What is the Botox lip flip exactly? The first question I have is why should a lip look better upside down? The next question I have is—if this procedure exists, why is it not written up anywhere in the literature and why are the only pictures of it on social media?
Botox lip flip procedures are gaining a lot of ground online thanks to social media, but it is important people understand lip flips. A lip flip is the injection of a small amount of botulinum toxin into the lip at the vermilion border, where the white part of the lip meets the red part at the cupid’s bow according to websites.
The lip doesn’t stretch as much when you smile and so it can remain fatter when you draw your face into a smile when paralyzed or weakened. But the price you pay is that you can’t show your teeth as much. As someone who has injected Botox around the mouth since 1986, I can state categorically that this procedure doesn’t exist.
What is a Botox Lip Flip Online
Every picture I have seen on the internet that shows an attractive result of lip flips is an injection for a gummy smile. A gummy smile weakens the elevators of the lip and thereby makes the smile more balanced, or a patient that had a minuscule amount of Botox, along with a sizeable and attractive amount of filler.
And online, people who have temporarily lost the ability to show their teeth (being toothless is not a sign of youth but of old age) complain about their upper lip Botox injections if done in excess—and it’s really easy to inject too much.
Professionalism is in Technique
We talked to the reps—and the national reps—from Allergan and Galderma. Not one doctor is willing to share the technique. Surgeons, and injectors in general, need to document their techniques in evidence-based fashion—publications in journals, or at least at meetings.
Botox lip flip, like Big Foot, is a myth. And a harmful one. Until there is documentation of a technique of Botox injection that doesn’t involve filler, I for one am a total skeptic. Filler around the mouth can make the lip more beautiful. It can make it larger. It can make it so that smiling doesn’t thin it as much.
But it can’t make it flip upside down. And neither can Botox.
