{"id":22922,"date":"2022-05-13T11:47:36","date_gmt":"2022-05-13T18:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"https://www.realself.com\/news\/?p=22922"},"modified":"2023-10-12T16:51:01","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T23:51:01","slug":"nasolabial-fold-filler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https://www.realself.com\/news\/nasolabial-fold-filler","title":{"rendered":"Nasolabial Fold Filler Is a Popular Ask. So Why Are Doctors So Reluctant to Inject?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Smile lines, laugh lines, parentheses—we’ve yet to find a euphemism that can make our nasolabial folds feel cute. They exist, in some form, on virtually every unaltered human face. Even babies have nasolabial folds, doctors assure us. “There’s supposed to be a line there—it’s actually a natural feature,” says Dr. Sinehan Bayrak, a board-certified facial plastic surgeon in Philadelphia. Yet “we seem to have adopted this idea that there shouldn’t be a concavity or even a hint of shadow there.” She speculates that our cultural reliance on filters and fillers<\/a> may be skewing our perception of textbook anatomy—what is normal. The irony is, she adds, “it’s when you obliterate that concavity that things start looking very weird.” <\/p>

Flanking the corners of the mouth, the nasolabial folds are more complex than the average wrinkle, their heft—that defining skin fold—giving them a sort of 3D quality that intensifies over time, due to inevitable volume shifts and bone loss. “In many people, the fat pads that sit at the nasolabial fold expand with age,” says Dr. Amelia K. Hausauer<\/a>, a board-certified dermatologist in Campbell, California. Meanwhile, the fat pads just above them, in the cheeks, are deflating and descending, and the upper jaw bone is shrinking—all of which makes the nasolabial folds look heavier and their accompanying creases deeper. <\/p>

These changes—and the shadows they cast—tend to draw the eye, causing a great many of us to fixate on this area. Nasolabial folds are, in fact, one of the biggest gripes driving women and men to seek filler, our experts tell us. Surprisingly, though, there really isn’t a simple—or even standard—way to correct them. Some dermatologists and plastic surgeons are actually moving away from injecting them directly, since they’re so unforgiving. “I haven’t threaded [lightly injected] a nasolabial fold with hyaluronic acid [HA] in at least five years,” notes Dr. Papri Sarkar<\/a>, a board-certified dermatologist in Brookline, Massachusetts. When aiming to blur and brighten this area, even the best injector risks overtreating and creating “that bulldog, Simian, central-face heaviness” that makes nasolabial folds look worse after filler, adds Dr. Hausauer. She too is treating these folds far less frequently than she used to, she says.<\/p>

Interested in dermal fillers?<\/small><\/div>Find Doctors Near You<\/a><\/div>

The illusion of improvement<\/h2>

Instead of reflexively filling every fold they encounter, many injectors are honing the art of distraction. “Much of what we do with filler is illusion and redirecting attention,” Dr. Sarkar tells us. She finds that oftentimes, if she “reshapes the face” by enhancing its perimeter—defining the chin, sharpening the jawline, restoring the temples and cheeks—“it automatically makes everything in the middle of the face look so much better.” <\/p>

Dr. Sarkar likens her technique to the approach one might take with a coloring book—outlining an object first to make it pop before shading it in. “Especially for people with more years behind them, balancing the perimeter of the face often means they don’t need the central areas injected—or they need just a sprinkling of filler there—which keeps them looking more like themselves over time, because we’re preserving the natural dimensionality of the face,” she explains. Strengthening the bony frame of the face with filler also “causes the skin to be stretched a little more taut,” she adds, which allows more light to hit the midface, further minimizing the look of shadows and creases.<\/p>

Nasolabial fold filler, before and after<\/h3>
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A post shared by Jolene Retaskie RN,BSN💉SoCal (@jolene_aesthetics)<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>