The short answer
Downturned mouth corners usually come from a mix of muscle pull and volume loss, so treatment tends to work best when it addresses both at once.
Reads with Marionette lines & mouth cornersFacial volume loss & hollowing
Marionette lines treatment, Kew, Melbourne
Drooping mouth corners are often the result of marionette lines which run vertically from the corners of the mouth towards your chin. They’re a common symptom of natural ageing and can make you look sad or angry, and often older than you are. So how can they be lifted? Here is everything that you need to know.
What causes drooping mouth corners?
Marionette lines occur for all the same reasons as any other lines:
- As your face loses fat with age, the skin has less support, which contributes to its sagging.
- As you age, the bones of your skull gradually lose volume. In your face, the effect of this bone loss is a gradual loss of support for the fat and skin.
- As the ligaments that support the area around your chin and mouth grow looser with age, your chin gradually heads for the floor.
- With age, your skin loses its elasticity, so it stretches and sags.
- As wrinkles develop, incipient lines become more obvious.
While the above five problems all contribute to lines elsewhere on your face, neck, and body, marionette lines are a particular menace, because once they become etched on your face, they give it a sad or angry look and drag the corners of your mouth downward.
Why am I developing them?
As well as the signs listed above, drooping mouth corners can occur due to facial expressions, genetics and lifestyle factors such as sun damage, smoking, and poor diet.
Can skincare help?
Nothing will smooth marionette lines as well as injectables but here are a couple of good ingredients to focus on:
Vitamin C serum: As you grow older, the fibroblast cells in your body that generate collagen slow down. This means that your skin doesn’t repair itself as fast or as well as before, so it becomes less resilient, and lines gradually become embedded in it. Adding a vitamin C serum into your regime helps slow down the damage and stimulate the production of new collagen.
Retinol: Retinol can be transformative for the skin because it kick-starts collagen production and, at the same time, reduces the rate of collagen breakdown in the skin, so your existing collagen lasts longer, and new collagen is made faster.
What about other Treatments?
A common place to target with dermal enhancements when smoothing marionette lines is the midface and cheeks, which helps raise everything below the cheek a fraction, and that may be enough to soften the appearance of your marionette lines. We may also treat the area directly to smooth and plump out the lines.
And wrinkle reducing treatments can also help, especially if pulling faces contributes to your marionette lines. A touch of toxins in the muscles that pull down the corners of your mouth will damp down this expression, therefore helping to reduce your marionette lines.
If you’d like to learn more about marionette lines treatments and what is right for you, book a consultation.
