Your lips tell your story. They let the world know when you’re happy, upset, or surprised. Unfortunately, they can also give away your age. In fact, the mouth is the first area that many women address with cosmetic treatments. Our patients often start getting fillers in their early 30s. Later, they incorporate additional services to address age-related changes in their mouth and lips.
Don’t worry; building a comprehensive, tailored treatment plan is easy. Board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Ellen Mahony will match you with age-appropriate solutions to maximize the health and beauty of your lips. Lip rejuvenation services also pair well with other cosmetic treatments. We like to say that your lips are the last detail in facial rejuvenation – don’t forget about them!
Mouth Aging 101
Women often come to our practice wondering why their mouth area looks old. The answer isn’t simply collagen loss or sun damage. The lips and mouth are affected by many factors, including:
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Gravity: Gravity is always pulling down on your face. Over time, it causes lengthening of the upper lip as well as deepening of nasolabial folds and marionette lines.
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Bone loss: This causes inversion of the lips and loss of lip projection. Bone loss can make your mouth look flat or sunken.
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Fat redistribution and descent: The fat pads that once sat high on your face shift and fall as you get older. This leads to contour irregularities such as prominent buccal fat pads and perioral mounds. In turn, these concerns contribute to jowls and nasolabial folds. Perioral mounds can also drag the corners of the mouth down with their weight.
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Fat resorption: Some of the fat that gives your face youthful definition gets lost with age. This flattens your features and erases attractive lip landmarks such as your cupid’s bow.
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Sun damage and environmental stressors: Unprotected sun exposure is the leading cause of visible aging. Combined with environmental stressors such as free radicals, it can cause vertical lip lines (“barcode” lips), brittle/dry skin, and pigment changes.
How To Improve Your Lip Look
Aging causes several significant physiologic and structural changes in the oral cavity. The complexity of this interplay creates a three-dimensional challenge to restoring a harmonious and youthful result. Unlike other areas of concern where there may be a single issue (excess fat) that can be addressed with a single solution (liposuction), the mouth and lip region is negatively affected by multiple issues. As such, the delicate proportion and quality of the tissue comprising the mouth area require balanced consideration and highly individualized treatment with attention to these many details. Dr. Mahony will create a plan tailored to your unique needs.
Comprehensive treatments will address the multiple layers of dense and soft perioral tissue to achieve a soft, balanced, and longer-term result. With many effective lip rejuvenation options available, you can find tailored solutions to your top cosmetic concerns at any age.
So, how do you improve your lip look? One treatment, or a combination of treatments below, may be an option for you. In some cases, staging an approach can be useful. Let us help!
Moisture-Boosting Treatments
Keep your lips moist and sun-protected with a humectant (a moisture-drawing agent such as hyaluronic acid) and UV block. Humectants keep the lips naturally moist, reduce brittle thickening, and add protection. Meanwhile, UV block will protect the delicate lip skin from radiation damage. We sell top-quality medical-grade skincare products at our practice.
You can also increase moisture retention from within using in-office treatments. For example, platelet-rich plasma (PRP) combined with microneedling can boost your body’s natural hyaluronic acid production.
Skin Resurfacing
By a variety of techniques, resurfacing the skin will allow the outer dry brittle skin to exfoliate. This offers a variety of benefits, including promoting moisture and nutrient absorption, evening out skin pigmentation/texture, smoothing “barcode lip” lines, and promoting the formation of thicker, healthier skin. Medical-grade skin resurfacing strategically includes skin boosting, which infuses your resurfaced skin with a regenerative serum complex of PRP, HA vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants (exosomes). Skin boosting is vital to restoring and maintaining a dewy, smooth, glowing complexion. If you’re interested in resurfacing, you should consider skin boosting too.
Popular skin resurfacing methods include:
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Chemical peels: Options such as the TCA, AHA, and VI Peels can be customized to your skin type.
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Microdermabrasion: A manual exfoliation technique that removes dead skin.
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Microneedling: This service works best paired with PRP, exosomes, and hyaluronic acid.
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Subcising barcode lines: An in-office surgical method of disrupting deeply etched lip lines.
XO-Vit Micro Infusion Skin Therapy
Although IV drips can help restore our skin’s balance, the most immediate way to repair and rejuvenate the skin is to directly infuse it with the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and amino acids it needs to maintain a moist glow and support healthy reparative processes.
Our skin-boosting microinfusion therapy combines the power of vitamins, minerals, growth factors, amino acids, humectants, antioxidants, and peptides. It delivers them into the skin for a direct and immediate effect.
In combination with PRP, exosomes and hyaluronic acids, skin-boosting micro infusion therapy offers unparalleled results to repair damaged skin, rejuvenate aging skin, and maintain younger skin that has never been seen before. It’s ideal for addressing signs of aging around the mouth.
Volume Restoration
Volume restoration is based on specific goals and ranges from quick hyaluronic acid fillers to more precise work with regenerative and DNA-based resources. Here are some options:
PDO Lip Threads (opens in new tab): Threads can serve as the perfect spacer/softener between the released old, brittle skin and the underlying muscle. PDO threads add thickness and depth to the skin, smoothing deep-etched wrinkles and laying down a matrix for collagen deposition. These delicate threads are foundational for promoting collagen synthesis. Collagen is a protein found in the skin that depletes as you get older.
Hyaluronic Acid Fillers: HA fillers volumize by attracting and binding water. Volume can be added to fill in deflated tissue and/or used to define and contour lip landmarks such as the philtrum, cupid’s bow, and white roll. HA fillers can also be used to lift and smooth lip lines, thus accentuating a woman’s most feminine feature — her lips. HA fillers, in combination with MESH threads, contribute an improved approach to deeper fold and creates a layering of collagen mesh structure and HA volume to more successfully and naturally smooth the nasolabial folds and marionette lines.
Micronized Fat (ALMI): ALMI is stem cell and exosome-based, and it’s a perfect match for you, through your DNA. When it comes to natural and regenerative-based procedures, this is one of the BEST! A small volume of your fat is processed to extract your own regenerative material for strategic placement at the vermilion and cutaneous lip. It’s great for etched lip lines, atrophic tissue, moisture loss, and poor skin quality.
Structural Fat Grafting: As an alternative to filler, fat cells can be used in higher volume and layered to correct a downturned upper lip, soften nasolabial/marionette folds, and add long-lasting structure to the cutaneous upper lip and other youthful landmarks.
Contour Enhancement
Contour irregularities in the face are directly related to fat deposition, gravity, and skin quality. Although we are most familiar with nasolabial folds and marionette lines, the effects of gravity are also seen with the development of fullness at the jowls and perioral mounds. These areas of fullness can be easily refined in the office with slimming procedures, using local anesthetic, to remove minute volumes of fat. Contour is also enhanced when the natural youthful lip landmarks are defined, including the philtrum, cupid’s bow, vermilion border, and commissures.
The following areas are often the focus of contour-enhancing treatments and procedures:
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Buccal fat pads, which can be reduced modestly with a tiny incision along the inner cheek to slim the lower face, define the jawline, and slim features.
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Perioral mounds, which are those little fatty pouches around the mouth, can be smoothed with tiny lipo under local to the area.
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Nasolabial Folds and Marionette lines, which can be filled with small volume fat grafting for a longer lasting result.
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Other youthful lip landmarks, such as the philtrum, cupids bow, vermilion border, and oral commissures, can be defined using injectable treatments.
Barcode Lip Line Treatments
The best solution for barcode lip lines is to get to the root of the problem by releasing adhesions, adding volume, and resurfacing the area. Finally, we can add baby Botox to prevent recurrence.
The following is a typical treatment plan for barcode lines above the upper lip:
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Subcise adhesions by releasing the deep skin wrinkle from the lip muscle under local anesthetic;
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Insert fat , PDO threads or fillers below the skin and into the wrinkle;
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Resurface the skin with chemical peels, microdermabrasion, or microneedling with PRP and exosomes;
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BOTOX® Cosmetic injections to reduce the overactive use of the orbicularis oris muscle.
Why Choose Dr. Ellen Mahony for Lip Enhancement
Lip enhancement requires a delicate balance of artistry and precision to create natural-looking fullness and definition that complements the rest of the face. Dr. Ellen Mahony takes a personalized approach to lip enhancement, carefully evaluating each patient’s facial proportions, lip shape, and aesthetic goals to achieve subtle, balanced results.
Patients choose Dr. Mahony because of her:
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Board certification in plastic surgery
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Extensive cosmetic and reconstructive surgery training
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Sophisticated, natural-looking aesthetic philosophy
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Attention to facial balance and proportion
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Personalized, boutique patient experience
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Compassionate and attentive patient care
Her refined aesthetic approach focuses on enhancing the natural beauty and shape of the lips while avoiding an overfilled or artificial appearance.
Love Your Lips Again with Lip Enhancement in Westport, CT
When it comes to facial rejuvenation, the mouth and lips are signature areas reflecting femininity and health. For this reason, no rejuvenation effort is complete without attending to this last detail! Contact us at 203-221-0102 to discuss lip enhancement and anti-aging treatments for the mouth with board-certified plastic surgeon Dr. Ellen Mahony. Our practice serves patients from Westport and across Connecticut.
Our skin-boosting microinfusion therapy combines the power of vitamins, minerals, growth factors, amino acids, humectants, antioxidants, and peptides. It delivers them into the skin for a direct and immediate effect.
