- How do you find a Botox expert?
They don't usually come knocking at your door.
(door opens)
Oh, hi, were you looking for a Botox expert?
(upbeat music)
Trust me, I have years of experience.
I mean, it is your face
that we're talking about here, right?
(upbeat music)
But as a patient, how do you know who is an expert
and who is not?
(upbeat music)
Firstly, because Botox is such a highly effective procedure,
it can really make even the novice look like a magician.
It literally works 100% of the time,
you inject it into a muscle,
and instantly wrinkles disappear.
So the difference between an expert
and a novice injector may be hard to discern.
I've been injecting Botox now for about 15 years,
but experience isn't the key factor
in determining whether someone is an expert or not.
You can be a bad driver, for example, for many years,
and just do the same things wrong over and over again
and not really learn from your mistakes.
So if it's not experience
what makes an expert Botox injector?
Is it how painless they can give a needle?
Is it their understanding of anatomy and facial movement?
Is it creating a natural, unBotoxed look?
Is it an eye for aesthetics and not just freezing the face?
Yes, these factors are all important,
but they are not the most important factors I believe.
Although it's very hard to determine
whether someone is an expert before you see them.
I think a lot of people start off their journey,
looking for an expert practitioner on the wrong foot.
Instead of looking
for the best practitioner to look after them,
they tend to look for the cheapest one.
Often the first question people ask is
how much do you charge per unit?
So why do so many people base their decision around price?
Although a high price doesn't guarantee you
a good practitioner, a low price
or a very cheap price will almost certainly mean
a compromise in the service
or the quality of the practitioner.
So given the cost price of Botox is fairly similar around
the whole world, that is, you can't buy it
for below a certain price,
the reduction in cost will almost certainly come
from a reduction in the labor cost.
So when you compromise on cost,
you're almost certainly compromising
on the skill of the practitioner
or the amount of time they're able to spend with you.
- I can inject you, I'm half price, and half the size.
- It is likely that a practitioner will cut their prices
when they're not busy
to try and attract you to come and see them,
and they're only not busy for two reasons,
and that is they've just started
and they don't have a patient base,
or they've been doing it for a while
and they haven't been able to retain their patients.
Both not good signs.
So you are unlikely to find an expert Botox practitioner
who is charging rock bottom prices.
Most of us can identify the difference
between good and bad Botox pretty quickly.
We know what looks good, and what doesn't.
I must admit, I am guilty of missing the mark sometimes
and especially with new patients,
you don't really know their face, you know,
it's the first time you've treated them,
you're still getting used to their dosages
and the way their face responds to the treatment.
So it's not really about how you play your short game,
it's about how you play the long game with Botox
and the endeavor really is to make it
the best treatment it can be each time you come in,
it should just get better and better.
So given that Botox is a repeat treatment,
the two main criteria
for determining an expert practitioner, I believe are one,
consistency and two, being able to make adjustments,
let me explain further.
Firstly consistency, we know that you need
to repeat Botox every three to four months.
So you don't want to have a face that's yo-yoing,
good one day, bad the next, different with one treatment,
different with the next, you want consistency.
To be consistent, you need to plan and you need to document.
So an expert practitioner will firstly plan
and that means working out the exact dose they wanna inject,
the number of injection sites,
the location of the injection sites,
the dose per injection site, and then documenting.
So does your practitioner write detailed notes
about exactly what was done,
a part of that will be marking the face.
So it's very important
that everything is pre-marked before injecting.
One of the big benefits of marking the face also
is that you can take a photo of the dots
that you put on the face
and actually keep that in your file,
and refer back to that on subsequent treatments,
so you actually know precisely what you did
the previous time.
Furthermore, if your practitioner isn't marking your face,
then really what they're doing is just ad-libbing
the treatments, I mean,
each injection needs to be pre-planned and precise.
Another part of documentation is very accurate before
and after photos.
So we wanna see your face before you had treatment,
and what it looks like after you had treatment.
And in fact, a video is probably the best way to document
the changes before and after because as you know,
muscle movement is dynamic.
When you inject Botox in someone's face,
it changes the dynamic movement of the face
and not the static one.
So a video before and after is ideal.
So the other aspect of a expert practitioner is the ability
to make adjustments.
Now in order to do that, they have to review your results.
That means getting you back in one to two weeks
to see what sort of results have come about
from the treatment
and making appropriate adjustments if necessary.
Now, if your practitioner only brings you back every three
to four months, when the treatments completely worn off,
they will never, ever be able to determine how good
or bad your treatment was, they're gonna just be relying
on whatever you tell them.
If your practitioner doesn't get you back in for review,
it's like a film photographer who doesn't develop the film.
They'll never really become good at photography
because they'll never see their results.
In fact, there is a doctor,
Dr. Phillip levy from Switzerland,
who I heard speak at a conference once
and he actually insists that patients come back
at the one to two-week mark,
even if they've flown in from another country to see him.
He insists they come back
and he actually won't perform treatment
unless they come back,
now that's an expert practitioner for you.
Now, making adjustments to your treatment needs to be done
with control of the variables.
So what I'm saying here is if you make a lot of adjustments,
then you don't really know
what adjustment made the difference.
The idea here is to control your variables,
make one adjustment to one variable,
whilst keeping the other variables the same.
Now, baristas are the best at doing this when making coffee.
There are so many factors
when it comes to making a good coffee.
There's the beans, there's the water temperature,
there's grind size, the shot time just to name a few,
and just like Botox shots,
you don't get the perfect espresso shot on the first try.
It often takes a number of gos
and adjustments to be made to one variable each time
to perfect the actual treatment or the espresso shot.
Doing Botox regularly, say every three or four months,
is like running a controlled experiment
on the patient's facial muscles,
trying to adjust one variable at a time.
And this might be the dose, the location of the injections,
the number of injections, the depth of injections,
and by doing that, making fine adjustments,
and understanding what adjustments end up with what results.
When you're looking for an expert practitioner,
see if they're making multiple changes
or if they're just making controlled changes
to one variable.
So here are the points in summary,
to help you find an expert practitioner.
Firstly, you've got to see
that they are planning the treatment.
Secondly, they need to properly document the treatment
which means marking you out and taking proper photos,
before and after the treatment.
They need to review your results at the one to two-week mark
and they need to adjust only one variable at a time
and then repeat this whole cycle.
So if you notice your practitioner doing these things,
they are probably going to be an expert worth sticking with.
And what makes you the expert anyway?
Well, actually I'm the expert here.