Look & Feel Your Best
If you have questions about common esthetic treatments, Dr. Kendra Manning is here to answer them.
Board Certified in Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics and licensed by the American Academy of Facial Esthetics, Dr. Manning uses her expertise to help you reach your health and esthetic goals.
FAQs About Our Esthetic Services
In 90% of gummy smile cases, showing our maxillary gingiva is a good thing. As we age, the upper lip muscles become less active, and more of our lip covers our upper teeth, which makes us look older.
In most cases, correcting a youthful, gummy smile with an irreversible procedure, such as jaw surgery or tooth intrusion, will make you look older than your age over time.
This is where botulinum toxin comes into play. Injecting a very small amount of this neuromodulator into the Levator Labii Superioris Alaeque Nasi muscle(man,that is a mouthful) will temporarily denervate the muscles that cause the upper lip to lift excessively.
Over time, this treatment will untrain this muscle’s overactivity, and as you age, treatments will become unnecessary. And best of all, when you are in your 50s and 60s, you will look younger than your friends because you will still show your upper incisors when you smile!
YES! Injecting botulinum toxin into your masseter muscle and sometimes your temporalis muscle can relax these muscles to minimize grinding and clenching.
Over time, these muscles can be reduced in size, which helps control overactivity when grinding or clenching. By telling these muscles to relax, most patients can experience significant comfort with a non-invasive procedure and a much-improved night’s sleep.
Results may take 7 – 10 days after the first treatment, and you may need to retreat every 3 – 4 months at the beginning of the process. If jaw muscles are bulky from overactivity, facial slimming will gradually occur around the masseter muscle.
Yes, there are eight different muscle groups on each side of the jaw that all work together when we eat.
And since botulinum toxin treatment relaxes one or two of the eight muscles, without paralyzing them, patients still have normal jaw function during mastication but less grinding and clenching at night.
Sleep apnea is a complicated disease caused by many factors. Some factors include nighttime bruxism and clenching, where the patient is unconsciously trying to open their airway. There is a great amount of clinical evidence that injecting the muscles associated with grinding and clenching is one component to helping improve the sleep quality of a patient with sleep apnea.
Most patients who have cosmetic botulinum toxin injections into their forehead and temporalis can experience a large decrease in the intensity of headaches.
Botox works by blocking a chemical neurotransmitter called acetylcholine, which transmits pain to muscles. When injected, botulinum toxin helps to prevent activation of the pathways that lead to migraine headache pain.
How soon will you see the effects of treatment? Some patients may see improvements in their headache frequency in the first four weeks, but most patients who see improvements will notice them after the second injection at twelve weeks.
Once a wrinkle has set in and appears at rest, botulinum toxin will not correct it. Botulinum toxin treats dynamic wrinkles, which are the wrinkles that form when we elevate our eyes, make an angry face, squint our nose, or purse our lips.
While botulinum toxin is used to help prevent the formation of deep wrinkles at rest, it will not erase them once they form. Sometimes fillers can help with this, so ask your doctor if another treatment option is available.
Botox/Xeomin is used to treat wrinkles that form with exaggerated facial expressions. By using botulinum toxin in our 20s and 30s, we minimize repeated wrinkle formation on these exaggerated expressions.
When these dynamic wrinkles are kept smooth over time, deep wrinkles cannot form, giving us much more youthful and rested skin in our 50s and 60s and older.
Looking for a Trained Facial Esthetics Doctor in The Woodlands, TX?
If you’re looking for a trusted doctor trained in facial esthetics in The Woodlands, you can count on Dr. Kendra Manning. Reach out to our team today for more information!