Can Botox® Prevent Wrinkles?

Since its debut almost a quarter-century ago, Botox® and its subsequent neurotoxin counterparts like Dysport® have changed the way we tackle aging and facial wrinkles. These minimally invasive cosmetic injectables are helping millions of Americans dial back the years by smoothing out wrinkles and lines, allowing people to hit the reset button on their aging skin.

Given how effective neurotoxin injections are, it’s little wonder that nearly 10 million neuromodulator treatments are performed each year in the United States. These numbers are also on the rise as we find new uses for Botox and its counterparts, including preventing wrinkles in the first place.

To explore the preventive uses of Botox, we turn to Dr. Thomas McHugh, here at McHugh Plastic Surgery. While the focus of our practice is primarily on plastic surgery, we do recognize the invaluable role that cosmetic injectables like Botox and Dysport can play, including a preventive one that we explore here.

Targeting dynamic wrinkles

While the uses for Botox and Dysport are ever-expanding, they’ve proven themselves time and again to be a great solution for dynamic wrinkles around your face.

These wrinkles form when you make facial certain expressions or movements, such as raising your eyebrows or squinting your eyes. 

Many of the dynamic wrinkles form around the top half of your face. Examples are:

• Crow’s feet at the outer corners of your eyes
• Frown lines between your brows
• Horizontal forehead lines

These wrinkles tend to come and go with your expressions as your muscles contract. Over time, however, you might notice that dynamic wrinkles start to become increasingly etched into your skin, making them far more permanent than dynamic.

How Botox and Dysport release dynamic wrinkles

When Dr. McHugh administers Botox or Dysport for existing wrinkles, the active ingredient temporarily quiets the muscles that contract to form the wrinkle. As a result, the skin smooths out, eliminating resting expression lines and allowing them to come and go with your expressions again.

Preventing wrinkles with Botox and Dysport

We’ve learned that dynamic wrinkles become more noticeable and permanent with time, which makes sense given that age and exposure increasingly rob your skin of the ability to smooth out and bounce back in between expressions.

A great way to prevent the transition of dynamic wrinkles into permanent ones is to treat expression lines early on in the aging process, such as in your 20s and 30s. The idea here is to stop your muscles from contracting and forming a line each time you create an expression. 

When we minimize certain facial movements with neuromodulators, there's less chance that dynamic wrinkles will lead to permanent lines in your face.

Bear in mind that we administer less Botox or Dysport for preventive purposes than we use for treating existing wrinkles. Think of it as a sort of micro-dosing treatment that prevents wrinkles from forming and continually breaking down your skin.

If you’d like to see why more patients are flocking to cosmetic injectables like Botox and Dysport for preventing aging in your skin, we invite you to contact our office in The Woodlands, Texas.