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To save you some time, here’s the gist of it. Yes, Botox, or any other neurotoxin, can reduce the appearance of hooded eyes by giving you a little bit of lift on the brow area. But there are a lot of strings attached. On the flip side, Botox can worsen your hooded eyes when you’re considering treating other wrinkles besides hooded eyes. That’s why I’m diving deep today. Here you’ll find how Botox works to treat hooded eyes and how Botox works in general for people with hooded eyes.
But before anything else, here’s what you need to know. Regardless of which facial wrinkles you want to smooth out, getting Botox injections and getting Botox injections when you happen to have hooded eyes are two different stories.
Because I’ve been doing this for years and my experience (see my before&after below) is going to help you understand how your unique features affect the outcome.
To brush up on wrinkle-smoothers, Botox is a neurotoxin. Just like Dysport and Xeomin, it’s a brand name for botulinum toxin. It temporarily weakens the facial muscles to smooth the appearance of wrinkles.
The most common Botox injections are for treating forehead wrinkles, wrinkles around the eyes (crow’s feet), and wrinkles between the brows (glabellar lines). In addition to several other uses, Botox can help with hooded eyes as well.
How Does Botox Fix Hooded Eyes?
Botox is used to fix hooded eyes by relaxing the muscle that pulls down your brow tail. This procedure is also called a Botox brow lift.
A tiny amount of Botox is injected into your brow tails. That way, the drooping of the brow is prevented and you get a slightly lifted appearance on the brow edges with relaxed eyelids.
With laterally lifted brows, you reduce the appearance of hooded eyelids. For this brow lift, brow tails are the areas that need primary injections. This is the actual procedure.
However, this is usually not enough to get noticeable results. For that reason, you get Botox injections right between your brows as well.
Where Do They Inject Botox To Fix Hooded Eyes?
There are three injection areas to help hooded eyes and lift the brows. One is on the edge of the brows, the other one is right between your brows, and the other one is just a little bit above that one. These are the areas involved.
I’m not an injector, I’m just an injectee. I want to keep this as English as possible but it’s important for you to understand which muscles are involved.
Orbicularis oculi: This muscle encircles the eyes. For our purposes, it’s the one that pulls down your brows towards the edges. That’s why they inject Botox laterally from the edge of the brows.
Corrugator muscles: These muscles extend right between your brows. And they pull the eyebrows together, giving you vertical wrinkles between the brows aka 11s.
Procerus muscles: These are located between your brows. And they pull your brows down as well, giving you tiny horizontal wrinkles above the nose and below the brows.
So collectively, these are responsible for wrinkles and movement right between the brows and on top of your nasal bone. To get the best result for a Botox brow lift and to fix the appearance of hooded eyes, you get injections in all three areas.
The aim is to lift the mid-brow, the edge, and the arch. As a final touch, you can also consider injections for crow’s feet to open up more space and achieve a more relaxed-looking eye area.
How Many Units?
The unit aspect varies and depends on so many things; your facial anatomy, the strength of the muscle, how big/small your injection area is, your skin elasticity, and so on.
But generally speaking, you get the traditional 20-30 units between the brows. But the brow tail and the area above the brow get very few units.
The procedure is practically pain-free. And just like other injections, it takes up to 15 days to fully settle in. And the results can last anywhere between 3-6 months.
The good thing is these injections are temporary. So you can always wait it out and not do it again if you’re not happy with your results.
Who is Not Eligible?
If your eyebrows are anatomically too low, Botox won’t be able to lift them. In other words, Botox won’t be able to fix hooded eyes if your brows are pulling too low. Botox gives very subtle and minimal results with this type of injection. And it won’t be enough to make a huge difference.
Additionally, if you have excessive skin on your eyelids or heavy drooping, you probably won’t be happy with your results either. Because Botox doesn’t remove your skin or tighten it. It’s simply a muscle relaxer. So it can’t reduce the actual skin. It can only reduce the appearance of hooded eyelids when the eyelid skin is slight/moderate as opposed to heavy.
And in case you’re wondering, the amount of the injection isn’t the problem. No matter how many units you inject, it doesn’t mean it goes up and up with every injection. Once the muscle relaxes, that’s it. More injections won’t cause the brow to lift up more.
If excessive eyelid skin is what you’re dealing with, you might want to look into surgical options like upper blepharoplasty. Well, I’m not qualified to give you any medical advice. But what’s common knowledge (and common sense) is that it’s surgery. So it means there’s more room for complications. So keep that in mind.
Who is Eligible?
If you need a tiny bit of intervention and could use any type of lifting on the brows, then yes. Botox can be enough to fix hooded eyes and soften the appearance of hooded eyelids.
To be honest, it looks like the best candidate for a Botox brow lift is someone young with healthy skin, and eyebrow position neither too high, nor too low… So basically someone who doesn’t even need Botox!
But so far so good. You can try and get rid of hooded eyes with Botox. The actual problem occurs when you want to fix hooded eyes and fix other wrinkles as well.
Treating Forehead Wrinkles When You Have Hooded Eyes
People with hooded eyes tend to have more prominent wrinkles on the forehead. It’s because we’re unconsciously lifting our eyebrows more, making that frontalis muscle hyperactive.
This is where it gets tricky. Even if you don’t care about lifting your brows, you need to be aware of your eyelids when you want to get Botox injections for forehead wrinkles.
You might not be aware, but forehead wrinkles are the most problematic wrinkles to treat! One would think it’d be the eye area. But no. If you and your doctor aren’t considering your eyelids and the location of your brows, Botox can even cause and/or worsen hooded eyes.
How Does Forehead Botox Cause Hooded Eyes?
To relax the wrinkles on the forehead, Botox is injected into the frontalis muscle. It’s a big muscle that extends across the forehead. And one of its functions is to raise eyebrows.
So you go in all excited and ask for a completely wrinkle-free, smooth forehead. And you get injections all over your forehead. You go home and your Botox settles in after about 10 days.
You see that the wrinkles are all gone but your eyelids seem to be heavier as if they’re being pushed down from the top. Well, that’s exactly what’s happening there.
When you get the treatment for all horizontal wrinkles on the forehead, you paralyze all muscle movement there. So there’s no muscle that elevates the brows and opens up your eye area.
As a result, your eyelids look more hooded and your eye area looks heavier. This is not the case for people that don’t have hooded eyes. That’s the reason why you need to be mindful of every injection if you already have hooded eyes.
Injection on the forehead without consideration of your upper eyelids is how Botox can cause and/or worsen hooded eyelids.
How To Treat Forehead Wrinkles and Not Cause/Worsen Hooded Eyes?
Simply put, you’re going to have to compromise. Because what you’re basically trying to do is paralyze the muscle that lifts your brows -the muscle that actually helps with your hooded eyes.
To avoid worsening hooded eyes when treating forehead wrinkles, your doctor may want to inject Botox less. Low dosage is going to weaken the muscle to smooth out wrinkles but not so much that it’s completely paralyzed resulting in heavy eyelids.
Low dosage may also mean that your horizontal lines may still be visible but not as deep. So you get normal injections in all three areas to fix hooded eyes. But you get little improvement on forehead wrinkles. This also means that your forehead Botox is not going to last as long as usual.
In my case, my forehead wrinkles were becoming really prominent. So I decided to go all in knowing that it’ll lower my eyebrows and may worsen my hooded eyes.
I got injections for all three areas for the brow lift. And I got injections all over my forehead and smoothed it out completely. What happened was my so-called brow lift didn’t really make a difference. As I mentioned, you can’t have it both ways.
Hopefully, you have a better understanding of how Botox is used to fix hooded eyes and what to know about getting injections when you already have hooded eyes.
Again, I’m not qualified to give you any advice on this. But this is my experience and something I feel like nobody’s talking about enough.
To get the best results:
- Always see a board-certified plastic surgeon/dermatologist/injector.
- Express your concerns and ask questions.
- Manage your expectations.
- Your doctor will call you for a follow-up after about 2 weeks. GO!
- Doctors perfect their doses in time. Your feedback is important for both of you.
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