Dr. Shereene Idriss explains that sagging jowls result from four structural changes: bone loss, fat pad shrinkage, collagen breakdown, and muscle movement. Sunscreen and skincare routines can't fix them because they're anatomical problems, not skin problems. Botox and night guards can actually make them worse.
What do we do about these sagging jowls? Why do we develop them? And what the heck can we do about them?
The dreaded jowl. I hate these things. Even the word sucks. Okay, so first, it's important. It's not a skincare failure. It's not because you didn't have a good skincare routine. It's not because you didn't wear sunscreen correctly. It's not. It's a structural problem.
Yeah, it feels like a face failure.
It's a fun being. It's a structural issue.
Okay.
And so the four things that lead to jowls, right, Is like, we kind of touched on your bone, your structural bone changes. That scaffold that's holding your face up is slowly disintegrating. Right? And so what's happening from there are fat pads in our face, and you have many of them. They start to redistribute and drop in addition to the fact that they shrink. So. And then on top of it, the surface, your skin, almost like the fabric of a couch, doesn't have anywhere to go, plus it's losing that collagen and elasticity, so it tends to just drape around it. So all of those three reasons compounded with potentially a fourth, which is repetitive muscle movement. There are some people who talk a lot like this or pull their teeth, and you could see their lower teeth when they speak. That emphasizes it.
Oh, my God. Does TMJ make it worse?
Very, very counterintuitively, no. Because if your muscle's really big, it might be pulling up your jowl.
Well, then these things would be hanging down in my Botox.
If you Botox your muscle, they may hang down to your boobs. I wouldn't Botox or Master get a night guard. And so that is something that I think is really important that you. So that you don't go buy, for example, a firming cream or a. It's not going to do anything. And so at some point, you're going to have to know where it's like a skincare failure or an anatomic failure.
It's an anatomic issue. It's probably that I have resting base to when I'm not paying attention.
And so I honestly. You really don't. But I think a lot of people feel like they do, and I think that is a huge driver as to why they want to help themselves so they don't feel like they're just hanging and sitting there.
