Cosmetic Surgery & Plump Lips

Plastic Surgery Science Comments (0)

European scientists have been studying lips and have firmly nailed down what many people have thought all along: A plump kisser is the cat’s meow and makes women look younger than their actual age.

But don’t get too carried away: plastic surgeons caution that beyond a certain age, plumping up lips alone won’t counterbalance a very wrinkled face.

Men also enter the picture. Guys with thick lower lips are usually seen as more virile, strong and desirable.

But as the years go by, so do thick, luscious lips which start to thin between ages 30 and 40.

Writing in the magazine, PLos ONE, researchers from eight European scientific institutions, studied 102 pairs of Danish twins, aged 59 to 81and 162 British women, aged 45 to 75.

In addition to the other marks of aging, they found that something known as “lip height,” (they mean thinning kissers!) is strongly associated with how old women look for their age.

When the researchers studied composite pictures of women who either looked young or old for their ages, they found that facial plumpness also had a lot to do with others’ opinions of a woman’s appearance.

(Read the cosmetic surgery study.)

So, if you’re a woman past “a certain age,” you should not get lip augmentation? No, not at all. Just don’t only plump up the lips.

Rather than surgically taking things away from your face, another complementary study suggests adding things to your face.

Plastic surgeons at University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center studied cadavers to find four facial areas that can be made to look more youthful through augmentation through augmentation instead of surgery.

• The cheeks
• Under the eyes
• Lines around the nose
• Lines at the corners of the mouth

The researchers say that several substances can be used to plump up aged facial tissues, including:

• The patient’s own fat
• Tissue fillers like Restylane or Juvederm
• Facial implants

Said plastic surgeon Ron Rohrich, M.D., lead author and chairman of plastic surgery at UT: “The process  to correct facial again is now dramatically changed…we must now lift and fill the face to restore a youthful, unoperated appearance.”

(Read about the UT plastic surgery study in Science Daily.)

admin @ February 8, 2010