Lip Injections May Add Youth to the Face

Lip injections may prove to be just the thing for women who want to look younger without spending lots of money on expensive plastic surgery.

New research suggests that women who want to look years younger may not need to undergo any major plastic surgery — at least not yet.

For now, a simple lip injection may do the trick.

Unilever funded a study of more than 250 women of various ages to figure out what feature most separated older women from younger women. According to lead researcher David Gunn, the women who looked young for their age had something in common: thicker lips.

Noted Gunn, “It is a feature that is strongly genetically determined and relatively easy to measure.”

For beauty reasons alone, lip injections are already a highly sought cosmetic procedure among women. Celebrities with full, plump pouts, such as Angelina Jolie, have cut a public figure many women hope to emulate. The cosmetic surgery industry has responded in kind, making several options available. Lip augmentation is generally performed with injectable fillers such as collagen, silicone or even fat. The first two fillers are readily available but temporary in their effects. Fat injections last longer, but results are less predictable.. And, more rarely, there is the option of a permanent surgical implant that, unlike the injectable fillers, does not disappear.

The side effects of these procedures, which are always possible, include scarring or a lumpy and uneven appearance.

And, simply getting bigger lips may not necessarily give the overall youthful appearance women desire. Gunn admitted that women who are elderly – or middle-aged, but with thin lips – may more wisely opt for some facial injections, such as Botox, rather than lip augmentation alone, which “doesn’t counter the impact of a wrinkled face.”

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Bigger lips can mean bigger beauty