Are Botox Cosmetic Injections Safe For The Face?
You may have heard the term Botox while surfing on the internet or coming across advertisements on your television. There are a lot of celebrity magazines and blogs which promote the successful popularity of Botox. Even if you have heard about Botox, you may have listened to the cons of the procedure. You often tend to get a contrary idea about something when you are not entirely aware of what it does. Due to this, you can have multiple misconceptions about the procedure which makes you doubt its safety.
The Food and Drug Administration in the United States has clinically certified Botox procedure to be safe in the year 2002. You can now quickly get it done when you are prescribed as per a beauty professional or dermatologist. The FDA approved Botox procedure in 2002 in terms of its cosmetic usage. However, the same process was approved by the FDA for medical reasons way back in the year 1989. At that time, medical purposes were mainly considered for Botox when you had problems related to uncontrolled spasm of muscles.
In 2017, the population of the United States majorly promoted the use of botulinum toxin as the most significant cosmetic procedure. This method was non-surgical and accounted for 1,548,236 injections of Xeomin, Dysport, and Botox. Majorly top physicians and skin care experts would perform such procedures.
What do you mean by Botox Cosmetic?
The name Botox comes from the merging of two words- botulinum toxin. The key compound used in this cosmetic procedure is onabotulinumtoxin A. You can undergo Botox procedure to serve three main purposes:
- Cosmetic enhancement
- Relief from excessive sweating of underarm
- Controlling unbearable muscle spasm
In this article, you will get to have an idea about the first purpose of this procedure that involves cosmetic upgrading. The product that you should use for this purpose is known as Botox Cosmetic. It consists of:
- The critical component botulinum toxin of type A
- Sodium chloride (NaCl)
- Human albumin protein (present in the blood plasma of humans)
You mainly go for Botox when you need to smoothen the glabellar lines or frown lines on your face temporarily. These lines are mostly present in between your eyebrows, which makes you look weary, angry or irritated even when you are not. The FDA has approved the procedure for its use in this part of the face only for cosmetic upgrading. However, you may even find its usage for other regions of the face, including:
- Marionette lines- present at the corners of your mouth
- Horizontal lines on your forehead
- Smoker’s lines near your lips
- Crow’s feet
Are you the right applicant for Botox?
According to the FDA approval in the United States of America, you are fit to undergo Botox procedure between the ages of 18 to 65. However, you need to pay attention to the limitations of experiencing Botox if you have any of the problems listed below:
- Allergic to any of the components present in the Botox cosmetic kit.
- Allergic to some other brand containing botulinum toxins, such as Dysport, Myobloc or Xeomin. If you have suffered any side effects from any of these ingredients in the past, do not opt for the procedure.
- Breathing issues like asthma.
- Difficulty in swallowing.
- Any infection on your skin or other items in the area of Botox injection.
- Weakness in the muscles of your forehead.
- Bleeding problems.
- Any plans for undertaking a surgery.
- Any operations conducted on your face in the past.
- Disorders are affecting your nerves or muscles like Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS), Lambert-Eaton syndrome or Myasthenia Gravis.
- Undertaken any vitamins, medications or nutritional supplements in the recent past.
- Baggy eyelids.
In general, you do not need to be afraid of undergoing Botox if you are pregnant or in the breastfeeding phase. Botox injections do not spread to extreme locations via your body like affecting your fetus or infants being breastfed. However, there are no clinical studies that have been carried out on pregnant mothers to test the extremity of this procedure on them. Thus, you cannot be very assured about the ethical issues related to Botox cosmetics procedures.
How is the working mechanism of Botox?
You get wrinkles on your skin with the natural process of aging because of the contraction of muscle fibres. This results in the formation of lines across your surface. For example, your forehead muscle forms a vertical line typically. When it starts to contract as you raise your eyebrows, the wrinkled lines formed will become horizontal. The same thing happens with the muscle lines present in between your eyebrows. They usually are horizontally placed, but as they contract, you get vertically solid frown lines.
To get rid of such problems, Botox comes to your rescue that non-surgically fixes your frown lines and wrinkles on your face. The Botox injections are directly pushed into your muscles to prevent the signalling of nerves to those tissues. Thus, the contraction of muscles that was causing frown lines on your face gets significantly reduced, thereby generating a smoother appearance. Now it becomes difficult for your skin to wrinkle because of less or almost no muscle contraction beneath it.
What if you have facial lines even in relaxed conditions?
This is one big factor that you need to keep in mind before considering yourself for a Botox injection. If you find yourself having facial lines even when your face is relaxed, do not undergo Botox. Dermal fillers can fix such kind of problems. If you go for Botox, you will only get your lines smoothened for a short time, but can never completely remove them.
Is the procedure painful?
Any injections can cause a certain amount of pain. However, the doses used for Botox are really small, and thus the pain is minimal. Moreover, if you choose a trustable place like DermaniMedspa, you will not have any problem at all.