Botox injection to upper lip to decrease gum show "gummy smile" or smoker's lines

This morning, we're going to discuss another specialized use of Botox, and that's to the upper lips. The reason you would do Botox to the upper lips really is for two main reasons. One is in people that smile aggressively and the lips elevate, showing the gum line too much Botox can decrease that elevation. A subcategory of that is people that smile and their lips thin out too much. I mean, if you're smile in a regular situation, you like the way the lips look, but then you smile and the lips completely disappear and they get thinned out. Doing a little bit of Botox to the upper lips will improve that. The second main category is people with smoker's lines or the vertical upper lip lines.

You can actually place some Botox to.

The upper lip to decrease that. However, most of those patients are older and tend to have longer upper lips to start with. And 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'd rather do fillers or dermabrasion or CO2 laser. We're going to demonstrate the Botox that upper lip.

I want you to smile for me. Nice big smile. And you can see that. You can see the top of the gum line.

So they relax again.

Now smile again. And when she does a big smile.

A bigger, bigger smile.

So when you're really happy, you can see the upper gum line. And what we're going to do, 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. We're going to do this. Go ahead and put your head back for me. We're going to zoom in a little closer to show the actual technique. What you want to do is you want to avoid the vermilion 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. Sensitive area. That's all it is. Two little drops, one on either side, a little bit of massage, move it around, let it diffuse, and that's pretty much it. So in about a few days, 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.

Thank you.