It’s time to deflate the duck lips: Fillers are out say docs

For a decade, lips have been getting larger. Reality stars, influencers and even Apprentice wannabes, if rumours are to be believed, have used injected fillers to inflate theirs.

But it appears we could lastly have reached peak pout — and, thank goodness, the one means is down.

The largest pattern in tweakments is for girls to have their fillers dissolved to undo the swollen, bumpy look of over-filled lips and provides again a extra pure smile.

What was once a hush-hush process — as a result of it meant you’d had an excessive amount of filler or it had been put in badly — has even turn out to be a standard boast amongst celebrities.

Love Island’s Molly-Mae Hague, a runner-up in 2019, brought about a sensation when she talked brazenly about lowering her lips the subsequent yr.

Geordie Shore’s Holly Hagan has since achieved the identical, as have Gemma Collins and Megan McKenna from The Only Way Is Essex. And simply earlier than Christmas, Charlotte Crosby, additionally of Geordie Shore fame, sported a bruised however noticeably thinner smile too.

Out in the true world, practitioners inform me they’re seeing an increasing number of girls asking to have lip filler dissolved.

Samira Kaur is one younger girl rejecting the pneumatic take care of 5 years of utilizing fillers. “In pictures, I looked OK,” says the 27-year-old eyelash artist from North-West London. “But when I saw videos of myself talking, my lips were sticking out with that duck-like look. A lot of people think that’s what filler is supposed to look like, but I know it’s not.”

Samira first had filler when she was 22, from a practitioner she discovered on Instagram who had no medical {qualifications}.

“I wasn’t insecure about my lips when growing up,” she says. “But the more time I spent on social media, the more it felt like everyone was getting something done. Suddenly, I was convinced my lips were too small and that having filler would make me more attractive, so I caved.”

Yet 5 years on, Samira was left feeling sad together with her lips, which had turn out to be lopsided. Her injector merely advised including extra filler to “even them out”. Samira determined she couldn’t hold injecting extra in her quest for the right pout.

She contacted Steven Harris, an aesthetic physician who speaks out in opposition to the overuse of fillers. “The problem with lips is that they’re often looked at in isolation,” he says. “People want the treatment, but it may not match their other features, so it stands out in a bad way, especially if it is botched.”

For a number of years, Dr Harris has run a weekly “dissolving clinic” at his apply in Crouch End, North London — however now he finds himself devoting 25 per cent of his time day by day to “normalising” messed-up lips. He says: “The tide is turning and people are looking for more subtle and more natural-looking results.”

He dissolved Samira’s filler by injecting her lips with a substance referred to as hyaluronidase. This highly effective enzyme dissolves filler gels constituted of hyaluronic acid nearly immediately. At Dr Harris’s clinic, the therapy prices $519.

Hyaluronidase is simply out there on prescription, which implies under-skilled, non-medical injectors, who don’t maintain a prescribing qualification, can’t pay money for it. Initially, Samira needed Dr Harris to re-inject filler in a means that will look extra pure. But he talked her out of it, saying her lips had been pretty as they had been. She’s now relieved she took his recommendation: “I can see now that having lip filler didn’t make me look better. Natural lips are definitely coming back.”

Dr Catherine Fairris, President of the British College of Aesthetic Medicine (BCAM), says the over-inflated look is uncontrolled.

“We have all seen unflattering and grossly abnormal-looking lip filler,” she says. “Achieving natural-looking, subtle results takes skill and expertise, which many practitioners out there don’t have, as well as an understanding of the way dermal fillers behave in the skin.”

It’s not easy to undo years of botched filler. Dr Fairris warns that utilizing hyaluronidase to dissolve gels carries its personal threat: “Anaphylaxis — a potentially fatal allergic reaction — is a side-effect of hyaluronidase treatment. So, seeking the input of a medically qualified and experienced aesthetic practitioner is important.”

An added complication is that few sufferers ask their injector precisely what’s being put into their lips — and there are round 200 manufacturers of filler out there. A handful of those have immaculate pedigrees and years of rigorous testing behind them, however the remaining don’t. So they might or could not dissolve in the best way they need to.

An additional drawback is that filler fairly often doesn’t keep the place it’s put. Most individuals suppose it breaks down and disappears after six months, at which level they’ve extra injected. But typically, dermal fillers final loads longer. Indeed, typically when individuals suppose their filler has “gone”, it has really “migrated” — drifted into the pores and skin across the lip border.

Dr Ayah Siddiqi, a sophisticated aesthetic practitioner with clinics in Halifax and London, sighs after I ask her about lip filler dissolving. “I now spend 90 per cent of my time dissolving lip fillers. The real problem is with product migration. Because of the way the muscles around the mouth move, filler migrates almost 100 per cent of the time.” As she factors out, the lips are like two tubes and the filler positioned there’s continually squeezed by actions of the mouth.

“A lot of people try to give lips a different shape, which works at first, but with time and repetitive movement, the filler will move.”