The upper lip lines problem bothers women the most. The underlying cause of upper lip lines is loss of volume and elasticity around the mouth. Mostly these lines are much deeper lines that extend vertically way up into the skin and indicate a more aged mouth look and in more severe cases allows lipstick to bleed up into the lines. Upper lip lines are more common in smokers because the action of smoking causes repeated creasing leading to wear and tear deficits in the skin and smoking causes damage to the skin, hastening volume loss. Watching lip wrinkles slowly develop is horrible. But whether you are a smoker or not they appear perhaps because of the association with smoking you hate them even more.
They may start as just one little line down to the lip. At first a carefully applied lip liner and lipstick would disguise it but eventually your lip liner does not go on smoothly and you hope no-one will notice. And after a few periods, the second lip wrinkle arrives. It looks horrible; your lips suddenly go from plump and young to looking like you are a smoker or aged.
Since you can't cure totally the cause of the lines (stop moving your mouth), I tell patients to think about improvement and the need for maintenance treatments as we are not curing the root of the problem. Treatment choices are based on three achievable objectives; diminish the muscle movement (Botox), plump up the lips or fill the lip lines (inject able fillers), or 'sand' down the wrinkles. (dermabrasion or laser resurfacing). Any combination of two or more of these will produce a better result in most patients. While Botox can certainly weaken the muscle movement and cause less puckering, it must be done carefully so as not to create an unnatural lip movement with smiling.
Inject able fillers are a good option if the patient can accept. If not, then dermabrasion or medium-depth laser resurfacing is the only other option. The best results that I usually see is when the upper lip is slightly enhanced with filler and the upper lip is then laser resurfaced at a depth of 50 - 100 microns.
This is probably the best combination if, again, the patient can accept a larger upper lip. It heals within a week and can be done in the office under local anesthesia. Patients will usually have to repeat the procedure once a year for maintenance of good results. However, it is fair to say that upper lip lines defy one single permanent solution.
There has got to be something to get rid of these awful lines. The treatment of lip wrinkles and lines involves restoring definition to the boarder of the lips, injecting dermal fillers around the lip and sometimes into the lines themselves.
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