Facial fillers are often used to restore a natural, youthful appearance to areas that appear older due to wrinkles, fine lines, or loss of volume. Dr. Biesman has decades of experience providing patients with minimally-invasive treatments, including facial fillers, to achieve their desired results. For this article, we asked Dr. Biesman to share some of his insights into the uses and potential misuses of facial fillers. Here are his responses.
Do facial fillers make you look older?
Facial fillers, if not used appropriately, can have all kinds of effects that are undesirable, and one of them can be looking distorted or even older.
Like any other tool, if it’s used properly by someone who understands how to get the best outcomes, using facial fillers should make you look better— not older.
Can too much dermal filler age you?
Using too much dermal filler can distort your face, make it look asymmetric and aesthetically out of balance, and in some cases, it can even make you look older than you actually are.
Are fillers anti-aging?
Dermal fillers are not anti-aging from the standpoint of preventing changes from occurring in our face, but they are wonderful for helping to camouflage changes that have occurred already so that people look younger. So, they definitely correct some of the signs of aging to make us look more youthful when used properly, but they won’t prevent those changes from happening. Those are going to be genetically predetermined.
Describe your approach to facial filler treatments.
My overall approach to facial fillers is a conservative one.
First, I like people at a comfortable professional or social distance to just look good— not look a certain age, not have a certain “look,” just look good.
How do you do that? We use fillers in three ways. We use fillers to correct volume or to replace facial volume if there has been a loss or change. We use fillers to recontour the face, whether that’s the cheekbones, jawline, forehead, or nose. Finally, we use fillers to fill in fine wrinkles or lines. That’s the minority of the work we do, revising wrinkles. Most of what we do is contouring and volume.
So, we use injectable fillers to aesthetically balance the face, balance the upper face with the lower face, and make sure everything is harmonious in such a way that it doesn’t look like people have had something done… they just look good.
At what age should women start getting facial filler treatments?
There’s no absolute minimum age at which you should start getting facial filler treatments. We do see younger people who are born with, for example, hollow under-eyes get filler treatments as early as their twenties. The majority of the treatment we do in people who have started to see changes over time, or if they look back over photographs from when they were younger, tend to be for people who are in their thirties or even a little bit older.
A majority of our patients who use fillers regularly are probably between the ages of 30 and 80.
What age group do you typically see women consistently getting facial fillers?
It’s very common to start seeing people regularly, women and men, in their thirties. In many cases, we can use fillers as the best option to keep people looking youthful. It’s important to maintain skincare, to use sunblock, to take care of ourselves in terms of what we eat and drink, and to use fillers appropriately.
For many patients who are in a younger age group, surgery isn’t an option for them. As people start to get older, sometimes fillers can be used in conjunction with cosmetic surgery, skincare, and injectables like Botox and other neuromodulators for a combination approach.
What do you want to share with women who have had a bad experience with facial fillers and are hesitant to try them again?
Unfortunately, we do see people regularly whose experience with fillers has not been the best.
Why does that happen? Usually, it’s because someone’s expectations weren’t met. In other words, they were hoping to get one thing and they got something else that they weren’t happy with.
Most often, we can fix that. We can get rid of filler that was put in the wrong place or the wrong quantity or was the wrong product, and replace it with something that gives a better result.
It’s disheartening to people when they’ve had a treatment and it doesn’t go the way they want, but do be reassured that in most cases we really can use fillers successfully, even in someone who’s had a bad experience to start with, to get a nice result.
Get More Information About Facial Fillers
To schedule a facial fillers consultation with Dr. Biesman, contact our office at your convenience.
