Will Botox Become Less Effective If I Use it Too Much?
By Michele Shermak | Published on July 23, 2010 | 0 Comments
Botox absolutely will not become less effective if a patient uses it regularly, says Dr. Michele Shermak, MD. A leading plastic surgeon in Baltimore, Maryland, Shermak explains that Botox is actually a natural substance found within the human body. Because of this, the body cannot develop a tolerance to the Botox injections.
The reason for this has to do with nerve pathways. Botox acts on a pathway that simply cannot get exhausted. “It works on a nerve pathway between one nerve ending and another nerve ending,” she says. “And it is just not a system that is going to get saturated, since we are passing messages between nerves all the time.”
Of course, this fact doesn’t stop people from questioning whether their Botox treatments are becoming less effective after they start having them regularly. Shermak says that some patients may mistakenly believe that their Botox injections are not having as much effect one or two years down the line, but the truth is that their wrinkles aren’t as deep as they once were and the Botox does not have as much of a line to erase. “I do think that as people use Botox more, the wrinkles are less pronounced,” Shermak says. “So when you come in the first time never having had Botox, your wrinkles are going to be pretty deep. But if you come in for the refresher six months later, the wrinkles will not really be as deep.”
As a plastic surgeon in Baltimore, Shermak regularly works with patients who come in requesting Botox on their foreheads and around the eyes. She says that she prefers to use Botox in the area around the eye and above, and rarely uses it on the lower part of the face.
The best place to use Botox is actually in between the eyebrows. “It’s called a furrowing of the forehead,” she says. Additionally, it is common for women to come in and request Botox as a way to get rid of their laugh lines, which is another name for crow’s feet.
Although there are physicians who will inject Botox into the lower faces of patients—primarily to get rid of the neck bands that some older patients complain about—that is not especially common in Shermak’s practice. Instead, she prefers to focus on volumizing facial treatments like Restylane and Juvederm for those lower facial areas.
Shermak says that not every plastic surgeon in Baltimore is using Botox to treat the neck bands and other areas of the lower face, and that the practice is “a little more radical.” Nonetheless, she says that she can almost always find a solution for every patient, even if Botox isn’t necessarily the answer.
When it comes to the frequency with which Shermak’s patients come back for their Botox refreshers, she says that can vary from patient to patient. Some people prefer to come back to have their wrinkles refreshed with a Botox injection once every six months, while some come in more or less often.
Unlike some other treatments, Botox does not seem to be any more or less effective the more a person uses it. Because of that, Botox is seen as an extremely safe solution for getting rid of wrinkles and lines in the faces of patients of all ages as long as a plastic surgeon who has received the proper training is the one handling the injections.
The information in the article is not intended to substitute for the medical expertise and advice of your healthcare provider. We encourage you to discuss any decisions about treatment or care with an appropriate healthcare provider.
*Disclaimer: The information on this website is not intended to substitute for the medical expertise and advice of your healthcare provider. We encourage you to discuss any decisions about treatment or care with an appropriate healthcare provider.