Beauty Spot: Pumped Up

Before we dive into injectables, I want to have a quick word on ‘ageing gracefully’.

You do not have to age gracefully. You do not have to age in a way that others perceive as acceptable. Your face and body are going to change. It will happen to all of us. You are allowed to get older. The societal and media obsession with ‘ageing’ is judgemental and gratuitous. It’s an unfair pressure, placed disproportionately on women, and I deeply resent it.

I, for one, plan to age as DISgracefully as possible.

It’s no one else’s business what treatments you choose to have, if any at all. You don’t have to tell anyone if you don’t want to, but similarly it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Having injectables is a choice. You can choose to get it, not get it, or you can get it then stop. It’s a medical procedure with risks. But if you’re curious, read on.

What can injectables do that skincare can’t?

As you know, exposure to the sun is responsible for most of the age-related changes to your skin. Skincare and skincare ingredients can and do change the way your skin behaves. For example, retinoids can help organise the structural proteins and signal skin to hydrate itself. This means skin will look more plump and bouncy. Retinoids can also signal cells to turn over more quickly. Again, this leads to smoother-looking skin and minimised pore appearance over time. A reduction inredness and hyperpigmentation can be achieved with skincare and in-clinic treatments such as laser, peels or IPL.

But there’s also fat, muscle and bone under your skin and these affect your appearance when they change and move around. For example, as you age the muscle above the top lip gets bigger and stronger and it curls the lip in and under. The forehead muscle and the muscle between the brows also get bigger and stronger, making the brows and outer corners of the eyes sit lower. Finally, the jaw becomes less angular as the jaw muscles grow from years of chewing (and clenching and grinding). Your face loses supporting fat all over, with remaining fat sitting lower.

These changes can’t be targeted with skincare. They’re not skin! That’s where injectables come in.

Neuromodulators

You may have heard of the brand names Botox, Dysport, Xeomin or Jeuveau – but they’re all essentially the same thing: botulinum toxin. Botulinum toxina is a neurotoxic protein that comes from the bacteria clostridium botulinum and it works by blocking the signal between the nerve and muscle. This prevents the muscle from contracting and effectively paralyses the muscle depending on the dose. The injection wears off in 2–6 months, depending on the amount administered and the size and strength of the target muscle, among other things. The toxin becomes inactive and your body regenerates the nerve, then it’s business as usual for that muscle.

 How does this erase wrinkles?

As far as lines go, it means you can’t repeatedly make the same line-forming expression. A wrinkle forms as a result of the expressions you make and loss of elasticity in the skin. By freezing the muscle, you treat the expression, and by using skincare you can treat the elasticity, to an extent.

Let’s use the forehead as an example. When you raise your eyebrows as part of your normal expressions, the skin moves with it and folds. By paralysing the muscle underneath, we can prevent or soften the crinkling.

Fillers

Fillers usually treat lost volume in the face (or even hands) and is often just modified hyaluronic acid. There are fat pads under our skin – in our cheeks, temples and under our eyes – that move and shrink as we age. Well-placed fillers give support to the skin which might otherwise look sunken or slack. They’re also used to smooth acne scars and wrinkles.

Hyaluronic acid fillers are a clear gel (like the hyaluronic acid that already exists in our bodies), only they’re modified to take longer to break down so that the effect of the filler lasts six months to two years (but they can stay in your body for longer than that).

Lips thin in appearance as we age due to loss of structural proteins (collagen) and loss of hydration (reduction of hyaluronic acid). A filler can revolumise and rehydrate lips, which isn’t something you can do as dramatically with skincare.

Fat-dissolving injections

Also known under the brand name Kybella/Belkyra, fat-dissolving injections are made from a copy of your bile salts (deoxycholic acid), which help to dissolve the fats that you digest. It is injected into the fat under your chin (and apparently feels like burning), causes swelling and destroys some of the fat cells, thus reducing the look of a ‘double chin’. You normally need a few treatments for a good result and it’s quite expensive per visit.

Choosing the right practitioner

It’s important for injectables to be administered by medical professionals as they’re not only experienced in administering them, but also in what to do if something goes wrong.

In terms of safety, it’s not only about practical training but also the medical knowledge and knowledge of facial anatomy that underpins it. If you choose to have injectable cosmetic interventions, please make sure you get your treatments from a safe provider. If the price seems too good to be true, it probably is. •

This is an edited extract from Your Best Skin by Hannah English (Hardie Grant Books).