BOTOX vs. Fillers

I want to talk for a minute about the differences between BOTOX and fillers. Because it’s a common confusion and it doesn’t need to be. A filler basically adds volume. So in this line right here if you got a fold, you put filler underneath and it helps lift the skin away from the fold. Now this fold comes from a muscle that starts up here comes down to the corner of your mouth. It’s your smile muscle, pulls up, makes it fold. That’s how fillers work. They plump it back out.

BOTOX is a whole different animal. BOTOX is botulinum toxin and it paralyzes muscle. So, what it does is make the muscle not work 6 months, 9 months, depending on how long it works for you. So, where BOTOX works best, lines like these between the eyebrows. These lines come from you frowning. Whether you do it consciously, or when you’re reading, or when you’re thinking. You frown enough and those lines become permanently folded into your face. If you paralyze this muscle in here, you still have eyebrows, you can still smile, but you can’t frown and these lines gradually fade away and disappear.

If you paralyze this whole muscle to try to get rid of this line, you can’t smile. So, filler is the right answer for this, BOTOX is the right answer for this and this.

BOTOX has become more widely used for other things. There are some people who are injecting it in small tiny quantities in the lip to help get rid of smokers lines. It’s great until it’s overdone and then your lips don’t work right. You can’t use a straw. There’s some downsides to that. So, be cautious and make sure that your injector has done a lot of whatever they’re proposing to do to you, that they didn’t just come for a weekend course on something new. But that’s the difference between BOTOX and filler. It’s a common confusion, but if you think about how they work, there’s no confusion at all.