For the lines you make when you move.

A dynamic line appears when you raise your brows, squint, or frown. A static line is visible when your face is completely at rest. The first is a muscle problem. The second is a change in the skin itself.

Neuromodulators address the first well and the second barely at all.

The product is standardized. What is not standardized is knowing which muscle is producing the line, how it interacts with its neighbors, and what the brow will do once a given muscle is relaxed. That is anatomy, and it is the difference between a natural result and a heavy or asymmetric one.

I inject conservatively, and I never treat all the way across the forehead. The frontalis is the muscle holding your brow up. Relax all of it and the brow comes down, which is how people end up feeling heavy across the eyes and looking worse than when they started.

I want you to still have an expression. Some movement in the upper face is the point, not a failure of the treatment.

This is also why I would rather start light. It takes three to five days to begin working and two weeks for the full effect. If you are still moving more than you would like at two weeks, call us and come in, and we can add more. Adding is easy. Waiting out too much is three months of your life.

The lip flip. A small amount just above the upper lip relaxes the muscle that curls it under, so a little more of the red of the lip shows. It adds no volume and it is not a filler substitute, but for the right lip it reads as fuller.

The corners of the mouth. The depressor anguli oris is the muscle that pulls the corners of your mouth downward. Relaxing it lets the corners sit a little higher, which softens a resting expression that reads as displeased.

A good number of patients now come in during their late twenties and thirties before they have any settled lines, as prevention. Smaller doses work in that setting, and the aim is to stop the muscle etching a line into the skin over the years.

The other group has already developed the lines: across the forehead, between the brows, or at the corners of the eyes. Often what prompts the visit is seeing themselves in photographs while concentrating or smiling and disliking how the dynamic lines read.

It suits most people, and there are a few for whom I would not recommend it. Anyone who has had it before and disliked the heaviness, and anyone whose brow position means relaxing the forehead would leave them with ptosis.

Redness at the injection sites, mild swelling, and occasionally bruising. The one worth planning around is simply not getting as much effect as you wanted, which is what the two-week check is for.