Spock No More! A Little Help From Dysport

For the first many many years of my life, when quizzical, I would raise my right eyebrow just like Spock. But as the years went by, maybe 5 years ago, (right around the time I started having my eyebrows done professionally after hacking away at them and they had become a cockeyed mess), I noticed my eyebrow was actually starting to physically slide down my face.

Funny, I thought using a muscle more made it stronger, in this case, gravity pulled the brow downward.

I’m no ophthalmologist, so I don’t know why the Spock expression would pull things down and not up like doing pecs.

Hmmm.

I digress.

So, as a volunteer this past week, I got injections of Dysport, which is a muscle relaxant like Botox Cosmetic. Dysport however, lasts longer in most people, maybe 2-4 weeks longer than Botox.  What’s more, if you continue your treatment, and get a tune up right when you notice the affects waning, your next Dysport treatment will last even longer.

Such is the way this category of aesthetic treatments work.  If you start early enough, you can avoid deep lines and wrinkles making headway to permanence, and after awhile you need less product because your muscles learn to behave and stay put.

Dr. Melanie Tantisira injected Dysport after numbing the injection area around my brows and crow’s feet with a cubie – which is a super cold pillow of ice.  She also uses super fine acupuncture needles so imagine getting a shot with a straw vs a shot with a strand of hair circumference.

So I pretty much did not feel anything.

Dr. Tantisira is an ophthalmologist so she knows the anatomy of the eye area back and forth, and forth and back.  Many in the audience asked about nurses doing injections, internists, dentists and everyone who has hopped on the bandwagon, but at the end of the day for me, if I want help around my eyes, I’m going to go to an expert on the eye area.

While I was there at the workshop for the “Madonna Lift”, the audience said after 5 minutes or so, that they could see a difference in my right brow raising on it’s own without the help of Spock.

A few days later and it looks even better, so I don’t have to fake a raised brow with my eyebrow makeup.

Muscle relaxants like botox and dysport and xeomin don’t do everything but they help alot.  Once your whole face starts losing the chubby cheeks of youth, aka volume loss, then you’ll see hollowing under your eyes (tear troughs) and folds around your mouth because the cheeks aren’t holding up the tissue etc. You know stuff like jowls.

Then it’s time to bring out the dermal fillers like Restylane and Radiesse.

I’m not there yet, but Dr Tantisira tells me she can tell I sleep on my right side because the right temple has lost volume from doing so. So I can anticipate that.

Yay.

Really.

Hah.

k

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Bat My Eyes! Clinique High Impact Extreme Mascara

The BF and I have a little deal.  He uses the Super Defense SPF 25 EVERYDAY to protect his blue eyed self, and I look for a Clinique gift with purchase so I can get the freebies.

As a side note, don’t you just hate it when you’re like $4 away from the gift threshold and you end up buying $20 more of something you don’t really need? Afterall you can only have so many pencil sharpeners – though Laura Mercier’s is superior.

Anyway.

I am the queen of lazy when it comes to putting on more than one coat of mascara so my mascara has to do it in one application, and I mean one short application.  Instead of brushing and brushing and coating each lash, I pretty much do 5-6 brushes, while pulling my lashes upward.  I skip the lower lashes. I skip curling them.

I’m not a mascara conniseur like some of my friends, but I am open to trying something new. For the most part, I get so many sampler tubes, I really don’t have to buy mascara – but I end up buying to get to the gift threshold.

Over the years my favs were Great Lash, Mac’s False Lashes, L’Oreal’s Voluminize, Bobbi Brown’s Party Lash (?), Cliniique couple of different formulas. And many many more.

But as a marketing person I think it’s funny that the Clinique ad agency must have sat there and said to themselves,  how many adjectival adverbs can I use in the product name?

The product is a performer. It only takes a couple of sweeps to get the product taking your lashes to new heights of length and volume.  For me that means, fat and long at the same time.

The only thing is- the formula is very liquid-y so it’s easy to smear it, and it kind of builds up on the brush. And the brush is so fat, it doesn’t work well on lower lashes.

There you go—now you have to buy their bottom eyelash mascara with the special brush to get the gift.

Great product, but seriously, why not just make a mascara with two brushes on the ends for upper and lower?

k

The Fight Against The Dreaded Eye Wrinkle Monster!

The day I was shopping around for a new eye cream, I was looking for something that would ease the dryness around my eyes-the sides, the under and a little under the brow AND something that I could use with concealer if I chose to take that step.

I have used Bobbie Brown’s eye cream which Bobbie uses when she demonstrates how to put on concealer her way. If you haven’t watched her video on concealer, it is pretty eye opening in that she covers the entire triangular area under the eye and above the cheekbone.  The affect is gorgeous if you have the right concealer color.  I always skipped the powder step because my skin is too dry, but I had a person who has known me for years exclaim, “damn, you just keep looking younger!”

Anyway.

I dabbed my way through pots of eye cream in Sephora, Nords and NM and then was coaxed into L’Occitane’ with the heavy fragrance wafting out of their doors.  I go in and out of how much I like their products–my favorite was their honey lotion which they discontinued years ago, but they should bring it back.  It was light yet very moisturizing.

I got  a sample packet of Immortale’ Precous Eye Balm,  L’Occitane’s premium skincare line.  Made with a special flower that somehow has properties that sustain youth blah blah blah.

I went back and purchased the product a few days later.

Why, is it that, the sample and the product don’t always perform the same?

The sample packet was a little thinner, the actual product a little thicker.  True it is called Precious Eye BALM, like in chapstick, but the product goes on really thick.  I take the step of warming it up on my fingers, but that doesn’t help much.

The thing is – a balm is supposed to help seal moisture in, so in other words you don’t feel dryness during the day.

But Precious precious eye balm – does not keep my skin moist.  After a few hours, when I smile or even when just sitting around, I can feel my skin getting dry.

Maybe I’m more sensitive than most, but hey….Plus insult to injury, this product is in a very very tiny pot for $40+ buckeroos. Yes, it’s not a $100+, but I give this product for lack of performance a C.

k