Your Botox Best

Getting the best out of Botox? It’s simple. The general guideline is to go in to your doctor’s office every 3 to 4 months for re-treatment. But whether you’re cost conscious or simply have trouble committing to appointment dates months out, you may want to wait until you know it’s time for a Botox brush up. The question is, how do you know?

Without a doubt, the easiest way to maintain your wrinkle-free results, is to follow the standard guidelines and plan to schedule your appointment on a regular basis. However, according to Dr. Few, there are a couple of tell-tale signs that signal a green light for your next treatment.

First, you may notice that you involuntarily find your eyebrows lifting along with your entire brow. This is a case of your elevator muscles (the ones that pull the brow up) coming back to life before the depressors do (the muscles that pull the brow down and work with the elevators to maintain balance).

Second, you may experience a slight twitch around the eye.

In either case, Dr. Few explains these as “signs of your muscles waking up after being asleep for awhile.”

And even if you are the type who commit to a regular schedule, knowing when it’s time to re-treat will come in helpful if and when an adjustment in your schedule may be needed. Consider this: Recent research has shown that over time, that you may need fewer treatments per year to maintain your results.

A study published in the medical, peer-reviewed journal Dermatologic Surgery this June treated fifty women between the ages of 30 and 50 for two years. They found that if patients receive Botox every 4 months for 2 years, treatment can be reduced to as little as every 6 months.

In this case, knowing whether it’s 2 or 3 treatments you need could mean having an extra $500 in your pocket. And that, ladies, you can take to the bank!

Rethinking Anti-Aging

Media love to jump all over the still young and beautiful who feel compelled to stop aging in its tracks before it even begins. (Hello, Botox Babies!) If you think about it, it’s the quintessential attempt to “anti-age.” Imagine: no lines, no wrinkles and, yes, no sign of life’s experience… pros and cons to be sure.

But is that what we’re really after, anti-aging? I’d venture to say, most of us wear the odd line proudly. My very own are indications to the world that I’m not a baby and have indeed earned the respect that goes with my age and experience. Of course, I don’t want ALL of them left unchecked. (Yes, I do like my Botox, thank-you-very-much!)

So in a recent conversation with plastic surgeon and industry leader Julius Few, MD, of The Few Institute in Chicago, Dr. Few told me that he doesn’t use the term “anti-aging” in his practice. Wow. (Right?) I was intrigued by his perspective and it made me stop and ponder how the industry has changed and is continuing to change.

Let’s start with the Botox Babies phenomenon of the past decade. Pretty obvious. We don’t want to let time slip by and become the 50-something-year-old woman who faces the hard choice of (a) major surgery to get the results she wants or (b) settling for less-than-significant results with less invasive procedures (fillers can’t always replace a facelift!).

But that doesn’t mean we need to start erasing all signs of aging before they begin to avoid the “big” surgical procedure. According to Dr. Few, it’s all about timing and customizing your cosmetic treatment protocol based on the way your particular face and skin age (we all have different aging traits). The idea is to begin an individualized, step-up approach to facial rejuvenation that combines less invasive procedures with selective surgical procedures—at the right time, over time.

The take home message? It’s all about gradual, subtle change that changes with your aging face, rather than trying to change your face.

So it isn’t about anti-aging, it’s about managing the aging process selectively and strategically, embracing elements of aging while maintaining a youthful quality to your skin and facial contours. It’s that age-old (pun intended) expression: Age with grace.