Enhancing your lips with fillers has become one of the most popular, non-surgical cosmetic interventions available. The demand and take-up are growing exponentially. We are going to take a brief look at why people are so attracted to this treatment, the history of lip augmentation, and how it is currently done.
There has been a relatively long history of people trying to adjust the contours of their faces to gain more pleasing proportions; as far back as the 1890, doctors were trying to use fat from arms to pad out facial defects and deformities. This treatment included the lips and was often used in cases of tuberculosis attempting to repair the damage caused by the disease. In terms of enhancement of the lips, sometime around 1900, there were attempts to inject paraffin into them to give them a fuller appearance. In the 1960s, silicone was introduced as a lip filler. However, this gave an initial better look at the long-term health benefits and inconsistent results, including the notorious ‘trout pout’ that led to the demise of this filler material.
In recent times, human collagen has become popular as a filler material. This is much safer and gives a more pleasing effect. The fact that it is a natural product of the human body results in fewer problems with allergic reactions, for example. Around this period, some practitioners were using bovine collagen (cow), which did have a much higher risk of triggering an allergic intolerance.
Although there has been a long-running interest in making the lips and mouth more attractive, many attribute the huge explosion in popularity in recent times to celebrity influencer Kylie Jenner. She has apparently touted this as her greatest beauty secret or tip.
All this talk of allergic reactions, stripping fat from your arms or injecting plastic may give rise to an understandable caution about whether to go for one of these treatments or not. We caught up with Sue Howarth, a technician from Beauty Skin Clinic, to see if she could lay our fears to rest. Fortunately, she laughed when we mentioned lip filler material concerns. “What we use nowadays is a thing called hyaluronic acid. It makes the skin soft and stretchy; it gets less as you age, so it is always good to top up.”
That is a relief to know! Sure enough, doing some basic research on hyaluronic acid, it is true that it gets less as you age. This is not just related to becoming middle-aged or a senior either; a baby’s skin is so much more elastic than ours due to the proportion of hyaluronic acid produced by the body. It is used in a procedure that usually lasts 30 minutes. This natural acid can be used as a lip filler and contour the whole face or parts thereof. Another plus of these fillers is that they are naturally absorbed by the body after nine months, which means they can be reshaped differently should you choose. If you wish to change looks sooner, the practitioner can use an enzyme that will dissolve the injected filler immediately and allow you to start again.
