Dr. Vicki Belo on why 20 million people trust Botox to look young

I’m obsessed with porcelain, flawless faces. I love how some actors have an ageless glow and how some newscasters’ tight skin can steal the spotlight from the headlines. I love imagining how their regimens must be like, thinking of the discipline their taut skin entails.  During a one-on-one chat with renowned doctor to the stars Dr. Vicki Belo, I was determined to find out their beauty secrets. “True, a lot of actors and newscasters get Botox,” Belo reveals. Bearing that reality in mind, I instantly got hooked on getting to the bottom of Botox.

 Considering how commonplace Botox has become, it’s ironic how it’s still shrouded in so much mystery and laden with misconception. While I personally prefer my regimens and creams, I can’t deny the merits of instant fixes and popular options, like Botox. There’s definitely a reason why “more than 20 million individuals trust  Botox to keep their appearance consistent with their active lifestyles,” reports Allergan Healthcare Philippines, Inc., makers of Botox.

 This year, Botox marks its 10th global anniversary since earning approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its aesthetic use. And, to commemorate this milestone of its star product, the Allergan group hosted an intimate dinner bash last November 8, to honor its leading customer and trusted partner, the Belo Medical Group. The Belo Medical Group has been administering Allergan’s Botox to many satisfied customers and remains to be its top customer in the Philippines.

In the Philippines, “getting Botox goes beyond wanting to look young,” says Seung Je Cho, country manager of Allergan. With its impressive medical track record, Botox has definitely earned its spot in the medical halls of fame. In fact, aside from its strides in dermatology, Botox neurotoxin is approved to treat five other medical conditions including  abnormal head position or cervical dystonia; symptoms of severe underarm sweating; increased muscle stiffness in the elbow, wrist, and finger muscles for patients with limb spasticity; chronic migraine; and urinary incontinence due to neurological conditions.

 Aside from these medical breakthroughs, the most evident proof of Botox’s effectiveness are the years it staves off faces — making, I must admit, TV viewing all the more pleasurable. Getting intimate with Dr. Vicki Belo, this Q&A answers your curious questions on beauty, Botox , and beyond.

What is Botox, really?

DR. VICKI BELO: It really started for therapeutic purposes. It paralyzes muscles temporarily. They were doing it for patients with cerebral palsy or blepharospasm. Jean Carruthers, an ophthalmologist, was injecting people with Botox for blepharospasm; and they kept coming back because the treatment also got rid of their wrinkles. The patients would insist on having Botox even on the side of their face where there was no spasm. She later informed her partner, Dr. Alastair Carruthers, a dermatologist, about her discovery. Together, they wrote a paper based on their patients, and they presented it in 1990 to the American Society for Dermatological Surgery of which I am a member.

 So, did you immediately become a fan of the product?

At first I thought: “Are you really serious? We’ll inject people with toxin just to be able to stop their wrinkles? Isn’t that a bit much? Haven’t we gone over the line?” I didn’t use it right away. I wanted to be sure. I just kept observing and later on there were more and more papers about it. I gave myself a five-year deadline, thinking that if nothing bad was reported in five years, I would start doing it. So, finally, I started doing Botox 17 years ago, way before it was really available in the Philippines. I used to have to import it from the States.

 What does Botox have over other kinds of treatments?

The public doesn’t know and they don’t really understand what it’s used for. They think laser can do what Botox does, but it can’t. They think a filler can do it, but it won’t.

When we talk about Botox, we’re talking about muscles. It doesn’t do anything much to your skin. When you talk about beauty, especially of the face, you’re dealing with four things: the epidermis, the dermis, the fat, and the muscle. Botox targets the deepest layer, which is the muscle. In fact, no other thing targets the muscle. Thermage Laser doesn’t target the muscle, fillers don’t target the muscle.

 So where and when does it come in, in terms of one’s regimen?

The filler can only come after the Botox. If you have the corrugator muscles or what we call the 11 lines here (points above the eyebrows), you have to Botox first and stop the muscles from involuntarily causing that line. Then, you can follow with a filer to bring the line up.

Just putting the filler without putting the Botox isn’t going to work. That might even make it worse because you just keep squeezing and squeezing the crease with your muscles, and so the filler is squeezed out, too. 

What makes a good Botox job?

You should look like yourself, except that you have fewer lines. Unless you request and tell me that you want your eyebrows a little higher, I can do it. But what I don’t want is a patient looking like Mr. Spock.

I’m very grateful to Allergan since it’s because of them that I can make my practice work really well. You can actually do a facelift with just Botox and fillers nowadays, you don’t even really have to cut anymore. The face will go on moving, your skin will go on aging. This is not a permanent solution. By doing it, you slow down looking older.

 It seems like there’s Botox everywhere. What makes one different from the other?

Botox is actually a trade name. It’s not a generic name. Now that its patent has expired after 20 years, though, there’s already Botox from China and from India, and they’re very cheap. But they’re also very unpredictable and not FDA-approved. There are no studies about them. And people use them because they’re cheaper. It’s scary.

People say, “You can easily Botox this and Botox that.” But you’d better ask for the bottle to see if it’s really Allergan. That’s the only real Botox. Everything else is clostridium botulinum toxin, yes. But, it isn’t exactly the same formula as Allegran. Sometimes, they put the clostridium botulinum in, but the carrier is different, so it’s more painful; or sometimes they don’t know how to regulate it. It takes a lot of money to have that kind of research and predictability, so that’s why we always insist on using Allergan Botox, so that you’ll know you’re sure. Besides, it’s your face, and you shouldn’t experiment.

 If you start on Botox, won’t you have to do it forever?

That is true. It’s not that you have to, but if you want to look rested and not problematic, then yes. The good thing is that the gaps in between get longer. If, say, you’re a Botox virgin, then you need to get your next (treatment) in three months, maybe. If you’ve had two sessions done already, it can go up to four months and five months, before you actually need a next treatment. The longest gap without the movement coming back is one year. For most people, the movement comes back after four to six months.

 “Paralyzing muscles” sounds a tad too stiff and frozen. How true is this?

The negative connotations are not real. I’ve been Botoxing for the past 17 years, and I’m not “frozen.” I mean, I have expression, there’s no doubt about that, but it’s an expression that I want. It’s the expression that I want to come out.

You see, in doing this (frowns and scrunches forehead), the motions are often involuntary and the message that you project is that you’re worried or you’re not a nice person; you look sungit. And that’s not the message that you want to project. A lot of nice people end up looking worried or cranky because they do that.

The first question we ask when someone comes in is, “How much of it (your lines) do you want gone?” We can do a frozen face with no expression, with no lines at all, but I advise against that. I want patients to have expressions, but soft.

 But don’t we like our facial lines to give us more character/wisdom/history?

Yeah, right! Well, it depends on what character you want to create or channel. Seriously, it’s very European to say that. They don’t care about their lines. They say, “I’ve earned those lines. They’re my lines.” In the US, they don’t want any lines. Filipinos don’t want any lines either. If you’re worried about “creating character,” do it in other ways, not with lines on your face.

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For inquiries, call the Belo hotline at 819-BELO (2356) or e-mail info@belomed.com.