How Long Does BOTOX Last?
We’ve all seen celebrities and friends whose BOTOX treatments have made them look years younger, with their foreheads smoother, their crow’s feet gone. Those little injections transform them.
With the results obviously impressive, one of your first questions may be ‘how long will I look that good?’
The answer varies from person-to-person, depending on the depth of your wrinkles, the strength of your facial muscles, and the areas where you have BOTOX injected. Overall, you can expect to enjoy the smoothing effects of BOTOX for three to six months, on average.
Since the individual areas of your face are so different, and move so differently, it’s common for the area around the eyes to lose a bit of their BOTOX improvement more quickly than the forehead. Your physician will assess the muscles in your face to explain the duration of BOTOX effects in all the different areas.
People with deeper frown lines tend to have stronger facial muscles in that area (which contributed to those frown lines’ formation,) and thus see their muscle movement return more quickly. In these people, BOTOX might only last two to three months. As wrinkles re-appear, you might choose to repeat BOTOX treatments to keep those areas as smooth as the other, more longer-lasting treated portions of your face.
Now an important factor is when do you ‘start the clock?’ When you get BOTOX treatments, you may notice some positive results immediately, but it takes the treatment a few days to really reach maximum effect. Physicians say that it may take three days to a week for BOTOX to reach its full, transforming results.
As the BOTOX wears off, your wrinkles may be less prominent than before you received your injections, because the muscles in those treatment areas have now gotten used to a more relaxed state. This can mean your follow-up BOTOX treatments will more easily erase those mildly returning wrinkles.
As soon as you notice muscle movement returning in your treated areas, make an appointment for your next round of BOTOX treatments to prevent those lines from deepening, and losing your progress. At each appointment, your doctor will again assess your skin and your muscle tone in the various areas of your face, adjust your treatment amounts, and keep you looking fresh, smooth, and wrinkle-free with each of your desired return visits. You might decide together that your BOTOX schedule is once every six months for an all-over freshening, or you might opt to return every three months for that one area that doesn’t last as long, and have those longer-lasting sections treated every six months.
Your customized schedule will keep you looking as smooth and youthful as possible, and your friends will soon compare you to the most impressively-BOTOXed celebrities and your most beautifully-enhanced friends.
