Pillow face is a condition that occurs as a result of a person getting over-injected with dermal fillers in their face. This leads to an overstuffed look, which causes the checks and other areas of the face to puff out.
The good news is that pillow face from fillers can easily be reversed. It is best if you avoid getting pillow face altogether by properly vetting medical practitioners and only booking appointments with experienced, board-certified cosmetic physicians.
Puffy, bulging cheeks
But if it's done by a less-than-credible injector, you can get the dreaded “pillow face.” If too much filler is put into the cheeks, or it's injected into the wrong area, the cheeks can bulge and essentially give you chipmunk cheeks.
If you are familiar with the person, you may notice the increase in lip size, especially if they've experienced slight swelling, typically short-lived common side effects. They may also have some minor bruising of the lips; this can also signify a recent lip filler treatment.
Over time, as facial movement increases in areas like the lips or cheeks, it causes the filler to break down and dissolve at a quicker rate. This makes the filler disappear faster in more active areas of the face.
Using too much dermal filler can distort your face, make it look asymmetric and aesthetically out of balance, and in some cases, it can even make you look older than you actually are.
The effects of the fillers will wear off after months or years, but the treated area is likely to return to its original state. The benefits of both Botox and fillers will be gone and you'll notice that those lines and volume loss will come back.
The first sign of a facial injection filler gone wrong is puffiness long after the initial injection. It's typical for patients to experience slight swelling or puffiness in the area for up to 24 hours. This is a common side effect that should be no cause for concern.
The Good: Patients who experience strange side effects such as having a weird smile or a “Joker” smile after lip injections can rest assured knowing that this is a common side effect, as a result of swelling after the procedure. Wait up to a week before worrying about your weird smile.
Pillow creases disappear in a flash when we're young. It's a different kettle of fish, however, as we get older. Our natural elastin and collagen levels drop over the years, meaning the Early Morning Crease Syndrome gets harder to shift!
Botox can also be incorrectly injected in a way that lowers the natural elevation of the cheeks, leading to the appearance of 'chipmunk cheeks'. Finally, the overuse of Botox around the mouth can result in temporary droopiness.
Treating with 1ml at a time is certainly appropriate for some areas, such as volumising lips or having smaller tweakments into other areas of the face. Sometimes, however, more than 1ml may be required – in the cheeks, for example – as 1ml may not make a discernible difference.
Pillow face is the colloquial term for the “stuffed” look many patients ultimately experience when a filler is overused. Filler is used in various parts of the face to increase fullness and gradually fill sunken areas resulting from age, medical treatments, or disease.
Yes, some swelling is normal after having Botox® treatment. Ways you can reduce swelling include: applying a cold compress to the area (though make sure you don't rub the area or hold the compress in place for too long)
Too much Botox in the forehead muscles can cause the eyebrows to droop, making the upper eyelids look very heavy and hooded. The face may look angry or sad all the time. Too much Botox around the eyes can dramatically affect facial expression. The face is simply frozen.
In most cases, when the filler wears off, the face will return to its normal appearance. That means if you got the filler to eliminate wrinkles, they would reappear; the areas that experience volume loss will lose that volume again.
Why do dermal fillers cause swelling? Dermal Fillers commonly cause swelling and sometimes even bruising. The injection process disturbs the skin and soft tissue, causing minor trauma to the area, and swelling is a natural bodily response whilst the area heals.
Like most things in life, dermal fillers do not last forever. You can keep your post-filler appearance by sticking to a regular touch-up schedule, but your filler will eventually disappear if left alone.
Depending on the filler used, you can enjoy a younger looking face for 2 years but that should depend on your priorities. The results of either of the aforementioned fillers can vary from one person to the next. In other words, you might get better results than those who came before you.
If you use Botox for ten or more years, your skin will appear brighter and smoother with fewer wrinkles. Even after stopping Botox injections after years of use, you'll still notice fewer wrinkles between your eyes or on your forehead, which means you'll continue to age gracefully.
If you stop BOTOX treatments after many years of regular injections, the only effect will be that your wrinkles will return, albeit a bit more slowly than if you had not been using BOTOX. It's true: Even after you stop, you will still look younger than you would have if you had never been injected.
If you're looking to a dermal filler to combat signs of aging, your mid-20s is often a good time to start. Your body starts to lose bone and collagen around age 26, so it's a good time to begin maintenance injections. By starting early, you'll use require less product than if you wait until your mid-50s.
However, the use of too much filler results in overly puffy cheeks which look unnatural and inappropriate for their age. The pursuit of the “apple cheeks” have also contributed to this syndrome. Overfilling in the cheeks and under the eyes obliterates the natural lid-cheek junction.
You Should Typically Wait to Use Juvederm Until Your 40s.
Rose usually recommends that you wait to begin Juvederm or any other facial filler treatment until you are in your 40s, or have begun showing the telltale signs of aging.