Non surgical, Draper and Lehi
The Botox brow lift, from the person who published on it
Your brow position is a tug of war. One muscle lifts, several pull down. A brow lift with neurotoxin is just a decision about who wins. I wrote the paper on that decision, which tells you something about how I spend my time.
How the lift actually happens
Your frontalis, the broad sheet of muscle across your forehead, is the only muscle that raises your brow. Nothing else does that job. Working against it are the muscles between your brows and the ring of muscle around your eye, and all of those pull the brow down. Where your brow sits at rest is simply the score in that contest.
A brow lift with neurotoxin relaxes the ones pulling down and leaves the lifter with enough strength to do its job. Your brow rises because nothing is hauling on it as hard. Which means this treatment is as much about where I do not inject as where I do.
The part most pages skip
Why the same treatment can drop a brow
If relaxing the depressors lifts your brow, relaxing the lifter does the opposite. Take too much strength out of the frontalis, and especially out of the part carrying your resting brow height, and there is nothing left holding the brow up. Your forehead goes smooth and your face goes heavy. Not the trade anyone wanted.
The usual advice is to stay high and keep well away from the brow. My published position is that this often makes things worse, because it takes support away from the region that provides it and leaves the lower lines sitting there untouched. The paper lays out the whole argument if you want it.
Evidence hierarchy
What is established, and what is me making a call
- Established: botulinum toxin relaxes the muscle it reaches, and the frontalis is the sole elevator of the brow. That is basic anatomy. Nobody argues about it.
- Peer reviewed: the compartment based approach to the frontalis that I use was published and reviewed in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, 2026.
- Clinical judgment: how much lift you get, and whether it is even worth doing on your face, is a decision I make in the room with you. Individual results vary.
Straight answers
Brow lift questions
What is a Botox brow lift?
It is neurotoxin used to change the balance between the muscles that raise your brow and the ones that drag it down. Relax the ones pulling down, and the muscle doing the lifting finally wins. Your brow sits higher. Nothing is cut and nothing is put in, so the name oversells it a little.
How much lift can I actually get?
A few millimeters. That is the honest answer, and I would rather say it now than after you have paid me. A few millimeters at the outer brow changes how open your eye looks more than you would think, but this is not a substitute for a surgical brow lift and it will not fix significant skin laxity. Individual results vary.
Can Botox also cause a brow drop?
Yes, and that is the strange part of this treatment. The muscle a brow lift borrows from is the same one that gets over treated when a forehead is dosed badly. Whether Botox raises your brow or lowers it is entirely a question of which part of which muscle gets the product. Same drug, opposite outcome.
Am I a candidate?
The people who do best have reasonable skin quality and a brow sitting lower than they would like because muscle is pulling on it, not because there is heavy tissue sitting on top of it. If your hooding is mostly excess skin, that is a surgical question, and I will tell you so rather than take your money.
How long does a brow lift last?
Broadly the same as any neurotoxin treatment, commonly three to four months. People judge this area harder than any other, because a small change in brow position is very obvious to the one person staring at it in the mirror every morning.
What is a spock brow?
An outer brow that arches up too sharply. It usually happens when the middle of the forehead was relaxed and the outer fibres were left alone, so they keep pulling. It is fixable, often with a tiny amount of product in the right spot, and it is a tidy example of why this region has to be planned as a whole.
Read first
Before you book
My brow feels heavy after Botox
A heavy brow and a drooping eyelid are different problems with different causes, and only one of them has a treatment. Told straight, with the evidence graded.
Why didn’t my Botox work?
Five causes, in order of how often each is the real one. True resistance to the product is near the bottom of that list, not the top.
How many units of Botox do I need?
Typical ranges by area, why two people with the same lines can need very different doses, and how to verify what you actually received.