Botox: Are Botox Injections Safe?
Sunday, April 27th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
For the last few years if you have wanted to eliminate the signs of aging like wrinkles, sagging skin and other lines then it is more than likely you would consider using botox; despite how often this treatment is used, few people understand the method it uses. Before this can be done we need to go back a little in time to when this was originally discovered. The first research into Botulinum toxin was carried out over five decades ago; it was used to treat patients with neurological problems.
It wasn’t until around 1989 that the Federal Drug Administration agreed to allow its use in medical procedures to help people with disorders of the eye; some of these included patients with excessive, involuntary blinking and for those suffering with crossed eyes plus, on occasion, wrinkles. More research was carried out into other medical uses and in 2000 it was allowed to be used on patients that had a cervical dystonia condition; this eases the pain from serious contractions in the shoulders and neck, but it was also given the ok to be used on another more unusual eye condition. In their research, doctors discovered that Botox softened the frown lines between the eyebrows; after further tests in 2002 the FDA allowed it to be used for the first cosmetic enhancement and the drug finally had a new field of use.
Now, botox is injected into a number of areas, one of which is the forehead to help lessen the effect of years of muscle use that causes a frown; when given sufficient injections given over a period of time, frown lines for example, will reduce in intensity. If this procedure is continued, in many instances the lines will soften so much they will seem to disappear; now the same procedure is used on other areas of the face where lines form, generally with age. The injections are a purified and watered down version of the sometimes fatal Botulinum poison; Botulinum toxin can be deadly and at the very least make us unwell but when it is used in cosmetic procedures it is safe.
This popularity is due to the fact that we all have wrinkles and lines (increasing with age) when we smile, laugh and make other facial movements which are the result of muscles in the face. This treatment is able to take back, for a temporary period, all those years of lines, creases and wrinkles that has formed from the use of our facial muscles; many ’skin age reduction cream’ manufacturers have tried to produce creams that reduce facial line but this is the only treatment that works, currently. Because botox paralyzes the facial muscles, normal movement, expressions and gestures are almost impossible to make; that’s why people who have had these treatments can look like mannequins.
Depending on the amount of treatments, a person can look fairly normal but their facial gestures will be restricted so that the creases and lines do not show. Injections of this very popular cosmetic treatment are still costly; often considered something only celebrities can afford because a single injection can cost anywhere from a few hundred to over a thousand dollars. It may be a few years yet before we see the result of long term use of botox but that doesn’t seem to concern those people who are using it at this moment.
