What Your Lines Say About You: Facial Wrinkles and Suggested Treatments

A skin care specialist is no palm reader or psychic, but she can tell, from your wrinkles, if you are a chainsmoker, a chronic worrier, an avid sunbather, or headed for osteoporosis. To a trained eye, your every facial wrinkle has a story to tell.

Wrinkles are more than just signs of aging. As an organ – and a largely visible organ at that – the skin is also an indicator of your underlying health.

While most wrinkles are nothing to worry about, some are early telltale signs of what’s going on underneath. So before you swipe another anti aging cream on your face, make sure that those wrinkles are what they are, and nothing serious.

To help you decide if a wrinkle is worth another look by a doctor, read through this list to better understand why your wrinkles formed as they did, and what you can about those that are a cosmetic concern.

Forehead Lines

These are called “worry lines” because we tend to wrinkle our foreheads when we’re anxious. This could also be an indication of a high-sugar, high-fat diet without adequate hydration. The best forehead wrinkles treatment is Botulinum Toxin (or more commonly known as Botox), which stops a nerve from pulling a muscle so the forehead doesn’t crease. If applied by a highly trained Botox specialist, you can erase your creases while having enough facial movement to convey your emotions.

Frown Lines

Do you have vertical creases appearing between your brows when you furrow them? Then you have glabellar lines or “angry 11,” appropriately named because they make an appearance when you frown, or because you have an angry resting face. Like the forehead lines, the frown lines can be made less obvious by injections of Botox in the forehead area. A Botox and dermal fillers combination treatment can be done for ‘angry 11’ that remains creased. Restylane works best when injected into areas of thin skin, and it can fill up lines that Botox can’t totally relax.

Crow’s Feet

Canthal lines are wrinkles around the corners of your eyes that resemble a bird footprint. Caused not only by laughing, crow’s feet may have also developed due to squinting – either because of poor eyesight, unprotected eyes when going under the sun, or smoking (causing eyes to squint to protect them from the smoke). Like the frown lines, crow’s feet can be corrected by Botox, as it is what it’s FDA-approved for (along with glabellar lines or angry 11). Similarly, a filler like Restylane can be used as a second line treatment for crow’s feet after the Botox has been injected, and the creases are still apparent.

An at home skin care treatment to address crow’s feet is daily topical application of Dr. Sylvia’s Fibroblast Growth Factor Serum with Plant Stem Cells. The serum acts as a growth activator to stimulate collagen production and slow down the degradation of collagen.

Undereye wrinkles

If there’s one place in your face that reveals early on your lack of sunscreen use, it’s the lower eyelids, where the skin is thinnest and where oil glands are fewest.  Lower eyelid wrinkles can also be aggravated by lack of sleep, and even coupled with puffiness.

Dr. Sylvia’s ELASTIfirm Eye Cream and Serum can help make the thin skin here elastic, and Dark Circles No More Can help lighten the undereye pigmentation and reduce swelling. Dr. Sylvia Ramirez, herself a highly respected filler doctor in Orchard area, Singapore, created a range of anti aging skin care products and treatments that enables her clients to enjoy “confident beauty through science.”

Tear trough

Those orbital rim hollows known as tear troughs can appear as folds that make a person look tired and older than they really are. These hollows can be corrected by dermal fillers to volumize the area, or by a daily application of Dr. Sylvia’s Dark Circles No More so the pigmentation is lightened and the haggard look wiped away.

Nasolabial folds

Nasolabial folds appear when you smile, hence their other nickname, smile lines. Nasolabial folds can appear as deep depressions, and may suggest that a person may be headed for osteoporosis. Both the bones and the skin are made of the same collagen component, so when collagen is lost at a fast rate – indicated by unusually deep wrinkles – the same component found in bones may be losing at a fast rate too.

If there is no underlying medical condition, nasolabial folds can be mitigated by dermal fillers such as Radiesse and Juvederm, which not only fill in the creases but also trigger collagen production. Dermal fillers can be followed up by daily topical application of skin rejuvenation serums like Vitamin C, B and E with Ferulic Acid known for its highly anti-oxidant properties that slow down free radical activity (which further aggravates deep lines and wrinkles) and kickstart collagen synthesis.

Marionette Lines

The lines framing your mouth are also known as laugh lines, but it’s not only laughing that could bring them about. Skin laxity is sometimes responsible for marionette lines, because these wrinkles have deep origins from muscles running down from the corner of the mouth. Marionette lines can be exaggerated by the increased volume of subcutaneous fat due to obesity. An aesthetic doctor in Scotts Road, Singapore, typically uses a dermal filler like Sculptra to plump up this area.

Smoker Lines

Despite what their name suggests, smoker lines – those vertical lip lines or wrinkles around the lips – are not always caused by smoking, although frequent pursing of the lips to smoke is a huge contributor. Smoker lines can also be caused by regular drinking from a water bottle nozzle or drinking from straws. Because the skin around the lips is thinner, Restylane might be amore appropriate dermal filler for this area.

Turkey Neck

The fatty bands around the neck, coupled with sagging jowls, can be both addressed by Ultherapy, a non-invasive FDA-cleared therapy that lifts the neck and the chin using ultrasound technology. Ultherapy doesn’t only address neck lines but also the sagging skin (platysma muscle) that runs vertically from below the chin similar in appearance to a turkey’s wattle.

Crinkly Cleavage (Decolletage)

If you want the decolletage covered, don’t wear a plunging neckline! But if you love to wear off-the-shoulder frocks or low neckline shirts, a crinkly cleavage is not a pleasant introduction to this area. The skin is even thinner here than on the face, and unlike the face, skin care for the decolletage is often neglected.  So if you have wrinkles here, chances are, you don’t slather sunscreen when you soak up the sun. A generous application of Dr. Sylvia’s Oil Free Sun Protection SPF30 30 minutes before going out prevents further wrinkling of this area.

In countless clinical trials, Ultherapy has been shown to improve the cleavage area, which goes well with a lifted neck also courtesy of Ultherapy. Both the neck and the décolletage are FDA-approved treatment areas of Ultherapy, and its use for these areas is fast gaining popularity in laser clinics in Singapore.

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