Yes, says Dr Afshin Mosahebi, a professor in plastic surgery at University College London: injecting botulinum toxin (commonly known as Botox) into areas of the face before fine lines start forming can slow their development – but that doesn’t mean you should.
“Facial wrinkles happen for two reasons,” he says. One is that when our muscles move, the skin over them is repeatedly scrunched and – in the same way that constantly scrunching up a piece of fabric will ultimately leave a crease – it begins to etch lines into the skin. The other reason is the thinning of the dermis layer of the skin, which happens “as we get older, and particularly as we are exposed to the sun”, Mosahebi says. The thinner it is, the more susceptible it is to wrinkles.
