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April15
V
erne Maree explores
two popular cosmet ic
procedures for treating
ageing skin
After five or six years of semi-regular “facial
injections” – one of the popular euphemisms for
Botox and other minimally invasive line-smoothing
treatments – I’m a firm fan of the genre. My job,
lucky me, keeps me in touch with new developments
and with all sorts of health and beauty professionals,
including DR WONG CHIN HO.
As a certified plastic surgeon, Dr Wong has an anti-
ageing armoury that offers everything from composite
facelift surgery, cosmetic rhinoplasty (or nose-job)
and breast augmentation, reduction or reconstruction,
through to the whole gamut of non- and minimally
invasive procedures, including injectables like Botox
and fillers. He can even give you a dimple!
Lift me up
For treating lines, Botox is best used on the upper face, says
Chin Ho: around the eyes and on the forehead. Personally, I’m
not so bothered about lines; what I like is the subtle brow lift
that Botox can create.
Lifting the brow with Botox really is an art, he agrees, and
different practitioners do it differently. Essentially, it involves
injecting and deactivating the brow depressor muscle or
orbicularis
oculi
, so allowing the brow elevator muscle at the top of the
forehead to do its job more effectively. He also injects in a line
down the middle of the forehead, which somehow “tricks the
brain”. The series of injections takes a couple of minutes and is
really quite bearable, especially if you gabble a bit to take your
mind off it.
Though he’s a fan of Botox, Dr Wong thinks that its ability to
lift the brow ability is somewhat oversold. For the bit of excess
skin on my upper eyelids, he would rather recommend surgery. To
make his point, he shows me three photos of one of his patients:
after one week, after two weeks and after three months. The
effect is remarkable, yet looks quite natural; definitely something
to think about.
Fill me in
Four or five years ago, a lovely doctor injected a little facial filler
to soften my naso-labial folds: the lines that run from the sides of
the nose to the corners of the lips and tend to deepen with age.
Told to expect the effect to last up to a year at most, I’m surprised
and pleased that the lines still haven’t come back.
I only wish that Botox would linger longer than a measly four
to six months. But I wonder: what if you
weren’t
happy with your
filler and it
didn’t
wear off as predicted? No problem, says Dr
Wong – it’s reversible. There’s an injectable “antidote” call Hylase
that swiftly dissolves hyaluronic acid fillers.
“The thinking about fillers has advanced a lot in recent years,”
he explains, “and that’s because we now understand that beauty
is not skin deep, but bone deep.”
It can help two distinct groups:
Firstly,
younger people
with a specific concern relating to a
weakness in their facial bone structure, such as eye bags or
sunken eyes; this can even be regarded as a form of congenital
premature ageing.
Secondly,
older people
with age-related deflation, sagging
and bone resorption, especially around the eyes and on the
cheekbones. For them, filler can be used not only to fill creases
and to lift sagging, but also to correct age-related skeletal
deficiencies.
“We now
understand
that beauty
is not skin
deep, but
bone deep”
– Dr Wong Chin Ho