There are a lot of muscles in your face that create your facial expressions. If you’re excited, angry, surprised, frowning , or smiling, the muscles around your face contract in different ways to show what you’re feeling. The muscles around your eyes, mouth, and forehead tend to get the greatest workout because these areas are involved in many expressions. They’re called dynamic muscles and they tend to show signs of aging first.
When your dynamic muscles contract over and over again, they cause your skin to crease and fold. Over time, these creases become wrinkles. There are different surgical and nonsurgical ways to handle these aging wrinkles so you can maintain a younger-looking face.
Surgical Procedures for Wrinkles
There are several different surgical procedures which can smooth wrinkles. A facelift, for example, can help target the wrinkles around the mouth. In this procedure, the skin is lifted and tightened along the lower half of the face. This includes the jaw, neck, and the lower part of the cheeks. The tighter skin in these areas helps pull some of the skin around your mouth, which will improve the look of those wrinkles and your face in general. A midface lift is a version of the facelift that targets the cheeks, mouth, and the area between the mouth and nose (nasolabial fold). This is a procedure that does a better job of dealing with wrinkles around your mouth, but either one of these procedures will improve signs of aging.
Forehead wrinkles tend to form across the brow and in between the eyebrows, which can give you an angry or tired expression. A brow lift will tighten up the skin across your forehead so that it smoothes out the wrinkles in these areas. Typically this is done as an endoscopic brow lift, which involves using small tools and even smaller incisions to perform the procedure. The muscles in the your forehead are tightened as well as the skin so you can enjoy longer lasting effects.
To improve the wrinkles around your eyes, an eye lift is a great option. This procedure is capable of doing a lot of things for your eyes, such as improving dark shadows or bags underneath, removing extra skin tissue from your upper eyelid so it isn’t droopy, and tightening the skin around your eye to smooth out the wrinkles.
Nonsurgical Procedures for Wrinkles
For patients who prefer a nonsurgical route to handling wrinkles on their face, injectables like Botox are very popular. Botox works by temporarily paralyzing the muscles wherever they are injected (usually in the forehead). This prevents the muscles from contracting and thus prevents your skin from creasing. Your wrinkles become less apparent and some may not be noticeable at all.
Dermal fillers are another nonsurgical way to handle your wrinkles. Juvederm, Restylane and other hyaluronic acids work by improving the hydration of your skin, making it smoother and tighter across your face.There are a number of fillers that can add volume to the face. Among them are Radiesse which is a filler that adds volume to your face using microspheres of calcium hydroxyapatite or Voluma which is a hyaluronic acid..Sculptra also works well to add volume slowly over a period of time in a natural way. The extra volume helps to plump your face in specific areas, such as your cheeks or around your mouth. When volume is added under your wrinkles, the extra volume causes the wrinkles to smooth out, sort of like when your blow up a deflated balloon.
Choosing the Right Procedures For You
Any one of these procedures that are offered by the Williams Center could help you get a handle on the wrinkles that form around your forehead, eyes, and mouth. You may even need more than one procedure depending on your face and the extent of your wrinkles. The good news is that surgical and nonsurgical facial procedures can often be combined in different ways to help patients achieve maximum results. Aging affects people in a variety of ways with a wide range of timelines, so it’s important that you choose the procedures that have the greatest benefit for you.
At the Williams Center, our staff of highly trained plastic surgeons is capable of performing all of these procedures and more. We have facial plastic surgery specialists who are highly trained and experienced in treating signs of aging. One of the most important things to remember about the Williams Center is that our providers exclusively offer and specialize in specific procedures. Our goal is always to give you the best possible results with the safest and most advanced techniques available.
While our practice is located in New York, we see patients from all over the world at our Saratoga,Albany, Manhattan or St. Thomas offices. If you are interested in scheduling a patient consultation at the Williams Center, contact us at (800) 742-2797 today.
About the Author: Dr. Edwin Williams
Dr. Edwin Williams is a double board-certified facial plastic surgeon who founded The Williams Center in 1993. He has performed over 10,000 facial plastic surgery procedures and has pioneered the deep plane facelift. He served on the Board of Directors for the American Academy of Facial Plastic Surgery for over a decade, and served as President from 2015-2016. In 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, Dr. Williams earned the Castle Connelly Top Doctors award in New York Facial Plastic Surgery.
Dr. Edwin F. Williams III attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1982. He began medical school at the State University of Buffalo School of Medicine and received his Doctor of Medicine in 1986.
Dr. Williams is actively involved in teaching facial plastic and reconstruction surgery to the residents of the Albany Medical Center and is former Chief of the Section of Facial and Plastic Reconstruction Surgery at Albany Medical Center where he received an academic appointment of Clinical Professor, Department of Surgery.