Dear Dr. Seckel, I am 52 yrs young. What is your recommendation for severe vertical lip lines? Regards, Clare, Somersworth, NH.
Dear Clare,
Lip rejuvenation, that is correcting vertical lip lines, called lipstick lines is one of the most difficult facial rejuvenation techniques today and one of the hardest facial aging changes to treat.
Beautiful results can be achieved with proper technique:
The best treatment is avoidance-if you are a smoker, stop smoking as smoking horribly accentuates lipstick lines, lip lines and lip wrinkles. Skin creams cannot help lipstick lines or lip wrinkles.
The best treatment for removing lip lines, lip wrinkles or lipstick lines is a laser skin rejuvenation treatment called laser resurfacing or laser skin peel. The laser skin peel of lip lines and lip wrinkles can be very effective but the lip will look red or raw for about 2 weeks after the laser skin peel although make up can be used at about 10 days to hide the redness. A newer more gentle laser lip peel is the ActiveFX laser skin peel which leaves the lip red for only 5-6 days, but this laser skin rejuvenation technique will need to be repeated 1-2 times to be as effective as the laser resurfacing.
Lip lines, lip wrinkles or lipstick lines will come back after laser treatment unless Botox® is used to quiet the muscles which cause the lip lines. The lip lines or lipstick lines are caused by the action of the lip muscle when we purse our lips like when smoking or sucking on a straw. Botox quiets these muscles and helps reduce the lip lines or lipstick lines. Only tiny amounts of Botox® are used.
Lipstick lines and lip wrinkles can be softened with filler injections of Restylane® or other soft tuissue filler and small amounts of Botox® with no down time and avoidance of the recovery involved with laser resurfacing or laser skin peel. However these non-surgical facial rejuvenation injections need to be repeated every 4-6 months and are not as effective as the laser skin rejuvenation techniques.
Thank you very much for your question.
For more information on lip lines, fillers, Botox and non-surgical facial rejuvenation read Save Your Face or contact me.
Boston, Massachusetts