Lines and Wrinkles
A crease your face makes when it moves and a fold that stays put do not come from the same place.
Lines on a face are not one problem. Some are made by a muscle that pulls the skin into a crease when it contracts. Others are made by skin that has lost some of its ability to spring back, so the crease remains after the muscle has relaxed. Others are not creases at all but edges, created by tissue that has slipped lower than it used to sit. The same line on two faces can hold a different mixture of all three, and that mixture decides what is worth doing about it. Fine lines and folds are separated here for that reason.
You can do the first part of the assessment yourself. Relax your face completely and look again. If the line disappears, the muscle is doing the work, and quieting that muscle is the question to consider. If the line is still visible, part of it now lives in the skin, and relaxing the muscle does not remove that part. This is why the same treatment helps one person a great deal and another very little.
Where the line sits changes the explanation again. Forehead lines, frown lines and crow's feet each have their own muscle pattern and their own relationship to the position of the brow. Lines around the lips form differently, and the folds that run from the nose to the mouth or down from the corner of the mouth are usually descent rather than wrinkles. The pages below are split along those lines so that the explanation you read matches the line you have, rather than the average of all of them.
Understand the problem
What causes it, how it is assessed, what can be done.
The procedures
One page per procedure: candidacy, recovery, risks, limits.
Common questions
Frequently asked questions
How do I tell an expression line from one that has set in?
Relax your face in a mirror and look. A line that disappears is made by the muscle contracting, and a line that remains has become part of the skin. Most lines on an adult face are a mixture of the two, with a proportion that changes over years. That proportion is what a clinician reads, because it decides how much of the line can be influenced by quieting the muscle.
Do lines around the mouth come from muscle or from sagging?
Mostly from sagging. The fold that runs from the nose to the corner of the mouth, and the line that runs down from the corner of the mouth, are formed by tissue sitting lower than it used to rather than by a muscle folding the skin. That is why relaxing a muscle does very little for them, and why the pages for those lines sit close to the pages on facial sagging.
What happens if I stop treating a moving line?
The muscle recovers and the line returns to roughly what it was before, sometimes a little less marked if the muscle has been quiet for a long stretch. Nothing about the treatment lasts, and the effect fades gradually rather than ending on a particular day. Going without treatment carries no penalty, which is worth knowing if you are deciding whether to begin at all.
Is there anything that changes the direction fine lines take?
Sun protection is the one step that changes the trajectory rather than the appearance. Fine lines reflect cumulative sun exposure as much as they reflect movement, so daily protection and not smoking matter over years. Moisturising improves how the skin looks and feels, and it does not remove a line. Nothing on the list reverses what is already there, and the honest aim is improvement rather than erasure.
Why is there a separate page for each part of the face?
Because the muscle pattern differs by area, and so does the relationship between a line and the structures around it. Forehead lines sit with the brow position, frown lines sit between the brows, crow's feet sit against the cheek, and lines around the lips sit against the mouth. Reading the page for your area gives you the specific explanation rather than a general one.
Can wrinkle injections help the fold beside my mouth?
Usually not, because that fold is not made by a muscle folding the skin. It is an edge produced by descent, and relaxing muscles near it risks changing your smile while leaving the fold where it was. Options for that fold are assessed differently, and whether any of them suits you depends on depth, on the position of the cheek, and on how much change you actually want.
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