The six cardinal sins of lip fillers

Lip fillers can enhance natural beauty, but many practitioners make critical mistakes that lead to unnatural appearances. In this episode, Dr. Stefanie discusses six common errors aesthetic professionals should avoid to achieve natural, beautiful results. From understanding the nuances of product selection to the importance of maintaining a harmonious lip ratio, she provides a roadmap for achieving a natural, youthful appearance without the telltale signs of overdoing it.

This episode is a must-listen for both patients seeking to enhance their beauty with confidence and practitioners aiming to refine their skills. Learn how to enhance your natural beauty and avoid common traps in this enlightening episode.

Dr Stefanie Williams is a renowned dermatologist and the medical director of Eudelo Dermatology & Skin Wellbeing (www.eudelo.com), a multi-award-winning skin clinic in Central London. With over 28 years of practice, Dr Stefanie is an international key opinion leader in cosmetic dermatology and aesthetic medicine, having authored two Amazon No-1 bestselling books. 

Eudelo offers a comprehensive range of treatments for both medical and aesthetic skin concerns, combining the latest scientific advances with a personalized approach to skincare. The clinic's commitment to excellence has earned it accolades such as "Best Clinic in London" and "Best Dermatologist" in the Marie Claire awards. 

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Disclaimer: The information presented in 'Dermatology Debriefs' is for educational and informational purposes only. The content does not constitute professional medical advice. Stefanie Williams and/or Eudelo do not establish a doctor-patient relationship through this content. Always consult a licensed healthcare professional for personalized medical advice specific to your individual health needs. The content represents personal opinions and perspectives of Stefanie Williams, and may not reflect current medical consensus or standard medical practice. Content may become outdated and should not be considered current guidance. By listening to this content, the listener acknowledges and agrees that: i) The information is provided 'as is' without warranties. ii) Stefanie Williams and Eudelo bear no legal responsibility for any actions taken or omitted, based on this content. iii) Stefanie Williams and Eudelo bear no legal responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or special damages arising from or related to this content. iv) Individual health decisions and medical conditions require personalized professional medical assessment and treatment. Listeners should never use this content to diagnose, prevent, treat, or manage any health condition.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Dermatologist debriefs. Join no-nonsense dermatologist Dr Stephanie Williams as she debunks myths and shares her professional insights, separating facts from fiction, in just a few minutes like to talk about the most common mistakes aesthetic doctors and nurses make when doing lip fillers.

Speaker 2: 0:27

For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not against lip fillers at all. It's really an amazing treatment when done correctly. But when done incorrectly, it looks terrible. And I just saw one of those really bad examples on Instagram where a doctor proudly presented a before and after image after lip filler, and I was quite shocked about it, to be honest, because they had essentially committed all six cardinal sins of lip fillers, and I will tell you exactly what they are so you can avoid them. But before I start, I just wanted to say that lip fillers really have a place in aesthetic medicine, in particular in more mature patients actually, and that's because our lips lose volume as we age and the consequence of that are lipstick bleed lines on and around the lips, plus a loss of definition and a thinning of the body of the lips. All of this can be corrected very nicely with a filler treatment, if done correctly, and the outcome will look 100% natural. Nobody would ever know that you had a lip filler treatment. Your lips will just go back to how they looked maybe 10 or 20 years ago.

Speaker 2: 1:56

So let's talk about those six very common mistakes. Number one the wrong choice of product. So all lip fillers, or the vast majority anyway, contain hyaluronic acid, but there are really big differences between different brands and between different products of the same brand even, and the key here is to not choose a product that is too stiff or viscous. That it's too stiff or viscous, if the doctor is using one of those products, then whatever they do, the outcome will look unnatural. Mistake number two they may have used the correct type of product, but they simply use too much of it, and too much is not easy to actually quantify. So one milliliter of lip filler does not equal always one milliliter, because if they used a thicker product, one milliliter may look hugely overdone, whereas if a very soft, lovely liquid product is used, if a very soft, lovely liquid product is used, then one milliliter can look completely natural. But even with a very soft product we often don't even need as much as one milliliter. So when I do lips, especially if the lips are naturally thinner, I may use as little as 0.4 milliliter in total. But of course that's very individual and we have to tailor it to the individual anatomy.

Speaker 2: 3:34

Mistake number three is that often the lips are treated in isolation. What I mean when I say that is that the filler is only injected into the lips themselves. But in my clinical experience it looks much more natural if we treat the lips but we also treat the skin area around the lips, because otherwise the lips can look really weirdly stuck on and lack for a better word gone and lack for a better word. Mistake number four is to make the upper and the lower lip the same size. That looks really really unnatural. So the ratio of upper to lower lip is extremely important and the most attractive lip ratio has been shown to be one thirdthird for the upper lip to two-thirds for the bottom lip, and that's following roughly the golden ratio. There are of course ethnic variations and the one-third, two-third rule is relevant definitely for Caucasian and Asian faces, while in black patients the ratio is maybe a little closer to one to one.

Speaker 2: 4:51

Mistake number five is to accentuate the borders of the lip, what we call the vermilion border, so that's the border between the red of the lip and the surrounding skin. And if we accentuate that with a lip filler, then again this looks unnatural. There is a kind of sharp step between the red of the lip and surrounding skin and that should really be avoided, in my opinion. Yes, we do lose definition as we get older, but we do not have to accentuate or over accentuate that loss definition. That's just the wrong way. The definition will be automatically restored when we treat the lips and we do not have to succumb to exaggerating that.

Speaker 2: 5:52

This brings me to mistake number six, which is to inject too much lateral volume. So if too much filler product is injected in the sides of the lip, in particular the lower lip, then the lips will end up looking square in a way, and that's a dead giveaway of a badly done filler treatment. So, in fact, all of the things I mentioned are giveaways that the patient had a filler treatment and when a filler treatment is done nicely, you would never know. But the kind of that square look of the lower lip is something that I very often see on Instagram, for example, and that I feel very strongly about should be avoided. So that was my top six of aesthetic filler treatment mistakes. I hope this all made sense and I will speak to you again soon.