Smooth skin, full cheeks, and pillow-like lips are all the rage. You don’t need to look any further than Hollywood where you’ll find beautiful celebrities of all ages walking the red carpet with radiant skin, full and sultry contoured cheeks, and bold, pouty lips that pull the entire look together.
While you could try to fake the look with a contouring palette and overdrawn lip liner, that’s a time-consuming process that often turns out to be more of a hot mess than a youthful look. This is precisely why so many people opt for a dermal filler.
What Is Dermal Filler?
As we grow older, our bodies tend to produce less collagen and elastin, often resulting in loose, saggy skin that emphasizes age and decreases radiance. Aging skin also becomes thinner, dryer, and heals much slower due to a decrease in hyaluronic acid. This is where dermal fillers come in.
Dermal fillers are FDA-approved hyaluronic acid that can be used to fill your lips, add volume back to cheeks, contour the jawline, fill hollowed tear troughs, and soften the look of wrinkles around your nose and mouth. Hyaluronic acid is a naturally-occurring substance found in your skin.
How Do Dermal Fillers Work?
With the ability to smooth and lift targeted folds and wrinkles, dermal fillers add subtle volume using a specialized hyaluronic acid. It adds youthful volume resulting in a contoured, radiant look.
There are different types of dermal fillers for your injector to choose from, based on your concerns. At Beauty Boost Med Spa, we offer Allergan’s family of filler, called Juvederm. We believe that this family is superior to others in its performance, longevity, and quality. Formulations of Juvederm include:
- Vollure: Softens moderate to severe lines around the nose and mouth by adding volume. We also sometimes use Vollure in the lips to add subtle volume. Vollure can last up to a year and a half.
- Voluma: Used for facial contouring along bony areas such as cheeks, jawline, chin, and nose, also known as a liquid rhinoplasty. Voluma can last up to two years.
- Volbella: Smooths vertical lip lines (smoker’s lines) around the mouth. Also used to fill under eye hollows such as deep tear troughs. Volbella can last up to 1 year.
- Juvederm Ultra or Ultra Plus: Plumps and reshapes the lips beautifully. Can last up to a year.
All formulations contain hyaluronic acid as the primary substance, but they contain other skin-enriching and structure-benefitting ingredients. The hyaluronic acid holds water at the site of injection and functions as a cushioning agent that adds volume and delivers a smoother appearance to the face and skin.
Even better, the Juvederm family of fillers contains lidocaine, a numbing substance that improves comfort and makes the injection process less painful.
What is a Dermal Filler Treatment Like?
Aside from knowing how Juvederm works and what areas it treats, you likely want to know how the treatment itself will feel. Injections take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on the area of your face that is being treated and the number of injections needed.
While you won’t need anesthesia, your injector may apply a topical anesthetic cream, inject a numbing agent or use other means to reduce the pinch of the injections. After the filler is placed, your injector may gently massage the area to smooth and mold the product. After that, you’re all done!
The results of dermal filler are immediate and they will continue to improve over the next 1-2 weeks after treatment.
How to Prepare for Dermal Fillers:
The most important thing is to avoid blood-thinners for three to five days before treatment. Common blood thinners include Aspirin, ibuprofen, alcohol, caffeine and fish oil supplements. Avoiding these will ensure your bleeding and bruising risks are low. To ensure better healing from swelling and bruising, we recommend taking arnica and/or bromelain supplements 1-2 days prior to your treatment for best results.
What Can You Expect After Dermal Filler Injections?
You might experience mild side effects after dermal filler treatment. For the first 24 hours post-treatment, you should avoid strenuous exercise, alcoholic beverages, and excessive exposure to sunlight or heat. Symptoms of swelling can be decreased by applying an ice pack to affected areas.
Common side effects after treatment to include:
- Discoloration
- Bruising
- Mild pain or tenderness
- Firmness
- Lumps or bumps
- Redness
- Swelling
There are several serious but uncommon adverse events including:
- Blindness
- Permanent vision impairment
- Stroke
- Tissue death (necrosis) resulting from a vascular occlusion
- Permanent scarring
It is important always work with an experienced provider for all injectables to mitigate risk and receive the best possible results.
WARNING FOR THE FOLLOWING PATIENTS WHO ARE:
PREGNANT AND/OR BREAST FEEDING
The safety of dermal fillers has not been studied for expecting and breastfeeding mothers. I acknowledge that my medical professional has fully advised me about the precautions of using dermal fillers during pregnancy and while breastfeeding.
UNDERGOING IMMUNOSUPPRESSIVE THERAPY
There is an increased risk of infection for patients on immunosuppressive therapy.
HISTORY OF SEVERE ALLERGIES
Dermal fillers are not to be used on patients with a history of or present severe allergies, a history of anaphylaxis, and a history of allergies to Gram-positive bacterial proteins or lidocaine.
Even though dermal fillers are considered generally safe, rare and unusual complications such as late-onset inflammatory reactions have been reported. A patient with a history of or present severe allergies may develop an immune-mediated delayed hypersensitivity reaction to this Treatment between an estimated 3 and 14 months after an uneventful dermal filler treatment. Studies have reported patients experiencing a flu-like illness or gastrointestinal upset for a few days before developing painful dermal filler swelling and inflammation.
HISTORY OF SCARRING OR PIGMENTATION
This treatment may result in additional scars or change in pigmentation for patients with a history of excessive scarring (e.g. hypertrophic scarring and keloid formations) or pigmentation disorders.
