“I have an opportunity today to talk a little bit about some minimally invasive options for improving or enhancing our facial appearance, and actually other areas. One of them is the injectable neuromodulators; the big fancy term for a group of medicines that affect our facial expression. These are really adverse facial expressions like the frown lines between the eyebrows, the crows feet area as well as forehead lines and some other areas in the face. The main products we use for that are Botox, which everybody has heard is a household name now. Dysport, which was approved a few years ago and is a very good competitor to Botox. Now there’s a newer one, Xeomin, and soon to be a fourth one within a year or so. So let me just say a few words about the products themselves, and how they work. Then we’ll get in to a little bit about what they do for you, or what indications we would be looking at for each individual. There are three major products that we use as neuromodulators: Botox, Dysport and Xeomin that are currently available in the United States, and my preferences right now are still limited to Botox and Dysport for some specific reason; Xeomin being the newer one.
All of these are actually naturally occurring proteins. People think of them originally discovered as poisons that were in canned foods. But like any medicine in the right dose, they can be great for people, and then the wrong dose or in higher doses they can be poisonous. So the thought of these as being poisonous or dangerous to people has largely been overcome.
Now I think everybody understands that Botox and Dysport in the right doses are very beneficial. Again they’re naturally occurring proteins, they’re used in a tiny little needle injection specifically in the muscles that we’re targeting, and it relaxes that muscle for period of three or four months on average. Although, we do have some patients that will go as long as about 6 months. So on average, our patients are here two or three times a year getting Dysport or Botox, and that’s a great supplement to whatever program we’re doing to manage the aging process: The angry scowl, the tired look. There’s a lot of benefits in terms of using these.
So welcome to the clinic and hopefully we can go ahead and get a little Botox and Dysport for you today.”
