By now, you are probably quite familiar with the term dermal fillers and have a good understanding of what they are and what they are used for.
Although dermal fillers have been around for decades, 2019 has seen the demand for facial injectables go through the roof, with more and more people making them part of their regular beauty routine.
Dermal fillers are designed to add and replace volume, redefine facial shape and structure, help smooth fine lines and wrinkles, plump the lips and restore a more youthful appearance overall.
Where can you have dermal fillers injected?
In general, you can have fillers injected into those areas of your face where you want to replace lost volume, plump and revitalise the skin. There are many different consistencies and forms of fillers, for use in different areas, and the technology continues to improve rapidly.
When carrying out my initial consultation with patients, I will always look at the structure of their face to establish what areas need to be treated. If you are considering getting injectables, it’s important you work with a professional doctor, who has a sound knowledge and understanding of facial anatomy in order to receive the safest and most suitable aesthetic procedure. Your face is your most bespoke asset and it should therefore be given a completely personalised treatment.
These are the areas you can treat and improve with dermal fillers:
Tear troughs
These are the hollows and dark circles under your eyes that make you look as if you haven’t had a good night sleep for months. They may appear due to the loss of volume, the loss of tissue elasticity or a mild reduction in bone density, which occurs naturally as we age. By using an advanced technique, we can apply dermal fillers in either the tear trough itself, slightly lower in the cheek area, or a combination of both to achieve brighter, more rejuvenated eyes.
Temples
A telltale sign of ageing is volume loss on the temple area of your face. The temples are located to the edge of your eyebrows, running up and backwards to the hairline. This is the area that, when feeling stressed or anxious, you massage to relieve a tension headache. By adding lost volume with fillers in the temples, you can restore a more youthful and refreshed appearance. Although the actual effect can be very subtle to the eye, it can dramatically improve the way you look by rejuvenating your face and enhancing your eyes.
Frown lines
The most common complaint among my clients is having frown lines between the eyes. Those horrible furrows that, as you age, appear between your eyebrows and not only make you look older but constantly angry with life.
Dermal filler can be used to replenish deep frown lines, refreshing and revitalising your face, and, as a result, making you look less angry and more relaxed. For best results, frown lines treatments are a combination of dermal filler with Botox anti-wrinkle injections. Both injectables working together give the area a fresh and youthful-looking appearance.
Cheeks
As you age, you lose subcutaneous fat (fat under the skin) which can result in the loss of facial volume and skin elasticity. When this happens, your cheek bones become more hollow and your skin loosens and sags, giving you ‘sunken cheeks’ and a rather unflattering ‘skeletal’ appearance.
As a result, you may appear gaunt and overly tired with more accentuated naso-labial and marionette lines in your lower face. This volume loss, along with your skin and underlying structures moving south due to gravity, contributes to jowls forming, something we all hate!
Injecting dermal filler into your cheeks can help you restore volume, plump out the face naturally, and give a gentle lift, reducing the appearance of jowls and improving your jawline. Cheek filler will also improve the appearance of mouth-to-nose lines and folds, your nasolabial folds.
Naso-labial folds
Commonly known as the smile or laughter lines, these are the two skin folds that run from each side of your nose to the corners of your mouth.
Dermal filler is perfect to fill out and lift these folds, and when partnered with cheek filler to lift the mid-face, it can take a good few years off your face.
Corners of the mouth
Sometimes the corners of your mouth can droop, making you appear as if you are dissatisfied and unhappy.
Dermal filler can help you look your old happy self by being applied below the corners of your mouth, with a small amount injected directly into the corners of your lips to stop them from sagging.
Marionette lines
Marionette lines run from the corners of the lips down towards the chin and jaw. Their appearance is simply another visible sign of the ageing process, affecting the texture of your skin, which becomes laxer and your facial bones, which seem to start shrinking.
When filling in these lines with dermal filler, they become less prominent and the area of your mouth a lot smoother.
Lips
The perfect pout. Full, symmetrical lips with a cupid bow to die for. Don’t we all want it?
Dermal fillers are the best solution to subtly improve the volume and shape of your lips and achieve a natural-looking, plumper look.
The ageing process is also visible in our lips, which tend to become thinner as we grow older. You can inject dermal filler either in the body of the lip to boost fullness or the actual border to improve definition. Both procedures will add subtle volume and give you a more youthful look overall.
In addition, you can also use dermal filler to correct lip asymmetry such as that caused by scarring.
Peri-oral / Smoker’s / Lipstick lines
These are the vertical lines above the lip which appear when you pout and can be dramatically ageing. Although you can still develop peri-oral lines without having smoked heavily or at all, they are certainly much more common in smokers who repeatedly purse their lips.
If your lines are deep enough to be treated, a small amount of injectable filler can drastically reduce them and help you achieve a much smoother appearance.
Combining this treatment with Botox anti-wrinkle injections will give optimal results.
Jawline
Dermal filler along the jawline can help you create a nicely defined and contoured jaw, which can substantially improve your facial silhouette. A more angular, sculpted, tighter jawline results in a slimmer, more young-looking appearance.
Chin augmentation
With injectable filler you can enhance your lower face by creating a more balanced profile. This is called non-surgical chin augmentation, a procedure which uses dermal filler to add volume, increase chin length, and create better definition in the jawline.
It can also help you correct chin dimples or a horizontal crease across the chin.
Nose
Dermal fillers can now be used to straighten out any lumps or bumps in your nose, releasing you from the need of having to go under the knife.
Injecting fillers into the nose can smooth out slight bumps in the bridge, rectify a crooked nose (particularly in profile view) and even cartilage irregularities at the tip of the nose.
This non-surgical rhinoplasty takes barely 10 minutes to perform and has virtually no down-time.
Hands
People have found that the use of dermal fillers in their face is great for concealing their real age, however, it is more often their hands which actually give it away.
As we age, our hands lose volume and the skin appears considerably thinner. Having filler injected into the skin on the back of your hands can make them appear plumper and less veiny, matching the youthful appearance of your face.
If you are thinking of making dermal fillers part of your beauty routine in 2020, I’d love to hear from you. My first consultation is always free and all treatments are tailored individually to your specific needs.
