Top 5 Areas To Get Botox
New to neurotoxin? A quick search turns up a dizzying range of what it can supposedly do: smoothing wrinkles, contouring a jawline, easing TMJ pain, even migraines. Consider this a starting point, the handful of places most people treat first, plus a few lesser-known spots more people have been asking about as the industry's shifted toward the lower face.
1. Frown lines (the 11s)
The eyes do more communicating than any other part of the face. A furrowed brow reads as concentration, confusion, or frustration, and over years of making that expression, the lines between your eyebrows stop fading when your face relaxes. Eventually they're there even at rest.
Relaxing the muscle that pulls your eyebrows together softens those vertical lines and gives your resting face a more open, easygoing look.
2. Forehead
The forehead is still the most requested spot, and it's easy to see why. It's a third or more of the face, and we use it constantly, raising our eyebrows when we're surprised, happy, or just listening closely.
The tricky part is balance. Too much neurotoxin here and your eyebrows stop moving entirely. Too little and the muscle keeps carving in the same horizontal lines. Placement matters too. A bit more product toward the outer brow keeps things looking masculine and grounded, while lifting more centrally can open and feminize the eye area.
3. Crow's feet
Every smile or squint creates small creases at the outer corner of the eye. We can soften those without touching the muscle that lifts the corner of your mouth, so a full crow's feet treatment still leaves you with real smile lines. Placement and dose both help decide how much of that movement you keep.
4. Jawline (masseter)
This one does double duty. For people who clench or grind, especially from stress, a dose in the masseter, the big chewing muscle at the back of the jaw, can ease the tension that leads to headaches and jaw pain. For others, it's mostly cosmetic: relaxing an overdeveloped masseter can slim and soften a square jawline.
We never treat this muscle heavily enough to affect chewing, though it can feel slightly different for the first little while. If clenching is a regular issue for you, a nightguard from your dentist and a physical therapy plan from a TMJ specialist is worth pairing with treatment.
5. The lower face: fighting gravity before you need a facelift
Ten years ago, most neurotoxin conversations stopped at the forehead. That's changed, and there's a good reason why.
As we age, skin and muscle both settle downward. A facelift is the surgical answer to that, lifting everything back up after gravity's already had its way. There's a much earlier, far less drastic option, though: stop some of that pulling before it happens in the first place.
A few muscles in the lower face actively pull things downward every time they contract. Relax them a little, and you're not undoing gravity's work after the fact. You're just not helping it along. That's the real case for treating this part of the face early, and it's why these two areas in particular have gotten so much more popular:
DAO (depressor anguli oris). This muscle pulls the corners of your mouth down, and in some people it's disproportionately strong compared to the muscles that lift the mouth. Over time that imbalance can read as a resting frown, and eventually contribute to the folds between your lower cheek and chin ("marionette lines"). Softening the DAO lets your mouth settle into a more neutral position at rest, without affecting your ability to actually frown when you want to.
Platysma (the neck bands). The platysma is a wide, thin muscle that runs down the neck, and it pulls down on the jawline every time it contracts. Treating it, sometimes called a "Nefertiti lift," can soften vertical neck bands and give the jawline a slightly more defined, lifted appearance, all without touching the jaw itself, or going anywhere near a surgeon.
While we're on the subject of the lower face, one more area worth knowing about:
Chin (mentalis). An overactive mentalis muscle can create a dimpled, "orange peel" texture on the chin, especially when talking or expressing emotion. A small amount of neurotoxin here smooths that out, less about gravity and more about a muscle that's simply working overtime.
Put together, these lower-face options are less about erasing one specific line and more about buying yourself time, holding gravity off for a while longer before more drastic options even enter the conversation.
Important to note: Botox® is Health Canada approved for glabellar lines (the 11s), lateral canthal lines (crow's feet), forehead lines, and platysma prominence; Dysport® is Health Canada approved for glabellar lines (the 11s) and crow’s feet. Treating the masseter, DAO, or chin (mentalis) for the reasons described above falls outside those approved indications, in other words, it's considered off-label. Off-label use is common in aesthetic medicine and often supported by published research, but it's a distinction worth knowing before you book.
Every face is different, and the only real way to know what's worth treating on yours is a conversation about your goals and how your muscles actually work. Learn more about our neurotoxin treatments, or book a consultation to talk through what makes sense for you.
