In this article we are going to talk about treatments for smoker’s lines around mouth, why these treatments work particularly well for them and when that might not be a good course of action. Smoker’s lines are the vertical lines that people get around the lips. The most common are around the top lip, but you will also see them in more severe cases in the corners of the mouth. This can be a huge problem if a person also has droopy mouth corners. They happen in men and women and actually the term smoker’s lines is a little bit misleading. Anyone can get these lines.
As with all wrinkles, they’re caused by aging and by muscle activity. In the case of smoker’s lines, over time, with skin aging and with a decline in collagen and elastin, you get these vertical lines. And yes, smoking does exacerbate them and it does make the lines worse, but plenty of people who’ve never smoked in their life also have these lines. So it’s just important to clarify that this isn’t the only reason you get them. With these lines, quite a few people are bothered by them and that’s why they want to know what treatments would work best for them.
They complain that smoker’s liners are just causing unnecessary attention to their mouth, because your lips are a very prominent part of your face. And if they wear makeup, then makeup is kind of caking in there and making it look worse. Also, if you’re wearing a lipstick or lip liner, you lose definition of the lip and you find this feathering or bleeding of the lipstick in that area. With that being said, three are a few treatments available.
One of them is to relax the muscles in this area, especially the top muscles and Botox anti-wrinkle injections can be used for that. These injections relax the muscles at the top. The Botox will stop the muscles from making the wrinkles bigger or worse. That can be combined with a dermal filler such as Teosyal RHA2. It’s a hyaluronic acid dermal filler that’s been specifically designed for use in really mobile areas. It’s a really soft filler, it’s not there to augment or to plump up, it’s just there to provide support without having any visible fullness in that area, which you don’t want, you don’t want that kind of bulky effect.
You see results straight away, but then, as the Botox kicks in about two to three weeks, you start to see the combined effect and the filler settles by then. It acts as a support and it lifts up the wrinkle. It also goes around the lip line itself, which restores that really important boundary between the lip and the rest of the the skin around the mouth. You get a younger-looking, a fresher-looking lip because you’ve restored that border and you’ve strengthened it.
You also get smoothing of the wrinkles around the mouth, and then with the Botox you stop them from getting worse. The fillers themselves last about 6 to 8 months, in some people a little bit more than that, and then the Botox lasts about 3 to 4 months. Each person has their own needs, their own expectations and that’s the beauty of these treatments. If you take a personalized approach, you always end up with the right treatment for the right patient. There are other ways to treat these lines. Some people use laser therapy to resurface these lines, but it doesn’t really provide any lifting of the skin.
For very fine or early lines, microneedling can work quite nicely because it stimulates collagen around this area. Profhilo might work quite nicely in earlier cases, because it refreshes the skin and it stimulates collagen, so that you don’t proceed to these marked wrinkles. And then of course, in really severe cases where there are really extreme lines, you may end up requiring something like surgical intervention. But for most cases, these treatments seems to be quite good for moderate or moderate to severe vertical lip lines or smoker’s lines.
