Jowls

Do you feel like you look sad or down faced when you look in the mirror because of a sagging jawline? If you do, you are not alone. A sagging jawline, or 'jowls' as it is often referred to, is the loose skin that forms under the chin and jawline as we age. One of the major concerns of the ageing face, jowls are caused by a loss of elasticity and thinning of the skin, combined with gravity taking its toll one the underlying structures which support the skin and prop everything up. People who have more fat in their face tend to have less pronounced jowls as the fat provides volume.

Treatments:

Anti-Wrinkle Injections - Nefertiti Neck Lift

Dermal Filler - Mid-Face Rejuvenation / Jawline

Fat Dissolving

Skin Boosters

Radiofrequency

FAQ - JOWLS

What are jowls?

Jowls are the loose and fleshy areas of skin beneath the jawline that have a habit of creeping up on us as the years pass.

As we get older, our skin becomes less firm and has a tendency to sag. If we have a heavy face, with a decent amount of fat left in it (something we tend to lose with age), then gravity and the weight of the face helps to drag everything downwards.

The same slackening is happening in the skin in our necks, and the result is that fat tends to slump under our jawlines and collect there, and it bulges forwards because the skin isn’t strong enough to retain it.

At what age do jowls start to appear?

Jowls are more prominent as we reach our 40s but they can start to develop at a younger age if the ageing process is accelerated by sun damage or smoking for example. Our skin starts to age from about the age of 25 onwards but earlier signs of ageing tend to be around the nasolabial folds, cheeks and eyes. Jowls get progressively more noticeable the older we get and are something women in particular in their 40s and 50s start to become more concerned about.

Will losing weight get rid of my jowls?

This is a tricky issue because if you lose enough weight, it is bound to show up in your face as well as on your body. The trouble is, the results are unpredictable and because of the way the fat pads in the lower face tend to slide south with age and gather unhelpfully beneath the chin, it is likely that your mid-face (where a bit more fat is helpful for padding out your facial contours - none of us likes to look gaunt) will start to show your weight loss before your jowls do. Even if you do lose weight evenly, there is no guarantee that your skin has sufficient elasticity to tighten up underneath the chin as you slim down, which could leave you with empty, sagging skin where the jowls used to be.

If your skin is still pretty elastic and your fat pads haven’t sagged down too much, you should see positive results just from losing weight.

What treatments are there for jowls?

There are several treatments you can use to tighten the skin on the neck without resorting to surgery. The key ones to know about are:

Anti-Wrinkle Injections - Nefertiti Neck Lift

A few well placed anti-wrinkle injections into muscles that are pulling the lower part of the jaw down, accentuating your jowls, will release these muscles and help redefine the jaw. Nefertiti Neck Lift can help redefine the jawline because Botox is not actually a 'wrinkle relaxing injection', rather a 'muscle relaxing injection'. Botox injections alone won’t totally resculpt your jawline, but they may well help.

Dermal Filler - Mid-Face Rejuvenation / Jawline

Dermal Filler can be used to treat the area where volume has been lost that causes jowls to form. By strategically injecting hyaluronic acid based fillers into the cheeks and jawline, the added volume creates a lifted, more youthful contour that provides support to the lower face and reduces the apearance of jowls and nasolabial folds.

Fat Dissolving

Fat dissolving injections can be used to reduce the fat deposits that contribute to sagging, improving jawline definition and give a more youthful look. The solution is injected directly into fatty deposits in the jowls and stubborn fat under the chin to emulsify the lipids within the fat cells. The body then gets rid of these fat cells naturally.

Skin Boosters

These treatments are mostly about hydrating the skin from the inside so they are not the first thing you would think of for tightening loose skin. However there are several brands of skin boosters and they all encourage ‘bioremodelling’ of the skin. This means the skin will regenerate itself and produce more of its own collagen and elastin to become stronger, smoother and tighter.

Radiofrequency

This treatment works by causing light damage to the subdermal layers, prompting collagen remodelling from within. Radiofrequency works by heating up the skin to the point where the collagen becomes damaged. This damage shrinks the existing collagen, giving a small but immediate tightening effect. Following this, to try and repair itself, the skin produces more collagen, which helps strengthen, smooth and firm up the skin. A course of treatments will give the best results.

Can I lift my jowls with Botox?

It might sound unlikely, but yes, you may be able to lift your jowls through carefully placed doses of anti-wrinkle injections. I say ‘may’ because everyone’s jowls are different, and this won’t work for everyone.

Botulinum Toxin can help redefine the jawline because it is not actually a wrinkle relaxing injection, rather a muscle relaxing injection. A few well placed into muscles that are pulling the lower part of the jaw down, accentuating your jowls, will release these muscles and help redefine the jaw. Botulinum Toxin injections alone won’t totally resculpt your jawline, but they may well help.

The Nefertiti lift is the fancy name for the procedure above, i.e. treating the neck and jawline area with Botox. So depending on what your face and jowls look like to start with, this procedure may help. The aim is to give you a jawline and neck like the ancient Egyptian queen, who was renowned for her beauty. Here’s hoping!

How to hide jowls with make-up?

If you’re going to try hiding your jowls with makeup, it involves some seriously clever contouring, artfully placing a darker shade of contour or bronzer beneath the edge of your jaw to create the illusion of the shadow that a stronger jawline casts.

Can it be done? Yes, with a bit of practice - just take your contour or bronzer and with a small brush, buff it on just below the edge of your jaw and under your chin.

Bear in mind, that while this buffed-on shadow that you have created may look okay in pictures or if you are facing people head-on, it may not look so good from the side. In fact, it may look as if you have a dark stripe of bronzer smudged under your jaw. Also, don’t do this if you are wearing a shirt or coat with a collar, because if you drop your chin and turn your head sideways, your careful handiwork will start showing on that collar.

Can surgery fix a saggy jawline?

Yes surgery can be used to address sagging in the area of the neck and jawline. A neck lift, medically known as a platysmaplastyis is probably the most effective treatment for jowls although a facelift may also be performed.

Will a laser treatment get rid of saggy jowls?

Laser rejuvenation can be very effective for a number of ageing related concerns, but it is not necessarily the most effective treatment for jowls. Ultrasound is considered to be more effective in this area. There are many different types of laser but the most powerful one used for facial rejuvenation is an ablative CO2 laser resurfacing. This is very effective at treating scars, wrinkles and pigmentation but does also have a tightening effect. Because ablative laser has more downtime many practitioners now prefer to use what is known as fractional CO2 laser which is non-ablative and therefore not as aggressive as its ablative counterpart. This is because it only targets a fraction of the skin, leaving little spaces in between the areas that are treated.