First a refresher. Dermal fillers are often confused with Botox, so, let’s clear that up. As you age, our repeated expressions, smiles, frowns, knitted brows, and squinted eyes, cause wrinkles to develop. Botox relaxes the muscles underneath the wrinkles and, voila, they disappear (or at least become less noticeable)!
But, other things happen to our faces as we age. We lose some of the fatty tissue just under our skin. We lose some bone mass as well. These losses can leave our faces looking tired and hollow as our skin sags into the voided spaces. Some of us experience hollowing at the temples, dark under-eye circles and eye bags, deep lines from the nose down to the corners of our mouths or lines down from the corners of our mouths to our chins. All of these are instances where dermal fillers can lessen the effects of age related volume loss.
So, where Botox is used to take away wrinkles by relaxing and smoothing, dermal fillers are used to add volume – to return our features to their youthful supple plumpness.
Fun Fact: The lines that go down from our noses to the corners of our mouths are called nasolabial folds, while the lines that go from the corners of our mouths down to our chins are called marionettes.
Who wouldn’t mind plump, luscious lips and prominent cheek bones? Those are the features everybody wants to talk about. But, we can also apply filler to cheeks, jawlines, chins, around our eyes, in the hollows of our temples, even the tops of our hands where they can hide unwanted vascularity and smooth the skin.
Now, you may already know about all of this, but, what you might not know is that there are many different, highly-specialized fillers. Each has a slightly different texture and consistency and is designed to match the area where it’s used.
Fun Fact: If you want to keep your hands looking younger longer, apply a little sunscreen to the tops of them daily.
Nope! Dermal filler is an incredibly versatile tool. While beauty has been propped up as mysterious and elusive, what we perceive as beauty is really just symmetry and proportion. It’s even defined by a mathematical ratio called the Golden Ratio, or Fibonacci sequence, named for the mathematician who discovered it. In short, we’re attracted to objects, buildings, shapes, works of art, and, yes, even faces with a specific ratio of dimensions (it’s 1.618 to 1, in case your little inner mathematician was wondering). As early as 440 B.C., the Greek sculptor and mathematician, Phidias, used the Golden Ratio in his sculptures.
In the faces we find beautiful, that ratio applies to the overall shape of the face (length to width), the length of the mouth to the width of the nose, the length of the face to the distance between the tip of the chin and where the eyebrows meet, to name only a few. But, let’s face it (see what we did there), not all of us are born with movie star faces that fit the Golden Ratio. It’s not at all unusual, for example, to have lips that are asymmetrical from side to side, or chins that leave us a little short of that 1.618:1 ratio.
That’s where fillers can be used to help out what God gave us. We can, for example plump and shape the lips and better define the lip line. We can add to a small chin, or help widen that face just a little in the cheekbone area. We can literally sculpt our faces using dermal fillers just as Phidias created beautiful works of art in ancient Greece.
How Long Do the Results Last?
Fillers, depending on the type used, typically last from 1 to two years. That said, one of the things we love most about dermal fillers is that they are reversible.
At EláMar, we only use fillers made with hyaluronic acid, a substance that occurs naturally in our bodies. These are much less likely to be rejected by our bodies. And, if, for any reason, you aren’t satisfied with the result, we can simply inject a liquid enzyme called hyaluronidase and it will literally dissolve the filler.
How Long Before I See Results from a Filler Treatment?
This is perhaps the best thing about filler, the results are immediate! And as a bonus there is zero downtime. You’ll walk out the day of your treatment ready to go and looking refreshed.
If you’d like to learn more about dermal filler, you can do so our our Filler Treatment Page. And as always, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to reach out.