by very small injections there we can upturn the corner of the mouth. Any depressions in the corner of the mouth are normally treated with derma fillers. An alternative is Botox treatment just to turn the corners of the mouth up, and that’s a relatively safe injection.

We can also treat a chin. Some people have a very dimply chin, sort of a wavy surface to the chin. Again, two small injections on either side just weaken the muscle in the chin slightly and make it smoother and more even.

The other area we can treat is the cords of the neck which you, again, when you’re slightly older. These sort of bounce like that in the neck. We can just soften those with Botox. It won’t tighten the skin. It’s only really used for people with bands with relatively tight skin. If you’ve got very loose skin in the area, Botox isn’t really a solution for that.

Something people talk about recently is a facelift using Botox. This is called the Nefertiti lift. I think Nefertiti was a goddess in Egypt who had a very, apparently very nice jaw line. The Nefertiti lift basically uses small amounts of Botox to weaken the muscle which pulls down on the jowl areas. By weakening that muscle, the jowls will go up slightly and improve the contour of the jaw line.

The other areas you can treat with lower face Botox, around the mouth, the so-called smoker’s lines, the vertical lines, also known as barcode lines on the upper lip. Very small amounts of Botox can be given just to soften the upper lip. We’ve got to be really, really careful with that injection because we don’t want to weaken the lip too much. We need the lip for sort of an oral seal, eating, blowing, sucking, normal facial activities. We’ve got to be very, very careful with that one. You should really be using experienced practitioners.

The last one we can use it for is nasal flare, which is when you smile, your nose gets sort of wider and that’s caused by a muscle here. We can selectively weaken that.

Essentially, upper face Botox, safe, predictable. Lower face Botox, slightly more risky. You need to really discuss it with your practitioner, ask them how much experience they’ve had, are there any alternatives to Botox for these areas. Botox should be used sparingly, really, in the lower face, much smaller doses and a much more sophisticated treatment.

I hope that has clarified some of the issues regarding lower face Botox. If you have any questions or queries on any of the topics I’ve discussed or any of the other subjects and treatments offered by Aurora Clinics, please don’t hesitate to contact us either via phone, which is 01844 214362, or contact us via the website. Thank you very much.