Surprising Signs of Aging That You May Have Missed

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February 7, 2019

Have you ever looked at a face of a celeb who has obviously undergone a facelift and multiple other cosmetic procedures, but still looked ‘her age’? There are subtle facial signs as one ages that are not always addressed by run-of-the-mill skin lifting treatments.

The difference between a youthful face and one that looks years older may lie in these subtle yet tell-tale differences.

Drooping mouth corners

This is an oft neglected area as women tend to target the more major signs of age such as nasolabial lines or jowls. However, this is one area that really do give your age away. In a youthful face, the mouth corners are either slightly upturned or set in a neutral position. This imparts a fetching appearance to the lips.

As one ages however, the lip corners begin to droop south. This may be due in part to the excessive use of the DAO muscles (involved in scowling). The more you use a certain muscle, the stronger it becomes. Secondly, our lips lose some collagen, as does the corners of our lips. This loss of structural support mean that mouth corners, left to their own devices, start to sag.

Treatment: Short of surgical correction, consider getting anti-wrinkle injections such as BOTOX on your DAO muscles. Since these muscles work to pull down your mouth corners, relaxing them will reduce the downward pull of the lip corners. BOTOX of this area however is not to be undertaken lightly and should be done only by an aesthetic doctor with experience treating this area. “When done incorrectly, BOTOX of this complex area can lead to asymmetrical results or crooked smile” says Dr Kenneth Lee. Instead, Dr Lee advises that only very small doses of Botox be used and judiciously.

Another effective enhancement to the lip corners is to refill the corner of the lips to build up the foundations of the lip corners. This will help prevent the drooping of the lips. Any associated marionette lines can also be easily erased by natural hyaluronic acid fillers.

Bunny Lines on Nose

Nicknamed ‘bunny lines’ because they appear when you wrinkle up your nose, they are less cute in reality. Many times, women have their more obvious wrinkles such as frown and forehead lines treated but neglect to extend their treatment to the bridge of the nose.

As we age, we tend to recruit more muscles around our eyes to express ourselves—frowning, squinting… The muscles over the bridge of our nose is often involved in our myriad of facial expressions and crinkle up multiple times a day as a result.

As the skin of this area is quick thin, they may leave semi-permanent creases in the skin over time.

Treatment: Anti-wrinkle injections such as BOTOX can be safely applied to the nose bridge area to reduce the appearance of bunny lines.

Double Chin

The only time you see double chin is in the very young or the old. While double chin may look cute on a baby, they certainly won’t evoke any of the same heart-melting emotion on an adult. “As we age, our jawbone resorbs slightly, this means that our facial tissues have less bony support. Add to that the downward sag of tissues of our lower face and jawline and you get a more visible looking double chin” explains Dr Lee.

Treatment: Kybella has been FDA approved for the treatment of double chin fat. It uses deoxycholic acid to break down unwanted fat in 3-5 sessions. Treatment involves a few injections to the treated area. To tighten the skin of the area, women have found Ultherapy, a microfocused ultrasound skin tightening device to be superior to other skin tightening technologies for this purpose. For those who are not disinclined to something minimally invasive, threadlifts of this area can help to suspend the sagging tissues to a more optimal position, instantly conferring a tighter jawline to the recipient.