Start researching anti-winkle injections or dermal fillers on the net, and you’ll find plenty of information about how safe they both are. Wrinkle Injections certainly trump the invasive procedure of getting a facelift in safety, and dermal fillers are made of a substance that occurs naturally in your body, so in some cases are superior to wrinkle injections. However, one time of life when you can’t predict the safety of everyday events is pregnancy. Cold meats are off limits, sprays for blocked noses are unsafe, and don’t even think about eating camembert! Wrinkle injections and dermal fillers are certainly safe – but are they safe during pregnancy? We find out.

What the doctors say

The general consensus among medical professionals, as well as licensed cosmetologists, seems to be:
• There is no conclusive evidence that either wrinkle injections or dermal fillers are unsafe for pregnant women
• However, it is universally better to leave non-essential procedures until after pregnancy and lactation have finished, just to be sure.
• Around 90% of medical respondents have said that they would not give wrinkle injectiond for cosmetic reasons, because of insurance and liability issues.
• However, people that need BTXA to treat variants of dystonia (muscle spasms) can still get the treatment from a GP, as the potential benefits outweighthe risk

What the prescribing information says

Here is what the prescription information leaflet that comes along with Botox in the US says:
“There are no adequate and well-controlled studies of BOTOX® in pregnant women. Because animal reproductive studies are not always predictive of human response, BOTOX® should be administered during pregnancy only if the potential benefit justifies the potential risk to the fetus… Additionally, it’s not known whether BOTOX® is excreted in human breast milk. Because many drugs are excreted in human milk, caution should be exercised when BOTOX® is administered to a nursing woman.”

The animal studies they were referring to showed some upsetting results at very high doses, including spontaneous abortions, fetal malformations and maternal toxicity. Rat and mouse fetuses had reduced birth weights and delayed ossification of the skeleton. However, you must remember that researchers were pushing the limits of dosage to see what would be achieved – normal human doses translate to a much, much smaller dose per gram of body weight.

Why are wrinkle injections and dermal fillers lumped together?

It can seem a little over-the-top … perhaps even a little paranoid (!) to class dermal fillers, made of naturally occurring hyaluronic acid, with botulinum toxin, one of the most lethal substances known to man.

However, there’s a valid reason for this. The reason that Botox and dermal fillers aren’t considered ’safe’ during pregnancy is because there is almost no scientific data available on either of them. There’s a possibility that hyaluronic acid may be degraded into a product that’s harmful to fetuses or breastfeeding babies – we just don’t know, and that’s the reason that the two substances are categorized together.

Breastfeeding and wrinkle injections

If you are breastfeeding, many cosmetologists and doctors will also tell you to hold off on the dermal fillers or wrinkle injections until you have finished. This is because many drugs are excreted into human breastmilk, and we don’t know whether dermal fillers or wrinkle injections are among those, and if so what risk they pose.

However, some pundits advise ‘taking a break from breastfeeding’ to have your dermal fillers done … and women need to understand that if you have a four-day break from breastfeeding, you will be having an infinite break from breastfeeding! Your body will assume the baby has finished feeding, and stop producing milk. So … just wait until you were going to stop breastfeeding anyway.

The conclusion?

Whether you have access to wrinkle injections or dermal fillers during pregnancy will depend on the policy of the individual doctors or cosmetic clinics involved. There are almost no cosmetic or medical professionals that will give either wrinkle injections or dermal fillers for cosmetic purposes during pregnancy. Take heart, though – the water you retain during pregnancy can often help with wrinkles anyway!

5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could do With Dermal Fillers

Dermal fillers … they can’t do your homework or wash your dishes, but they are far more versatile than you may have known! One of the main reasons that dermal fillers have taken off flying in the cosmetic popularity stakes is their flexibility and wide range of applications. These fast, safe, non-invasive cosmetic treatment tools aren’t just for filling in crow’s feet and correcting dropping mouths – today we check out 5 things that you may not have known dermal fillers could do.

1. Give you a nose job

If you’ve been putting up with a crooked, deeply scarred or generally lumpy/bumpy nose for years because you aren’t enthused about the prospect of ‘going under the knife’, you should ask your cosmetic technician about non-surgical nose jobs with dermal fillers. Of course, dermal fillers won’t be able to reduce the size of your nose, but they can:
• Help crooked areas appear straighter
• Smooth out bumps and valleys
• Correct a hook-shaped nose
• Help balance a wide nose
• Improve the appearance of a nose that looks strange after being broken
• Refine the results of a surgical ‘nose job’

2. ’Plump out’ your face

One of the main changes that occur in our faces as we age is a general loss of volume. Our hips may be happily widening, but we all tend to lose fat from our faces, and as a result wrinkles form. Facelifts aren’t the ideal correction for loss of facial volume because they tighten the skin without restoring that fullness – you’ll be wrinkle-free, but also a little skeletal. Dermal fillers are a great all-round solution – safe and natural-looking. The most popular areas where dermal fillers are used to fill out your face and create a younger look are:
• Cheekbones or cheeks
• The tear troughs
• Nasolabial folds (smile lines)
• The chin – we lose a disproportionately large amount of bone mass from our jaw as we age. Dermal fillers can’t replace the bone (!), but they can replace the appearance of volume.

3. Give you fuller lips

Dermal fillers based on hyaluronic acid have well and truly replaced collagen for lip re-shaping. Very specific shaping is possible with dermal fillers – most people choose to enhance the ‘vermilion border’, the line between the red and white parts – to create a ‘natural lipliner’ effect.

4. Fill in acne scars

Any large, depressed acne scars can be filled to soften their appearance with hyaluronic acid-based substances. Filling in acne scars with dermal fillers is also usually quite a cost effective exercise – pricing is usually based on the number of vials used, and you can have many acne scars filled in while using only a small volume of filler.

5. Create younger looking necks and hands

When it comes to cosmetic treatments, we often focus on our faces to the detriment of other parts of the body … and this can create a very spooky effect whereby your face looks 30 years old, but your hands remain at 45. Dermal fillers can safely be used in the neck and the hands to turn back the clock a decade or so!