What's the best treatment for eye wrinkles?

Well, that depends on your age and the extent of the wrinkles.

• If you are in your thirties and forties, then Botox is a great way to relax the wrinkles on the lateral part, or outside part of your eyes.  

• For the under eye area, loose skin and wrinkling is sometimes improved with Botox, but if the severity is mild to moderate, then you can get great results with a physician who performs Thermage skin tightening.   

• Now if you are in your fifties to sixties, you can give the Thermage a try, especially if the under eye area is not as lax or loose.  Thermage to the under eye area then will depend on the consultation with the physician and your expectations. 

• If the under eye area is not treatable with Thermage, then I like to perform a lower lid lift simultaneously with a chemical peel and Botox to the crow’s feet.  

• Now if your tolerance for surgery is low, and if your physician finds that you may benefit from Thermage, you can achieve good results after two or three Thermage treatments.

Hope that helps.

Dr. Sofie

Aging, environmental exposure and muscles that fold the skin around the eyes hundreds of times a day provide a triple threat to the tissue around the eyes.  The results are wrinkles, textural changes, laxity and discoloration.  In order to get the best results in this area you need to treat both the skin and the underlying muscle. 

I start my patients with Botox. This quick, effective and safe procedure treats the muscle under the skin and keeps it from folding the overlying skin.   This prevents further damage, gives an immediate decrease in the lines and provides a slight raise in the lateral height of the eyebrow all without making the face look altered or frozen.

Next I turn to resurfacing in order to address the wrinkles, pigmentation, texture and laxity of the skin around the eyes. 

We have used Titan, Laser Genesis, IPL, chemical peels, Fraxel and many other modalities all with modest results.  The combination of the Active FX with Deep FX (i.e. Total FX) is the only procedure outside of full CO2 resurfacing that I have seen consistently excellent results for fine, moderate and even deep lines. 

Downtime should range from about 5 day to 2 weeks depending on how aggressively your provider performs the treatment.

BOTOX Cosmetic may be used to reduce the appearance of wrinkles around the eyes. Mild chemical peels or laser resurfacing may be used to help reduce the prominence of these wrinkles as well.

A physician will be able to provide you with the most appropriate treatment options after examining you in person.

Botox is best for your crow's feet. A very small dose (2 units) of Botox injected just below the lower lash line helps with lower lid wrinkles.

A great new technology is Fraxel re:pair, an ablative fractionated CO2 laser that has shown very impressive results for both lower and upper lids. A light glycolic peel also works well for lower lid wrinkles. Surgically, a skin pinch is excellent.

Save the sunglasses for after your treatment.

Good luck.
Dr. P