Fuller lips are a sign of sensuality and youthfulness. For folks, both old and young, lustrous lips are a very desirable facial feature. Social media influencers today are especially concerned with the look and shape of their lips as a sign of beauty and good health.
A lip lift is a minimally invasive cosmetic procedure. It helps enhance the shape of the upper or lower lips. This gives them a favorable curve and fuller appearance, without adding excessive volume to the lips. It also adds to a beautifully enhanced show of your pearly whites while smiling.
The Real Problem of Dull and Lackluster lips
Dr. Talei says that “the lip lift procedure today is not just limited to older people who find their lips becoming saggy or misshapen due to aging. Many younger folks also want to have beautifully enhanced pouts and a harmonious projection of teeth when they smile. Patients in their early twenties go for lip lifts to have some issues with the mouth like ‘cleft lips’ corrected.”
We all know that age and genetics have a plan of their own in our lives. The thinning of lips also happens to be one such undesirable thing. As we age, the elasticity of our skin is one of the first things to take a dip. Lips begin to thin out or the lower lip sags. This makes the mouth appear less of a pout and more of an elongated line. So, you no longer have those luscious looking lips that you loved when you were young.
Dr. Joel Kopelman says that the lips can also look misshapen due to gum recession or attrition of teeth with age.
Lip Lift vs. Lip Fillers
Lip procedures enhance your smile or lip aesthetics in many different ways. But how do you decide which procedure is right for your lips? Here are a few factors which will help you make the right choice.
If you are pressed for time, then lip fillers might be the right choice for you. But if you are looking to achieve a permanent correction to your lip issues, then a lip lift surgery is certainly the way to go.
Lip fillers have become the trend in lip lift procedures. This is probably because bigger, voluminous lips seem to be gaining a lot of popularity. Instagram influencers like Kylie Jenner and many others endorse lip fillers in a big way. More and more of the younger generation are turning towards non-invasive lip fillers to get enhanced pouts. It almost feels like the grunge-girls’ beauty trend of the 90s is back on the scene!
Dr. Talei, however gives a word of caution.
He explains that “augmenting the lips using fillers definitely changes the contours of the lips. It fills out the lip wrinkles and adds desirable volume to the lips.”
Hyaluronic acid fillers have become very popular as lip fillers. These are least reactive, benign gels made of bacterial fermentation to enhance the lips. They happen to be better than the patient’s own fat taken from the abdomen to enhance lips. While it may appear natural to use the patient’s own body fat, it can cause problems later. This is because it is far too different in structure and genetics from our facial fat.
But both Dr. Joel Kopelman and Dr. Talei in a very honest review of these fillers, point out that while lip fillers may be the fastest and easiest way to enhance the lips non-surgically, they can lead to some obvious issues with the lips’ aesthetics and its overall functionality.
Lip fillers like Juvederm, a popular Hyaluronic acid filler, are least predictable. That is, over time these fillers may get channeled into other tiny blood capillaries in the lips and not remain where they had been initially injected. This causes some obvious problems like the filler moving away from all those right spots in the lips which had earlier added to a beautiful pout.
Now the tone thickens instead, leading to bigger and elongated lips which might not look very pleasing to the eye. In fact, the infamous ‘ducky lips’ is a result of fillers leading over time to very fat or stretched lips. This is the biggest reason why people have to keep getting lip fillers injected repeatedly in the right places.
Now for The Lip Lift Surgery
Dr. Talei describes the modified lip lift surgery or deep-plane lip lift surgery as a procedure that may take a little longer for the patients to recover from, but in the end is a better and a more permanent way of enhancing the fullness and sensuality of the lips in a very natural way.
In this surgery, a classic incision is placed at the juncture of the lip and the nose. Any excess skin is removed and distributed evenly to give a natural-looking lift to the upper lip. Since the incision is placed in the crease underneath the nose, the base of the nostrils doesn’t get wider in this procedure. The lift given to the upper lip and to the Cupid’s bow, brings out a better pout. In reality though, no extra volume has been added. This prevents it from interfering with the natural functioning of the mouth. It also gives a flattering ‘tooth show’ while smiling as the upper lip does not hide the teeth too much. That’s how you get a well projected smile.
The surgery causes much less scarring because the incision closures are placed in non-visible places deep inside the nose’s mucosa. The incision has a chance of healing better as it sits without tension in the crease under the nose.
The intricacies of lip lift surgeries are the reason why both Dr. Talei and Dr. Kopelman follow a very strict process when it comes to the aesthetics of lip lift surgery. He says that any cosmetic surgery is a big decision for patients. Having detailed discussions with your doctor about different options is a must before going for any lip procedure. This private consultation leads to better looking lips that are more individualized for you.
Facial aesthetics depend a lot on ethnicity and the natural ratios of the facial features. Dr. Talei says that he can never do the same procedure on, say a young Russian woman and an older African American woman. Standards of beauty differ subtly. Most cosmetic surgeons tend to recreate features which look very natural even after the patient grows old.
What is Lower Lip Surgery though?
In order to enhance the lower lips and give them a fresh, filling appearance it is common to use fillers or V-Y lip procedure. In this procedure the incisions remain hidden. It enhances the curvature of the lips in a natural way. It also helps to hide a ‘toothy’ or even a gummy smile.
Dr. Talei also suggests something called SMAS (Superficial Muscular Aponeurotic System) grafting or dermis grafting. This involves taking natural tissue from the patient’s own body and grafting it onto the lips to add fullness. But this tissue is structurally more similar to our lips and facial tissue.
Many people prefer silicone implants that have often been used to enhance the lower lip. But these can be very stiff for the lips. Even Alloderm, which is a common implant and is softer, tends to contract with time making the smile look weird. He says that for lip contouring and enhancement, benign procedures like grafting work best.
Recovery from a Lip Lift
Directly following your surgery, recovery from the lip-lift surgery can prove to be a little difficult and tricky but manageable. You need 3 weeks downtime for your lips to heal enough to camouflage the surgery. The surgery itself is just about 40 minutes long. At the one-month mark, Dr. Talei suggests that the patient should be given 5-FU to speed up the process of swelling, but not unnaturally.
The healing from lip-lift surgery takes time. Dr. Talei tells his patients that despite the longer recovery time, this is the best procedure out there. It has a zero percent chance of anything going wrong now or in the future. The procedure is permanent and will also age naturally without giving any regrets to the patient years later. Lip surgeries often step up to fill the gap between noninvasive temporary fillers and more permanent lip implants, both of which leave much to be desired.
