Seeing lines, wrinkles and folds in the mirror is enough to shake even the strongest confidence. If you don’t feel good about the state of your complexion and facial volume, you don’t have to just live with it. Call Artful Aesthetics in Oakland, CA to see if dermal fillers are right for you.
What Are Dermal Fillers?
Dermal fillers are a family of injectables used to replace lost volume or enhance areas where clients would like a little more dimension to their appearance. There are a lot of fillers on the market today, and each one has a specific purpose. The most popular fillers are made with a synthetic form of hyaluronic acid. Hyaluronic acid is a sugar our bodies produce naturally to keep our skin, eyes and other connective tissues lubricated and hydrated.
These molecules can hold up to 1000 times their weight in water and actually attract moisture to the skin. When we’re young, we have plenty of hyaluronic acid, collagen and elastin to make our skin look supple, dewy and smooth. As we age, our production of all three declines and we’re left with the signs of aging.
What Collagen Does
Collagen can be thought of as the building block for our skin. It’s a protein that forms a strong and solid foundation in the middle layer of our skin, called the dermis. When we’re young, we have plenty of collagen and it’s packed tightly together, keeping the surface of our skin smooth and wrinkle-free. As we get older, our production declines and what was once packed tightly together becomes sparser.
When collagen becomes less abundant, small areas of lost volume appear, creating dips and crevices in our dermis. This causes our surface skin to fall, filling in those crevices, which leaves us with folds and wrinkles.
Elastin
This is another protein that serves a different purpose. As the name implies, elastin helps our skin remain elastic. It does the same for our other organs, keeping everything flexible. When we’re young, we can make expressions, pulling and pinching our skin, and it’ll always snap back to place. Over time, as our skin falls to fill in voids left by the loss of collagen, our elastin depletes too, and skin stops snapping back into place.
Layers of Skin
Our skin is comprised of three layers:
- Epidermis or outer layer
- Dermis or middle layer
- Hypodermis or deepest layer
The hypodermis is where you can find a fat layer and fat pads that give us our contours and facial structure. When you smile and you’ve got youthful and plump cheek apples, that’s because collagen is keeping your fat pads in place. As we age and lose collagen, there’s less holding those pads in place. They can slide down our face, adding volume to the chin and neck while leaving other areas like our cheeks and temples looking hollow and bony.
How Fillers Can Help
A lot changes in our faces with time and the loss of collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid. Fillers can help restore the volume loss that comes with age. Fillers have become very versatile over the years and can be used in a variety of places to restore a more youthful appearance.
Lines, Wrinkles and Folds
Some of the most bothersome signs of aging are the inevitable lines that become etched on our faces. It used to be that we had to consider more invasive procedures if we wanted to make any kind of significant improvement in moderate-to-severe lines and folds. Not anymore. Dermal fillers made of hyaluronic acid can give patients natural-looking yet transformative results, turning back the clock on their faces.
Fillers will not only add volume to these wrinkles and folds, but because they’re made of hyaluronic acid, they’ll actually pull moisture to the area, giving your face a dewy and healthy look. The lines and wrinkles most commonly treated with dermal fillers are:
- Nasolabial folds from the nose to the mouth
- Marionette lines from the corners of the mouth down the chin
- Chin dimples and wrinkles
- Vertical lines around the lips
Lip Enhancement
Most of us weren’t born with the lips of a supermodel, but in reality, neither were the supermodels. One of the most common requests for dermal fillers is to enhance the lips for a variety of reasons. As we age, our lips can thin, sometimes so much that they can look like vertical lines when we smile. Other times, people were just born with naturally thin lips and they’ve always wanted more volume.
Injecting fillers can restore or add volume to thin lips. Because these fillers are made from hyaluronic acid suspended in a smooth and pliable gel, results will not only look natural, but they’ll feel natural too. You don’t have to worry about looking over-filled or too plump. We’ll work with you to make sure you’re getting just the amount of volume you want.
Mouth Corners
Another thing that happens as we age is the pull of gravity on the corners of our mouth. This can cause down-turned corners. When this happens, it can give people the impression you’re unhappy or upset when you aren’t. A small amount of filler can help turn the corners of your mouth up and completely open your resting expression to look friendlier and happier.
Lip Lines
Fillers can now address the vertical lines that blur the border of our lips. Women know these as lipstick lines, and they can make lipstick and gloss frustrating things to wear because the color bleeds onto the surrounding skin. There are also deep vertical lines on the lips themselves. If you wear brighter shades of lipstick, you know you have these lines if, when your lipstick fades, you’re still left with sharp lines of color.
Talk to us about the lip concerns you have and how you’d like them to look. We’ll recommend what will work best to address your concerns and get the results you’re looking for. Our clients are thrilled with the lip enhancement they receive from us. And while the results can completely transform how you look, they always look natural.
Lost Areas of Volume
The deepest layer of our skin holds those fat pads that give our faces contour and definition. As some of us age, those pads can slip, leaving larger areas of lost volume that cause our faces to look hollow. This is especially noticeable on our:
- Temporal area
- Cheeks
- Cheekbones
- Back of the hands
Cheeks and Cheekbones
If you used to have high cheekbones or were born with flatter bone structure, we can help restore or provide contour to the cheek area of your face. Losing volume in larger areas of your face happens gradually. You may look in the mirror and not know exactly what has changed: just that something has. If you smile and your cheeks don’t have the plumpness they used to or your cheekbones aren’t as prominent as they used to be, we can help.
There are dermal fillers specially formulated to provide volume to larger areas. These fillers will provide natural-looking results while seemingly turning back the hands of time.
Temporal Areas
As we age, the thin layers of fat under our temples can thin even more, leaving us with a bony look. This can be made even more prominent as fat settles into the bottom of our face. Certain fillers were designed solely to restore a more youthful look to bony temporal areas.
Back of the Hands
Our hands can betray our age almost as quickly as our faces can. When we lose fat and tissue from our hands, the backs of them can look bony and our ligaments and veins can become very prominent. There are fillers designed to restore volume here, making ligaments less visible and hands look youthfully full again.
Jowls
We’re not sure there’s a sign of aging more dreaded than jowls. When fat works its way downward, it can bunch up on either side of our chin, creating droopy jowls. Filler can help minimize the look of jowls by filling in the skin on either side of them. This can reduce the appearance of a bony chin while making jowls look smoother and not so noticeable.
Who Is a Good Candidate for Fillers?
Ultimately, we need to have a consultation with you to determine if you’re a good fit for fillers. We’ll do an examination of your areas of concern and talk through your goals for treatment. If you have any of the concerns we’ve listed, fillers may be a good solution. Other things we consider when determining if someone is a candidate for dermal fillers are if you’re:
- Over the age of 21
- Not pregnant or breastfeeding
- In generally good health
If you’re looking for a non-surgical, minimally invasive way to temporarily reduce or eliminate the appearance of moderate to severe facial wrinkles, lines and folds, restore areas of lost volume or enhance your lips, dermal fillers may be just what you’re looking for.
What to Expect
After our consultation, we’ll make an appointment for your treatment. We may ask that you stop taking any blood-thinning over-the-counter medication or supplements one to two weeks before your appointment. This is just to reduce the already small likelihood of bruising.
During your appointment, we’ll clean and sterilize the area to be treated. Many of the fillers we use have lidocaine in the injection, so as treatment goes on, your session just becomes more comfortable. A series of small injections will be made to achieve the desired results. We’ll be able to see the results as we go and can show you the progress we’re making.
Results
Part of what makes fillers so popular is the immediacy of the results. You can walk into our office with deep folds, thin lips and areas of lost volume and walk out looking much younger and happier. Our goal is always to make results look as natural as possible and as transformative as our clients would like. We can do very subtle and we can do very dramatic: it’s up to you.
The kind of dermal filler you receive will determine how long the results last. Some fillers will last between four to six months while others can last close to two years. We’ll be able to give you an idea of how long you can expect to enjoy results after we determine which filler is right for you. Following a maintenance schedule can allow you to enjoy consistent results.
Call for Your Appointment Today
You don’t have to live with the signs of aging and the number they can do on your self-confidence. Call Artful Aesthetics in Oakland, CA and make an appointment for a consultation. We are deeply committed to ensuring our clients feel and look their very best.
