Draper and Lehi, Utah
The muscle that makes crow’s feet also closes your eye
That one fact decides everything about how this area gets treated. It is why the goal is softening rather than erasing. And it is why the results people dislike here almost always come from treating that muscle like it only had one job.
What I am actually deciding
- How far down to go. The lower the treatment sits, the more it touches your lower lid and your cheek lift. This is the single biggest thing deciding whether your smile still reads as a smile.
- How much to leave. Relax it partly and the fan of lines softens while your eye still narrows when you laugh. Relax it fully and the whole expression flattens. People notice that without being able to say why.
- What it does to your brow. This muscle pulls your outer brow down. Relax it and that brow rises, which changes your brow shape whether or not anyone planned for it.
- Whether the line moves at all. Lines that are there with your face completely still are a different problem and need a different answer.
Why this connects upward
You cannot treat the eye without moving the brow
The muscle ringing your eye is one of the muscles pulling your brow down. Relax it and your outer brow lifts. Relax the forehead above it at the same time and your brow falls. Both of those are happening on the same face, in the same appointment, and they pull in opposite directions.
Treating them as separate line items on a menu is how people end up with a brow shape nobody asked for. Dosing them against each other is the subject of the method I published in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology. It is a niche thing to care about. I care about it anyway.
How the system is dosedRead first
Before you book
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.
Botox side effects: what the trials actually found
Every rate with the placebo rate beside it. One of the two columns is the reason most side effect pages are not useful, and the headache number is the surprise.
Botox aftercare: which rules actually matter
Separating the rules with real reasoning behind them from the ones that get repeated because everyone repeats them.
Straight answers
Crow's feet questions
Can crow's feet be removed completely?
Softened, usually. Removed, rarely, and chasing removal is how this area goes wrong. The muscle making those lines is the same muscle that closes your eye and lifts your cheek when you smile. Switch it off entirely and you do not get a smooth smile. You get a smile that stops at your mouth.
Why do my lines stay visible at rest?
Because by then they live in your skin, not just in the movement. Neurotoxin stops the muscle reinforcing the crease, and the skin does soften over several cycles, but a line etched at rest is a skin problem wearing a muscle problem’s clothes. Individual results vary.
Will treating here make my under eye look worse?
It can, and I would rather name that risk than skip past it. Treating too low, or too heavily, can leave your lower lid looking fuller or rounder when you smile, because the muscle that was lifting that tissue has stopped. That is a placement decision. It is not bad luck.
How does this interact with treating my forehead?
Directly. The muscle around your eye pulls your outer brow down, so relaxing it lets that outer brow sit higher. Often that is exactly what you want. Sometimes it is not. Which is why I dose the whole upper face as one system instead of one area at a time.
How many units does it take?
Less than you are expecting. This is one of the areas where a smaller dose placed well beats a bigger dose spread evenly. Anyone quoting you a number before they have watched you smile is quoting an average, and you are not an average.