Here’s How to Get Natural Looking, Fuller Lips

The lips are more than a doorway to the mouth. They help create facial harmony and balance by anchoring the lower third of your face. Unfortunately, not everyone is born with the kind of fullness in the lips that they desire or that is in proportion with the rest of the face. Furthermore, with time, everyone’s lips begin to lose volume as the body produces less collagen and elastin starting around age 25. This, in turn, has a profound effect on all of your skin and tissues. Certain lifestyle choices, such as sun exposure, may speed up the process, but volume loss happens to everyone. Fillers are a great option for reversing this trend. But we’ve all seen photos of celebrities who have gone too far, winding up with lips that look strange. This does not need to be you. Here’s how to get natural looking, fuller lips.

See a Skilled Injector

An injectables procedure with Botox® and/or filler is the most popular non-surgical procedure in this country. Anyone with a medical degree can administer an injectable, but this does not mean that they should. Restoring lost volume with filler is both technically challenging and requires a keen artistic eye. Even the most subtle augmentation can have a profound effect on your whole face. Whether this effect is positive or negative really comes down to the skill of your injector.

At the Boston Center for Plastic Surgery, Dr. Doherty, and myself are Board-Certified. This means that we have undergone extensive training, passed rigorous testing, and have committed to the continuing education that keeps us at the forefront of innovation. Furthermore, we all have years of experience with injectables. In fact, Dr. Doherty even trains other plastic surgeons in this procedure. This is particularly critical when it comes to achieving a natural looking result with a non-surgical lip augmentation. It is one of those procedures where it doesn’t take much to be “too much”.

Non-Surgical Lip Augmentation Must Be Customized

No two set of lips are the same. You may have inherited your Dad’s lips, but they are not an exact duplicate. Also, there is no perfect proportional equation for the face. Every ethnicity has its own map. Layered on top of this is your own individual anatomy and aesthetic desire. So, your injector needs to not only understand the pros and cons of each different filler as well as which one works best where, but also have the artistic eye to sculpt your lips into harmony with the rest of your face. This is what produces a natural looking result.

Lip Augmentation with Fillers

At Boston Center for Plastic Surgery, we are proud to offer our Boston area patients a wide array of filler options for a non-surgical lip augmentation procedure. These include:

• Juvéderm Ultra
• Juvéderm Ultra Plus
• Teosyal RHA 3
• Restylane Silk
• Restylane Refyne
• Restylane KYSSE

In general, we use a combination of fillers to address the lips as the vermillion border, which is the outside line of your lips, and the Cupid’s bow require more structure than the pads of your lips. Juvéderm Ultra and Ultra Plus are two robust fillers, meaning that the HA molecules are a little bigger, that are also soft. This makes them great for addressing lips that are too thin and/or asymmetrical. Furthermore, the balance between a heavier weight molecule and pliability allows us to deliver those pillow-like lips that so many patients desire while still keeping them soft to the touch. The results of a lip augmentation with Juvéderm Ultra and Ultra Plus will typically last about 6 months.

Teoxane’s Teosyal RHA 3 is a new HA filler that is proving to be a nice addition to our lip augmentation with fillers arsenal. Like Juvéderm Ultra, it is a heavier weight filler that can provide structure while also remaining pliable. The advantage of RHA 3 is that the results may longer lasting.

Restylane is the Gold Standard for Non-Surgical Lip Augmentation

In many ways, Restylane is the gold standard when it comes to a lip augmentation with fillers. This tried and true HA filler has a long track record of delivering safe, exemplary results. It is also a line with a number of different options that work really well in a lip augmentation. Restylane Refyne has more structure so it’s great for the border of your lips while their latest filler, KYSSE, is lovely for delivering fullness. And Restylane Silk is wonderful for diminishing lip lines. Although these vertical lines are technically above the lips, we need to rejuvenate the entire area in order to achieve those natural looking results that we all want.

To find out more about a lip augmentation with fillers procedure with Dr. Leonard Miller at Boston Center for Plastic Surgery, check out our website or call (617) 735- 8735 to schedule a consultation.