Thank you for your question!
You submitted some photos and you’re asking: how does this Juvederm process work? And you
stated in your question, that you want fuller lips to address concerns about a gummy smile.
And so naturally you’re asking about the frequency, the cost and just how does this
whole process work. Well, I can certainly assist you.
I’m a board certified cosmetic surgeon and fellowship trained oculofacial plastic surgeon
and using fillers is a part of my practice that we do every day in particular to help
people with the lip aesthetics. And I think that one of the things that you are probably
doing which many people do is you’re really getting ahead of yourself by going straight
to a solution like Juvederm for a question or concern that has to do with a gummy smile
and that’s not unusual. A lot of times people use the term like Botox™ to mean essentially
anything that helps wrinkles. Certainly the people at Allergen like that but understand
what is the mechanism to help you improve your appearance.
Being a practicing specialist for over 20 years and having used the origin collagen
Zyderm, Zyplast and then going to Restylane and now the other fillers, I have a lot of
experience with these fillers and an unfortunate byproduct of the popularity of fillers is
that everyone is now very negative about the appearance of the lips on people who are celebrities
or people who think they are celebrities. And so, I think it’s very important in your
situation, with the photo you submitted, it appears that you are very young and I would
caution you in using a lip augmentation strategy as opposed to some other options to address
a gummy smile. In fact Botox™, speaking of Botox™, Botox™ is used to help people
with a gummy smile, make the smile less gummy and that’s a treatment that can be applied
in your situation and could be done a couple of times a year in terms of the frequency.
I would caution you again about the volume correction of the lips. You know, it’s very
easy especially on a younger person to overdo the appearance of the lip and make it look
artificial. You know a younger person, even if they have naturally thin lips, still has
a certain proportionality to their lips that if it’s thrown off, it can look very artificial.
I think that it’s very important that you understand that if you’re going to do anything
like a filler that the filler’s response on you is going to be individual. There are
some general rules in terms of the longevity of the fillers and there’s kind of a spectrum
from the least viscous or the least thick to the most thick so like from Restylane all
the way to Voluma but Ultra, Juvederm, Ultra Plus are popular fillers for lip enhancement
as well as Restylane. And there are some FDA-based studies that show how long they last but practically
speaking, there is still a wide variability.
You have to understand that when someone comes to me who is in their 40s or a woman in her
40s comes in and their lips are getting thinner and some vertical lines are forming, this
is a very different scenario where I try to focus on restoring the outline of the lip,
restoring volume and then using my own artistic style and of course the application of the
golden ratio to the proportion of the lip so it looks like a correction no one can tell
that they had lip augmentation. And that’s a very different scenario from a younger person
who’s trying to treat something else by blocking it lip augmentation. I think it would
not work out well in terms of the overall aesthetics.
So I would recommend that you meet with some practicing doctors who specialize in fillers
and learn about your options. You know, like I said, consider doing Botox™. There are
also some surgical procedures that might be worth considering. I think that a lot of times,
the gummy smile situation also has to do a lot with the way the teeth are set in terms
of the jaw and the jaw bones but without getting ahead of ourselves, in that respect, you can
certainly meet with an oral surgeon or dentist but the gummy smile issue does not have to
be necessarily indirectly treated with Juvederm. It can probably be treated more directly.
So again, meet with doctors and get some opinions. Learn about your options but I would say start
very conservatively. I think that Botox™ is the most conservative. Worst case scenario,
if you don’t like the results, it wears off and I don’t mean just Botox™ but Dysport
and Xeomin are also in that same category of treatment that inhibits a nerve impulse
which is what is responsible partially for the gummy smile.
So I hope that was helpful, I wish you the best of luck and thank you for your question!