– This article appeared in Anne & Stiil magazine’s Beauty Treatment special edition in 2015

When cosmetics just aren’t enough for those wrinkles any more, many women turn to injections. Instead of starting by filling in one wrinkle, Brit-Carmen Norlan, Manager of Christinas Clinic, recommends a full assessment and treatment plan for the face. This gives a better overview of the techniques that may give better results in the long run.

Start with deep moisturizing

Wrinkles are more visible in dry skin. You can make filler injections into such skin but you may actually not even need them. Thus, Norlan suggests you start by improving the general state of your skin and only then see what wrinkles still remain.

Christinas Clinic moisturizes with the Teosyal and Profhilo products. During the procedure, a small capsule is placed under the skin and it starts to moisturize from the inside, binding with the water in your system. This has a particularly good effect on fine wrinkles and freshens your general appearance quickly. After three procedures over three months, you should already start seeing noticeable results. Only once your skin has a good tone can you decide whether and how to smooth out the remaining wrinkles.

Botulinum toxin is good for thin skin

One way to get rid of wrinkles is botulinum toxin, known by the brand name Botox, which helps relax the muscles. This means it is a good way to get rid of wrinkles caused by facial tics. This substance also works against compulsive gestures or smoothing out differences caused by activity in the facial muscles.

Botulinum toxin has another good quality – this potent substance can only be used in extremely small quantities. This also means that, unlike filler injections, you can’t use Botox to create bumps, dimples or shapes in the skin. That’s why it’s appropriate for areas with very thin skin where fillers may remain visible through the skin: including horizontal wrinkles on your forehead, vertical wrinkles between your brows, crow’s feet around your eyes and sagging corners of the mouth.

Facial fillers are effective in smoothing out wrinkles

Facial fillers are a good solution when it comes to deeper wrinkles because they are able to smooth them out. They contain the hyaluronic acid that binds water to your body and helps keep this water in the surface layers of your skin. Juvederm has different products with different consistencies and lasting times, which can be used for creases around the nose and mouth, wrinkles in the lips, the corners of your mouth, and filling in the chin or jaw line.

The unsuccessful cosmetic treatments you hear about in the media are mostly due to filler injections. People tend to forget that injectable gels are intended to fill dimples and wrinkles, not to radically change the shape of one’s face. And, thus, repeated injections can lead to the cheekbones rising so high that eyes become squinted and the person ends up looking like a chipmunk. This is why it is particularly important that the specialist doing the treatments uses a good injection scheme and knows when to say no to the patient if necessary.

Transplanted fat stays in place

If you are seeking more permanent results than can be achieved with filler injections, you can turn to lipofilling. Since the reduction of fatty tissue in the face causes skin to become limper, this is a good procedure for restoring the volume of the face. Lipofilling is also a good option for filling hollow eye sockets and eyebrows and filling in sagging skin around the cheekbones and cheeks.

Lipofilling means the patient’s own fatty tissue is removed and injected into the region that needs correcting. The transplanted fat attaches and becomes a part of your metabolism – thus, the results can last a lifetime. It takes time for the fat to attach, which means this is not a good procedure to use to enlarge the lips as no one can hold their mouth still for that much time.

Surgical threads support saggy muscles

If wrinkles are caused by limp muscles, then the treatment has to go deeper under the skin. You may want to consider support for the facial muscles and underlying tissue because when these droop, they pull the skin with them. This can also reverse the positive effect of fillers in that area.

Thread lifts use Thread & Lift surgical threads, which attach to the tissues under the skin. Threads are used to lift facial contours, cheeks, nasolabial folds and eyebrows. Threads are also good for the fine, upright wrinkles around the lips because they reduce these wrinkles without increasing lip size like filler injections. The lifespan of surgical threads ranges from four to five years and up to a whole lifetime. Surgical threads are popular thanks to their quick recovery times and are thus affectionately called a “weekend facelift”.

Since every woman is different, there are no universal solutions, Brit-Carmen Norlan finds. We must rather find the right method at the right time and often combine different options. Some problems can be solved by a specialist, others need a surgeon’s hand. Thus, she recommends you find a clinic that offers diverse treatments with long-term results.