Hello everyone! Welcome back to our channel, I'm Dr Amel from City Skin Clinic and today I
thought we'd have a chat about preventative Botox. This is a topic that comes up a lot,
I know that it's been in the press a lot more and there are a few companies that have been
promoting the concept of preventative Botox, which has been around for a while. As always, I just
wanted to have a chat with you guys and discuss whether preventative Botox is actually a thing,
does it work and give you insight, as an aesthetic practitioner and the founder of City Skin Clinic,
as to whether it's something you should consider or not and what alternatives there are for wrinkle
prevention. Before we get started, if you're new to our channel, welcome! Please subscribe to our
channel and hit the notification bell so that you're alerted of all our new videos. If you
are a returning viewer, welcome back, it's great to have you! So, what is preventative Botox? The
concept of preventative Botox is actually you should get Botox anti-wrinkle injections before
you start having wrinkles and that will stop you from getting lines and wrinkles. That's
the general sort of idea, that's what most people think of when they think of preventative Botox and
when they come to our clinic, that's what they're generally asking for. Before I get into it,
just a real quick recap as to how Botox works. So Botox is actually a medication and it's
a substance that basically paralyzes muscles or can "put them to sleep",
and so it blocks the interaction between the nerves that tell muscles to move
and the muscles moving. So it works at that neuromuscular junction and what it does is the
muscles that you inject it into will stop moving or they may reduce their movement, depending
how much Botox you inject. That's where the skill and the experience comes in, because it's
a balance in terms of getting rid of lines and wrinkles, but also having a little bit
of movement, which most of our clients come to us for, they don't want to be completely frozen.
Some people want to be completely frozen and that's also fine, but it's always a matter of
personal preference. The most common places that Botox is injected for wrinkle reduction
is actually the forehead, the frown line area, around the eyes for crow's feet reduction.
These are the most popular spaces and most people when they come to us for example with Botox,
they've started to get lines and wrinkles in these areas or they've been there for a while and they
bother them. Botox is really really good for lines and wrinkles that are only there when you move
your face, so if you raise your brows and you get lines, horizontal lines like this,
or if you frown and you get those lines in the middle, or if you smile and you have
smile lines but all of these wrinkles disappear or reduce massively when your face is at rest, Botox
is fantastic for that. The muscle movement that creates the wrinkling in the skin, combined with
obviously collagen and elastin loss in the skin, that's what causes the wrinkles, so if you
smooth down and relax the muscle then you're not going to get wrinkles.
In people who already have ingrained wrinkles i.e the lines or wrinkles do not change whether
you express yourself or not, so they're already deep set even with your face at rest,
then Botox doesn't really tend to have the same effect because those have already set
in and even if you relax the muscle underneath, you may improve, still, the the appearance of that
line or wrinkle, but you're not going to completely get rid of it. and There are
other treatments for that. So in someone who already has lines and wrinkles, Botox
is fantastic for people whose lines and wrinkles are brought on by facial expression and that they
go away when they're at rest, and which is why, in my opinion, the thought of preventative Botox
is a little bit controversial. The idea that you could relax the muscles that would ultimately
cause these lines, I get the concept behind that, so if you're relaxing the muscle then
there's nothing to pull on the skin and that's going to stop a wrinkle from forming. To an extent,
yes, but here are the issues where I think it's not quite that simple or useful. Firstly,
it's a combination of things that causes wrinkles and lines to form. so
Number one it's loss of collagen and elastin in the skin, which are the proteins that form
the basement membrane of the skin and they cause it to be stretchy and plump. you know
so When you're younger, your skin is thicker, it's plumper, it's juicier for lack of a better
word and as we get older, it gets thinner and it's less pliable and so that kind of skin is already
due to aging, it's susceptible to then having lines and wrinkles. So when you have
these muscles acting there, the lines and wrinkles will form. It's not just the muscle activity
because of course, children are able to pull all sorts of faces and they don't have wrinkles.
So the muscles are contributing but they wouldn't be causing lines and wrinkles if
you didn't have that aging of the skin. And the two main reasons the skin loses this volume and
this elasticity in this collagen is a naturally as we get older that happens that the big big one is
sun damage and exposure to the sun without wearing sunscreen over a really lengthy period of time is
what sort of causes that photo aging, it causes and speeds up that change in your skin,
which then leads to lines and wrinkles. So the issue that I have with Botox as a preventative in
someone who is, say, in their twenties and doesn't have any lines or wrinkles at all is whilst it's
relaxing the muscle if that person isn't using sunscreen, isn't taking care of their skin,
they're still going to, over time, have those skin aging signs. The other thing is
Botox lasts for about three to four months on average, usually around the three-month mark.
So if you're in your 20s and you you're basically committing to every three months
or so, every three to four months, having Botox injections
for, I guess, ever really, because the idea is that you never get these muscles to pull
on the skin and so you don't develop lines and wrinkles. To me that seems like a really
inefficient way of doing it. It's also unrealistic, there are plenty of times in
people's lives when they don't want to have Botox and any other treatments, pregnancy is
one example, breastfeeding, so you can't have Botox injections during those times, and also
just life. I mean, Botox is, if done correctly and in a reputable place, it can be expensive
and so to me, I think it's an inefficient way and a very expensive way to potentially
prevent lines and wrinkles. But to be honest, as muscle movement isn't the only cause of these
when people come to us in the clinic and they don't have any wrinkles when they express their
face and they've got fairly young skin, we tend to advise them against having preventative Botox,
not because it's gonna harm them, but because it's really not going to be that useful to them. There
are better things you can do with your time and money if you are looking to prevent skin aging.
To me the number one is to take care of your skin, wear sunscreen during the day even if
it's a cloudy day, even if you're indoors, because UV light rays get through windows,
so that's the biggest thing you can do. There are other things you can do like not using
extremely harsh products on your face, no physical scrubs that will cause micro tears in the
skin and then speed up kind of that weakening. Eating a really good, healthy, balanced diet
as well, that's going to help. If you're someone who's kind of in their mid-20s onwards
and you don't have wrinkles yet, or even if you're starting, then using retinol or a retinoid,
these are the only topical products that have been shown, time and time again, to
prevent and also reduce the appearance of lines and wrinkles. In my opinion,
that's a much better use of your time. There are also other things you can do if your skin doesn't
have lines and wrinkles but you want to improve the quality of it and make it more resistant to
getting lines and wrinkles. Things like Profhilo injectable moisturizer,
which is an injectable hyaluronic acid that's injected in the face and that stimulates your
skin to make more collagen and elastin, and so that will improve the quality of your skin. So,
in my honest opinion, I don't think preventative Botox, if you're someone who doesn't have
lines or wrinkles when you express your face, I don't think it's a worthwhile investment
and certainly not if you're in your early mid twenties. I think skincare like sunscreen,
retinol would be fantastic and much better use and if you're keen on something a little bit
more involved like an injectable, and then things like Profhilo are really good. If you suffer from
things like acne or underlying skin texture problems, then considering chemical peels,
micro needling that can also stimulate collagen and elastin production. So the investment should
be in boosting your skin and helping maintain its youthfulness and its vitality, rather than
a treatment that is amazing if you already have lines and wrinkles, but when you don't have them,
I don't think that, again, it's not going to do you any harm if it's done correctly,
but it's not really going to achieve much in my opinion i think you're better off with the basics
of skin care and a few professional treatments if you really want to amplify your skin. and
Then the best time, if you are really really concerned about about lines and wrinkles, is
if you start to notice lines when you raise your brows or when you smile
or when you frown, that's usually the best time to get Botox as these lines have
just started and they're only a bit visible when you move and then when you get Botox in addition
to doing all of the other stuff like taking care of your skin, that's a really really good way
to keep those lines at bay, eliminate them and stop them from becoming ingrained, because
ingrained lines and wrinkles are much harder to treat. To me this is the real power of using Botox
as a preventative, is that you're preventing the lines or wrinkles from getting worse
and you're kind of stopping them in their track and you're also doing other things like skincare,
like Profhilo, like micro needling, these are just examples, each person may or may
not benefit from the additional professional treatments, but those are things that will
stimulate your skin to repair and improve itself so that you have really good skin quality.
I hope that this has been useful, I've been seeing a lot more of a push towards
the idea of preventative Botox and I thought, as someone who's been in the industry for quite
some time, it would be really good to put across my perspective. This is not an attempt to
criticize anyone and like I said, this is an area that's controversial and there are,
as you know, lots of opinions for using Botox in that way as there are against,
but where I come from is what does the medical research say, what does the evidence show and also
what is the best and most efficient way for our patients to to get the most out of treatments and
what's going to help them establish lifelong habits that are going to really improve the
skin and not just treat individual problems, because if you just spot treat, you end up
having all these different treatments you're doing all the time and they're not working together.
The best thing is what you can do at home and then the clinic is just to amplify
all of that. Anyway. let me know if you have any questions about Botox in general or
preventative Botox in the comments below. I'll leave a link to our Botox information pages.
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