Lips are one of our favourite and most requested places to inject. Our lips, like other parts of our body, age over time.

Here are some ways in which our lips age:

• Loss of collagen: Collagen is a protein that gives our skin its elasticity and plumpness. As we age, our body produces less collagen, which leads to thinning of the lips.
• Decrease in hydration: As we get older, our body’s ability to retain moisture decreases, which can make our lips appear dry and cracked.
• Sun damage: Overexposure to the sun can damage the skin on our lips, leading to wrinkles, fine lines, and age spots.
• Muscle atrophy: As we age, the muscles around our mouth can weaken and shrink, which can cause the corners of our lips to turn downward.
• Bone loss: Our facial bones also lose density over time, which can cause our lips to appear thinner and less full.
• Smoking: Smoking can accelerate the aging process, causing wrinkles around the mouth and lip lines.
• Repeated facial expressions: Repeated facial expressions such as pursing your lips or frowning can cause lines and wrinkles to form around the mouth.

Overall, our lips age due to a combination of biological, environmental, and lifestyle factors. They are one of the areas of the face that portray youth, beauty and sexuality, sometimes without us being able to pinpoint why.

Let’s Dive A Little Deeper

As we age the top lip lengthens on its ligaments and rolls under so that less of the pink, fleshy body is visible. This is also accompanied by flattening of the body itself and also the philtrums (the stalks of tissue that extend from the nose to the top lip).

We also experience dehydration and increased wrinkling of the lip tissue and some degree of corner migration, where the edges of the mouth begin to turn down. Particularly in smokers or people that purse their lips often (instrument players etc); lines can form around the mouth (smokers lines) which in addition to completing the picture of ageing, can make lipstick (a tool we might use to disguise some of the aforementioned effects) difficult.

Together these changes can make us look angry and sad; or age us and make us feel less attractive or feminine.

Luckily through a thoughtful combination of techniques, artful injectors can appropriately reverse some of the effects of time and help restore the mouth. This should be done after thorough consideration, and with chronological age in mind to ensure lips that are complementary to your face and years.

Find out more about our treatments our book with an Aescend artisan.