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  • Botox Injection To Upper Lip To Decrease Gum Show
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The reason you would do Botox in upper lips really is for two main reasons. One is, the people that smile aggressively and the lips elevate showing the gum line too much, Botox can decrease that elevation. The subcategory of that is people that smile and their lips go down too much. I mean if you're smooth in a regular situation, you like the way it looks, but then you smile and the lips completely disappear and they get thinned out, give a little bit of Botox to the upper lip will improve that. The second main category is people with smoker's lines that are vertical upper lip lines. You can actually place some Botox to the upper lip to decrease that. However, most of these patients are older and tend to have longer upper lips to start with, then you have to be very careful with that because Botoxing the upper lips can make it look longer in a patient that already has an elongated upper lip and that's one of the signs of aging. So, in those patients, I would rather do fillers, or dermabrasion, or CO2 laser.

We're going to demonstrate the Botox in the upper lip and I want you to smile for me, a nice big smile. You can see that you can see the top of the gum lines. Relax again. Now smile again. I want you to give a big smile, bigger, bigger smile so when you're really happy you can see the upper gum line. What we're going to do is, you can see that the upper lip basically disappears and gets a lot thinner. So now relax for me. We're going to place a couple of drops of Botox here and that will decrease that. So, it's not a very high dose. Go ahead and put your head back for me. We're going to do one a little closer to show the actual technique. What you want to do is you want to avoid the vermillion border and you want to avoid the philtrum. The reason you avoid the philtrum is you don't want to thin out the philtrum. The philtrum is essentially this area that creates the Cupid's bow. This is the area that you inject, it's a sensitive area. That's all it is, two little drops. [inaudible 00:02:01] little bit of massage, move it around, let it diffuse and that's pretty much it. In a about three or four days, what's going to happen is that the upper lip will be more seductive when she smiles, it's not going to thin out and it's not going to show as much gum.

Botox Injection To Upper Lip To Decrease Gum Show

A more unique use of Botox, a muscle paralyzing agent, is at the upper lip. This patient has noted that she is uncomfortable with the amount of gum show she has naturally when she smiles.