article by Nora Kuch

Forehead lines: horizontal lines, often called worry lines. These lines form mainly because the underlying frontalis muscle, which stretches across the forehead, moves when you make facial expressions. When you lift your brow—sometimes referred to as the “aha” or surprised look—the muscle contracts, which causes the skin that is covering the muscle to pull, wrinkle, and then return to its original position when you relax the muscle. Now consider the countless number of times you’ve used these muscles. As you age, your skin be­gins to lose its elasticity, it suffers from sun damage, and the constant contracting and relaxing of the muscle results in forehead lines. These can be eliminated using Botox or filler injections such as collagen or fat.

Frown lines: vertical lines, also known as glabellar lines, that appear between the eyebrows. These linescan make you appear serious, angry, or stressed even when you’re not. It is for the removal of these lines that the Food and Drug Administration gave approval for Botox in April 2002. These lines are best removed with Botox. If you’ve frowned a lot over the years and the lines are very deeply etched, you may also need wrinkle fillers (e.g., collagen, fat) to eliminate these lines. Your doctor will discuss your options with you.

Crow’s-feet: lines that radiate from the outside corners of the eyes. They’re also known as periorbital lines. If you have these lines, they’re most likely the result of smiling and squinting. If you look in the mirror ands mile or squint, notice how your muscles contract and cause your eyelids to nearly cover your eyes and how the muscles contract at the corners of your eyes where the lines appear. Crow’s-feet are best eliminated with Botox, plus adjunctive treatment such as collagen, chemical peels, or laser resurfacing.

Laugh lines: also known as smile lines or nasolabial lines, they are the two vertical lines that run from the out­side corners of the nose down to the top of the outside of the upper lip. Even though they are called laugh lines, gravity and aging are also factors in their development. They can best be eliminated using wrinkle fillers (e.g., collagen, fat, AlloDerm, Cymetra, Gore-Tex, or SoftForm).

Lipstick or smoker’s lines: the tiny radiating lines that appear above the upper lip and below the lower one. It seems as though everyone has a different name for these annoying wrinkles, which are best removed using laser resurfacing, chemical peel, microdermabrasion, or wrinkle fillers—tissue augmentation (e.g., collagen in­jections, AlloDerm, fat)—in addition to Botox.

Marionette lines: the often deep lines that run down from the outside corners of the mouth toward the chin. These lines develop from a combination of factors, in­cluding gravity (the cheeks tend to sag from the force of gravity) and thinning of the supporting tissue that comes with age. These wrinkles are best eliminated using wrinkle fillers or laser resurfacing. Another option is a face-lift, a complex surgical procedure.