Botox to Lift the Corners of the Mouth


Did you know that Botox can be used to lift the corners of your mouth? Keep reading to learn more.

What is Botox?

Botox is a purified protein used to treat wrinkles caused by facial expressions. Think of the vertical frown lines you see between your eyebrows when you frown. Botox is also commonly used to treat horizontal forehead wrinkles you see on your forehead when you raise your eyebrows and the crow’s feet wrinkles you see around your eyes when you smile or squint. Botox can also be used for many other things. One of them is lifting the corners of your mouth. Botox works by relaxing muscles. This gives you the desired effect, such as fewer wrinkles. You’ll see initial results from your Botox treatment in a few days and full results by two weeks. Most people enjoy the results of their Botox treatment for three to four months. But this could be longer or shorter depending on the person, the area being treated, and the dose.

How can Botox lift the corners of the mouth?

In your face, you have many muscles that you use to make facial expressions. For example, when you frown, you use muscles between your eyebrows to pull them down and together. In your lower face there are a lot of muscles, specifically around your mouth. You use these muscles to move your lips when you eat, speak, smile, or make other facial expressions. Most of these muscles attach to the skin around your mouth. Some pull your upper lips up, others pull your lower lips down, and others pull the corners of your mouth outward. These muscles allow you to make facial expressions such as smiling, frowning, etc.

You have a muscle in your lower face called the depressor anguli oris (DAO). As its name implies, the DAO muscle pulls down on the corners of your mouth. Your DAO muscle goes from your skin above your jawline just beside your chin and attaches to the corner of your mouth. You have one DAO muscle on each side. When you contract your DAO muscle, it pulls down on the corner of your mouth. This gives a typical sad face look. Over time the DAO muscle can get strong and sometimes people have a constant state of contraction of the muscle. This leads to the corners of the mouth being pulled down, making you look sad. Botox can be used to relax the DAO muscle. This will prevent the DAO muscle from pulling down the corners of your mouth. When this happens, the corners of your mouth will be lifted by one to two millimeters. This sounds like a small amount, but in this area, it makes a big difference. The DAO is a small muscle, so only a small dose of two to four units of Botox per side is needed. With a low dose such as this, you may need maintenance treatments more frequently than three to four months.

What are the side effects of using Botox to lift the corners of your mouth?

With any injection there are side effects such as pain, bleeding, bruising, infection, redness, swelling, and tenderness. These sometimes happen and go away on their own. You can take Tylenol for pain and apply ice packs for swelling. We can treat bruises with a complimentary laser bruise treatment as early as the day after your Botox treatment. This makes the bruise go away usually within a day or two. You may also see small bumps in the area. This is the liquid that’s placed in your skin and it goes away within an hour or two.

With Botox you also need to be careful that it’s placed in the right muscle. If the Botox accidentally travels to another muscle, it can relax than muscle too. Then you can get side effects. In the lower face the most common such side effect is an asymmetric smile. This is because there are many muscles in the area and they are small and close together. To minimize this risk, you’ll want to avoid heat exposure, alcohol consumption, and strenuous exercise for 24 hours after your Botox treatment. Also stay upright for the first four hours after your Botox treatment without lying flat or bending forward for prolonged periods. All of these things can cause the Botox to move from the muscle where it was intended to be used to another nearby muscle.

Below your mouth you have a few muscles. Centrally (in the middle), right over your chin you have a muscle called mentalis. When you contract your mentalis muscle, sometimes you see dimples or wrinkles on your chin. Botox can be used in the mentalis muscle to treat these wrinkles or dimples. On either side of your mentalis muscle, you have a muscle called the depressor labii inferioris (DLI). You use your DLI to pull down your lower lip when you open your mouth, eat, speak, and smile. The DLI muscle is almost never treated with Botox for cosmetic purposes. Going further towards your ear, the next muscle is the DAO, which pulls down the corner of your mouth. This is the muscle you treat with Botox to lift the corners of your mouth.

In terms of preventing Botox from accidentally affecting nearby muscles, when treating the DAO with Botox to lift the corners of your mouth, you want to make sure it doesn’t spread towards your chin and reach the DLI. When this happens, you may have an asymmetric smile. This is because you use your DLI muscle to pull down your lower lip when you smile. If the DLI muscle on one side is relaxed, you’ll have a hard time pulling down that side of your lower lip. So you’ll be able to pull down your lower lip on the other side, but not the side that’s affected. Therefore, it’s important that the Botox be placed as far as possible away from the DLI muscle. This is done by placing the Botox laterally (away from the midline or chin and closer to your ears). This will minimize the possibility off this side effect. Fortunately, the results of Botox are not permanent and this side effect will go away on its own usually in one to two weeks. It’s faster when a lower dose is used. Sometimes radiofrequency or infrared light can be used to stimulate the DLI muscle and make your smile more symmetric faster. Some injections will place Botox in the DLI on the other side. This will relax your DLI muscle on the other side to make your smile more symmetrical. But it can cause more problems that it will solve so it’s not a good idea.

 Getting Botox to lift the corners of your mouth is an outstanding complementary treatment to getting fillers in your marionette lines or laser skin tightening in the lower face. It’s important to get a treatment from an injector that has a lot of experience in order to avoid side effects.

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Dr. Alex has performed over 10,000 cosmetic treatments with many satisfied patients. Contact us to schedule an appointment for a free consultation with Dr. Alex in our Encino, CA office.

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