Can Botox make you look older?

Botox treatment, West Malling, Kings Hill, Kent

When performed discretely, most of us know that Botox is an excellent way to quieten lines and wrinkles and make a face appear fresher and more youthful. It’s the gold-standard anti-ageing treatment that can be used preventively to stop lines from becoming etched into the skin as well as correctively to improve existing lines and wrinkles. But can the injectable actually have the reverse effect and make you look older? This is a fear that holds many people back from seeking treatment. If you’re worried that Botox may have the reverse effect on your face, read on for everything you need to know.

What is preventative Botox?

Preventative Botox involves using Botox injections to prevent the formation of lines and wrinkles. We can perform this treatment when we can see where lines are going to develop, but they aren’t yet there at rest. Botox works to relax the muscles that cause wrinkles, therefore, if we relax overly expressive muscles, we get less skin creasing and prevent lines from forming as quickly (or potentially at all). The goal is not to completely freeze the muscles, simply to mellow them.

Starting too young

Having heavy Botox from a young age is likely to make you look older over time. An early start and heavy-handed approach can leave a face looking frozen and over-treated. In addition your face continues to change as you age, and while Botox may halt the creasing effect of the muscles on the skin, long-term overuse can sometimes weaken the muscles causing them to waste away, medically named as an ‘atrophy of the muscles’. Elasticity is lost, and you may start to notice deepening lines and wrinkles. If you seek treatment at the right time – when lines and wrinkles are just beginning to show – and from an experienced medical practitioner, this isn’t a risk that you need to be concerned about. Subtle treatment is key.

Over treatment

We’ve seen it in the media – frozen faces and shiny foreheads. If you’re over-treated with Botox, freezing your muscles can give a mask-like appearance that makes you look ageless rather than better. We have all seen people who have taken treatments too far or started them too young and achieved the opposite effect of what they probably hoped. Remember, in experienced hands, no practitioner will want to make you look different, they will simply aim to help you look fresher and more youthful. And they will also be honest when you don’t need treatments.

Stopping treatments won’t make you look older

Many fear that their faces will become dramatically wrinkled when they stop having Botox, but that is not true. Your skin won’t develop lines overnight to make up for lost time – the lines will slowly start to come back, but they won’t be worse than they were before you had Botox, and often, they aren’t as severe as they once were, but this is dependent on how long you had the treatment for and how well you have looked after your skin in that time.

If you’d like to learn more about Botox and whether it’s right for you, click here to book a consultation with an expert practitioner.