Crows Feet Treatments
Like us at Castleknock Cosmetic Clinic Dublin 15 many people refer to crow feet as “smile lines” or “eye lines”. These unflattering terms refer to the same thing, an unavoidable results of the sign of ageing. Crows feet wrinkles begin to form from the outside corners of your eyes when you reach your late-twenties. They may show up earlier for people who don’t take good care of their skin and later for those who do. But either way, crow’s feet are all but unavoidable.
The skin on our face stretches like a rubber band, thanks to a property called elasticity. This means it can return to its original form after being pulled or compressed, pretty important when you think about how much we move our faces. Regrettably, as we get older, our skin loses its elasticity. That’s why we start to form wrinkles and thinner skin of our face start to droop. One of the main reasons for this is that our bodies’ production of collagen and elastin diminish with age. These are the two proteins responsible for our skin’s elasticity, and guess what; the older we get the less of them we have!
One way to avoid crow’s feet would be to never smile, laugh, frown or squint. Since that seems next to impossible, most of us have to look into other ways of fending off those fan shaped wrinkles. For starters, you can protect yourself from the sun’s harmful UV rays by using sunscreen. Dr Kahlout (medical director of Castleknock Cosmetic Clinic Dublin) explains that exposure to UV rays are of the most common ways for our skin to lose collagen and elastin, and eventually,their ability to bounce back. If you’re a smoker, you’re even more at risk. Smoking does kick-start the biochemical processes that make your skin to age faster.
Related Botulinum Toxin Blogs
Dr Kahlout shares his personal views and medical experience about crows feet treatment with botulinum toxin or dermal fillers. In a series of clinic blogs you can read about various behind the scene information related to this wonderful anti-ageing injection remedy. To find out more please click one of the links below:
Toxins for Crows Feet
For some people, creams aren’t enough. But there’s a nonsurgical option at Castleknock Cosmetic Clinic Dublin: muscle relaxing injections for those annoying wrinkles. Crow’s feet are most pronounced when you work the muscles around your eyes, so their appearance is unavoidable when you smile, laugh or squint. Toxin injections literally relax those muscles so they can’t contract. It works by blocking the chemical signal that travels from your nerves to your muscles, telling them to wrinkle. There are different botulinum toxins. Though toxin treatments are generally safe, they can result in complications if the toxin spreads beyond the treatment area, so you should only receive injections from an experienced doctor with good knowledge of facial anatomy and function.
The upside of muscle relaxing injection treatment is that it only takes a few minutes. The downsides are that it involves needles and it doesn’t last forever. To break it down, the procedure involves injecting the toxin into specific muscles around the eyes. No anaesthesia is needed as the needle used is a specialised ultra fine needle, however you’re likely to experience some discomfort. After an injection, it may take up to a week to see any results, and those can last anywhere from three to four months.
There are some side effects (unlikely in experienced hands) that come with the procedure, including temporary bruising and headaches. While the bruising is rather uncommon, the headaches are rare and should go away over the course of a couple of days. It’s also important not to rub the treated area after an injection for an hour or so. Doing so may encourage the toxin to seep into your eyelid muscles, causing them to droop. Unfortunately, there is a possibility of this happening even if you don’t rub the treated area, but the droopiness fades over time.
The bottom line is that while wrinkle injection with toxins can’t completely get rid of your crow’s feet, it will reduce their appearance significantly. If you can tolerate the needles and you’ve got the commitment to get the treatment twice yearly, you can hide those wrinkles with almost no effort on your part.
Dermal Fillers
We can lift and soften crow’s feet at the side of the eyes and the more permanent lines around the eyes with the use of very thin, serum like dermal fillers. Many doctor will not consider dermal fillers an ideal choice for use around the thin crows feet area. However, they can be an adjective therapy in some situations where the skin is thick enough to accommodate the fillers.
Grade I Lines
Serum like dermal fillers are perfect at softening those early signs of crow’s feet. They work by hydrating and strengthening your skin to withstand torsion effects from underlying muscles. Typically an initial course of two to three treatments is needed. Results last 6-8 months. A top-ups would maintain the result every 6 months.
Grade II Lines
Medium consistency dermal fillers are a better choice for more established crows feet. Crows feet that are always visible. Restylane and Juvederm dermal fillers are more robust and gently mould to your skin giving a very natural result. For crow feet it tends to be a single treatment lasting for up to 10 months.
Grade III Lines
Toxin injections are generally the best option for pronounced crows feet with deep lines, but when the lines are a tad too deep, dermal fillers can be used in combination with toxin injections where a loss of volume needs to be restored to give an improved effect.
Fractional CO2 Laser
Narrow micro laser beams target the skin in the wrinkles causing instant ablation of compacted cells in a controlled treatment zones. The ablated areas are replaced with new collagen under the same process of neocollagenesis. The difference between fractional CO2 laser resurfacing and skin tightening is that the resurfacing procedure is a once off treatment. However, a downtime of a weeks is expected for the healing process to complete. Results are long lasting.
Carbon dioxide laser resurfacing – as a standalone treatment – can achieve excellent results in patients with mild-to-moderate surface texture changes. These include fine superficial or moderate static wrinkles but not in those with deep furrows or severe loss of elasticity.
Carbon dioxide laser resurfacing combined with muscle relaxing injections to treat dynamic lines and wrinkles. When used at the time of performing MiniLift for advanced skin laxity it can produce excellent clinical improvement.
Improving Crows Feet Results
You can improve the results obtained through dermal filler or toxin correction of crows feet with natural rejuvenation using a combination of Retinol and AHA. At Castleknock Cosmetic Clinic we recommend using skincare routine from an early age. For the area area around the eyes a combination of intensive eye serum Refine with high SPF factor tinted daily moisturise Protect are ideal. Over the years we tried many and found Demani Skincare to be effective medical grade remedy.
