Can Fillers Make You Look Old?
The Truth About Aging and Injectables

Hello everyone and welcome to the SKIN Report. We are going to talk about can fillers make you look old? This is a very heavily searched topic. It’s something a lot of my patients ask me about, and that is because we have examples of friends celebrities who don’t look themselves anymore and many people attribute that to their use of fillers. We’re going to talk about how fillers can make people look old, how not to use fillers, and use them in ways where you can enhance your appearance, not look older.

Let’s start with what is a filler? A filler is a hyaluronic acid based gel that can be injected underneath the skin to create volume, and in some cases, a little bit of a lift. Fillers are designed to enhance the face so that you can enhance the appearance of features that complement your face or make volume corrections when people have lost volume in places like their lips or cheeks. But interestingly, there are examples of people in the media or celebrities or people you may know who actually don’t look enhanced but look like somebody else because they used fillers or also many times look older because of the use of.

The most common reason why people can look older when they use fillers is when they have overused them. And I’m going to specifically talk about what kind of overuse I’m referring to. The first and most common place people overuse fillers is in their cheeks. When we apply fillers or inject fillers into the cheek, this is done to replace a fat pad that we normally have on our cheek right here in the center of the face, and that fat pad does go down with age or if you had a lot of weight loss. When you restore that fat pad, you should only put enough filler to restore to its original size.

When injectors add more volume than what was naturally in that area, you are going to start seeing that the eyes look smaller, the face just looks puffy.

The other area in the cheek area that can look overfilled and give someone an older appearance is the lateral part of the cheek. If you overfill the lateral or the sides of the cheek, which a lot of injectors will do in an attempt to lift the face, you are going to widen the appearance of the face. As people age, their face naturally gets a little fuller, and while they’re sagging downwards, they also have a little more fat in the lateral part of the face. You are just enhancing that process by adding more filler in an effort to cause lifting in that area.

The next area where you can worsen the appearance of your face or look older with filler is in the jawline. Fillers can be put in the chin and jawline and can really complement the face. However, if done incorrectly or overdone, you can have the opposite effect. If you put too much filler in the jawline in an effort to enhance a recessed jaw or to reduce the appearance of lax skin underneath the chin, this can lead to widening of the face. Widening of the face, again, naturally occurs when we start losing volume in the upper part of our face and our skin starts sagging downwards. Now, if you add filler to this process in the lower part of the face, it can give this appearance of a widened face or a larger or chubbier face, again, leading to not looking yourself and also looking older.

Another area where fillers can make you look older is by injecting in the nasolabial folds. The nasolabial folds can look deeper when people lose volumes in the front of their cheek or anterior cheek and their skin starts folding downwards. And when this starts happening in the early phases, putting a little bit of filler to soften the nasolabial fold can really complement the face. But most importantly, it’s important to first restore the volume in the cheek to create a lift. And then if you do need a little bit of filler in the nasolabial folds, you can add that in a very elegant and very undetectable way.

When people start going after that nasolabial fold deepness aggressively by putting a lot of filler, they’re going to start seeing that their smile is restricted. And we see this in a lot of celebrity examples where when the celebrity or the actor or actress is smiling, it looks like the corners of their mouth don’t fully lift up. That’s because they have so much nasolabial fold filler that it actually restricts their smile. This is a common issue that you see after injectors have put a lot of volume in the cheeks, and now they’re not getting any more reduction in the nasolabial fold, so then they start adding filler in that area, again, creating a lot of centralized fullness. So not only does the face look very pillowy, but it also has restriction of expression.

Now that I’ve told you all the different ways that filler can make you look old, you are probably wondering, is filler even useful? Why do we even offer it in aesthetics? And what can be an alternative?

Filler is very effective when used correctly. It’s a great way to make small enhancements because you can do so quickly, but also elegantly and precisely. I do use fillers in my practice because they do have a space in aesthetics. They can provide great solutions, but when overdone, of course, they will give the opposite effect.

If you’re nervous about using fillers or you’re wondering what are some good alternatives to address an aging face that can help restore natural volume and give a lift? My favorite in this area is a product called Sculptra.

Sculptra has been around for decades, and that’s for a good reason. Sculptra is not a filler, but it’s an injectable that is injected underneath the skin to stimulate collagen production. What Sculptra does is it creates collagen in areas where we’ve lost fat, and this was fat that was helping us lift the skin on our face.

When you inject Sculptra, you do it in a more global way. Normally we inject Sculptra underneath the temples to restore the fat pad that helps keep the eyes lifted. We also inject it in the cheek area, in the center of the face and the lateral part of the face to create a nice lift with a little bit of subtle volume enhancement. And finally, Sculptra is injected in the lower face right by the ears to anchor back your skin so that you have an overall lifted face.

Sculptra can be beautifully used with fillers, and what I typically recommend, if you are not in a rush, is to do a series of Sculptra treatments. We typically do three sessions of Sculptra spaced about six to eight weeks apart. Wait for about six months to see your final results with the Sculptra. And then do a little bit of filler work if needed in a form of precision so that you can have a natural youthful appearance without any concerns of overdoing your fillers.

There have been a lot of celebrities who’ve come out and talked about how they reversed their fillers, but this doesn’t mean fillers are contraindicated or fillers will always make you look old. Fillers can make people look more youthful, they can enhance their features, but only if done correctly.

If you have any questions about fillers or Sculptra that we did not discuss today, please leave it in the comments. And if you haven’t done so already, please subscribe. Turn on your notifications so that you always know when we release new content.