Could your facial expressions age you?

Smeared from brow-line to breast-line with the most succulent of skin creams, or the best sun block that money can buy, may keep you feeling fresh and supple or keep the sun's rays at bay, but it will do nothing to stop the deep lines and wrinkles that can occur from your own most punishing facial movements.

According to the experts at The Harley Medical Group, who perform thousands of procedures each year to address the visual affects of lines and wrinkles, regular repetition of simple everyday expressions will eventually result in many of the deepest of all facial lines when we hit our late 30s and 40s.

Laughing
Laughing can cause a spider's web of lines and creases to work their way around the corners of your mouth.
Preventative procedure
Injections of collagen or restylane (collagen will last longer, and is recommended for more severe cases) will work to fill in the creases, ensuring that the marks melt away.

Squinting
Periods of continuous squinting, caused by either poor eyesight or gazing at the holiday sun, will cause serious damage to the skin around your eyes, producing the dreaded `crow's feet'.
Preventative procedure
In this case, a small injection of botox will relax the strained muscles and allow for the lines to disappear.

Raising eyebrows
The repeated strain of raising your eyebrows will soon form a series of `train track' lines across your forehead.
Preventative procedure
A combination of botox and collagen provides an easy cure: firstly botox should be injected to relax the muscles, and after a fortnight, collagen can be added to plump up the skin.

Pursing or pouting lips
The habit of pouting or pursing your lips (in seduction or disapproval!) can wrinkle the skin directly around your mouth, causing the `cat's bottom' effect to become permanent.
Preventative procedure
Injections of restylane into the skin just above and below the lips will smooth out the creases, bringing your pout back to perfection.

Frowning
Serious frowners will be cursed with `train track' lines (like those who raise their eyebrows), and will also have to put up with the `number 11' - two furrows that appear between the eyebrows, making you appear constantly angry.
Preventative procedure
Small botox injections to the forehead will counteract the lines by encouraging the muscles to ease and the skin to soften.

Louise Braham, Director at The Harley Medical Group comments: `It was thought that once a frowner, always a frowner, but with treatments like botox, which freeze the use of the muscles used to frown in the forehead, patients get out of the habit of making that facial movement and so over time, requirement for the treatment reduces and stops.

Botox injections, collagen and restylane fillers are available at The Harley Medical Group (call 0800 0859085 for further information about any cosmetic surgery treatment or procedure).

What to do if you're not prepared to go for cosmetic procedures

Give up smoking
`Every time you smoke, you are killing one thousand skin cells' says Odle. Worth thinking about next time you light up.

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