ET's Kristen Gill gets fillers from the GoodSkin clinic via a European technique for a subtle, effective result.
Botox isn't always the ideal treatment for maintaining youthful skin.
Botulinum neurotoxin, or most commonly known as Botox -- a popular brand of the injectable -- freezes the muscles from contracting that cause wrinkles. And Botox is often the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks about injectables. However, fillers have garnered lots of attention in the last few years.
After obsessively scrolling through GoodSkin's Instagram, brimming with jaw-dropping before and after images of anti-aging treatments sans surgery, ET's Kristen Gill visited the clinic to get the scoop on all things injectables and GoodSkin's signature "untouched look."
"Let me just tell you, Botox for you is not going to be what makes you look better. It's actually going to be a cherry on top, but I wouldn't go there first," says Lauren Pack, RN of GoodSkin in Brentwood, California.
For Gill, 29, who has never received any type of injectable, Pack prefers filler to add volume and stimulate collagen production via a European technique she swears by for her celebrity clients.
"What really helps people look better, and that's how Europeans inject, is all back here," Pack explains as she points to the sides of the forehead and cheeks. "Because this is actually where you age the quickest and then you start to fall."
According to Pack, if you focus on injecting the front of your face, which is a common mistake many make now (especially with the trend of lip fillers), your skin starts to fall on top of the filler.
"Filler is a hyaluronic acid -- it's a sugar found in your joints," Pack says. "Your body would break it down just like it naturally would any sugar. When you get injected in our office, we use cannula, and cannula is a blunt tip needle that places filler deep on bone. So imagine, just like somebody who gets older and want to prevent osteoporosis or bone degradation, they do weight-bearing exercises -- same concept. To prevent your bone from degrading as fast as it is, I need to stress that bone and by stressing that bone I'm using a needle, placing the filler."
Pack notes your skin won't sag after your body breaks the hyaluronic acid down.
"The filler stimulates collagen. What's going to happen when it breaks down? You're going to still look better because the filler created collagen in the process," she says. "As long as it's placed on bone, it's not in your skin, so you're not stretching your skin. The skin's not falling, you're truly at that point, anti-aging."
To balance out the symmetry of Gill's face, Pack injects fillers to the right side of her cheek after poking in a numbing agent. A vibration tool is used to distract Gill, while laughing gas provides comfort during the injection. Pack chose filler over Botox as Botox will make her skin look "stuck" when she actually needs "tension", which is achieved by injecting the filler on the bone and blended out with a slight injection under her eye.
The result? A refreshed, tighter surface without looking obviously done -- the "untouched" approach.
For more on anti-aging, see below:
