Should You Get Botox Around the Mouth?

So I wanted to talk about Botox around the mouth. It's an area where we see a lot of injectors talk about, they inject themselves, patients come in asking for it. For example, Botox around the DAOs, the mentalis, around the mouth, upper lip, lower lip, neck line, all that kind of stuff. It's an important topic to discuss, because obviously the FDA approval of Botox is 11s, crow's feet, forehead, but we use it throughout. We use it for armpits, sweating, hands, a lot of different things.

But what you want to realize is that Botox relaxes muscles and relaxes movement. There are certain movements you don't need to make. You don't need to frown, right? I mean, why do you need to frown? But you do need to move your mouth. When you talk, it moves, right? It's got to move. So if you're frozen solid, if you are completely stiff around the mouth, upper lip, lower lip, you may have no lines, but you look really weird.

And you see a lot of injectors inject themselves, and they'll make videos on Instagram when they're talking, and you're like, what? There's something about this person. There's something you can't touch on. What is it? Something that just doesn't look right. Well, guess what that something is? The something is, this is unnatural.

So I don't like to chase lines. I want you to look beautiful, balanced, three-dimensional, rested looking. But my goal is not to eradicate every single line in your face. If you do that with fillers, if you do that with Botox, guess what happens? You look unnatural, especially around the mouth. The same thing goes with fillers, right? If you overfill this area, it is stiff, it doesn't move. When you smile, it just doesn't move. If you inject this area, upper lips, lower lips, so you have no lines, then you talk like this and you kind of look weird. So please, look natural. Natural is important.

These things scare people. If all of a sudden Judy or Julie or Sam, who's never tried Botox before, sees you at a dinner party and you just look odd, they're never going to want to try Botox, because they're afraid of Botox now. It's not the material, it's the injector, the injection pattern. So when done properly, you can actually have a really nice result.

But it's important to realize that the people that are doing really good work on anything, whether it's a carpenter, plumber, injector, plastic surgeon, only a small portion of people really are experts and do a good job. The vast majority kind of do an average job, and some do really horrible jobs, obviously. But don't look at what you see across the table at dinner or on Instagram as, this is Botox, this is a nose job, this is plastic surgery. It isn't. It may be that they went to somebody who wasn't doing an expert job at that. Same thing, like I said, with a painter, plumber, HVAC worker, car mechanic, whatever. You're going to find experts. Your job, it's a tough job, I feel for you, the tough job is finding that expert.

But over-injecting Botox and fillers around the mouth is a bad sign. It's a no-no. Don't do it. When you come in here, you'll come in and ask for certain things, and I will examine you, and I'll tell you, yes, you need that. But nine out of ten times I actually tell you, hmm, you need this. Let me divert your attention to something that actually is going to make you look better. And 99 out of 100 times patients walk out of here going, oh wow, I'm glad I listened to you, I'm glad I did it, instead of just doing what was a trend on TikTok or Instagram. So I look forward to seeing you.