Greg:
Hey, this is Greg here from 997 Now, Big Bay Mornings. And there he is smiling into the camera, board-certified plastic surgeon, Dr. Bae. How you doing, Dr. Bae?
Dr. Bae:
Doing great, Greg. Thanks for having me.
Greg:
Well, I am having you today because I have a personal question. This is all me.
Dr. Bae:
It’s not for a friend?
Greg:
Well, it’s for everybody, but I have a question about if you could help me with something. Now look, I’m near perfect, but not completely. When I smile, this has always bothered me. When I smile for photos, my eyes sort of disappear. So they go from open to almost closed. I mean, really, in a lot of photos, my cheeks are so full they come up. And my mother also has the same issue and she can’t stand to have her photo taken and she won’t smile in any photos. And I’ve noticed that literally, my eyes will go away. So a lot of times what I do is wear sunglasses in my photos, because I just don’t like the way it looks. Is there anything that can be done to help me out to where I actually have eyes when I smile?
Dr. Bae:
Absolutely. And the thing is, if you want to do something to address that we can, but you also don’t want to take away all your facial expressions. That’s when you start to look like a real housewife or something.
Greg:
Well, hey, that’s my dream, so don’t knock it. I want to be a real housewife.
Dr. Bae:
So I think the easiest way to address those issues is something called a neuromodulator, which is just the fancy term for Botox or Xeomin or Dysport or Jeuveau, any of these products you’ve heard.
Greg:
Oh, that sounded like a neuromodulator, it sounded like you’re going to put a mask on my face and pull it like this. So you mean it’s just Botox.
Dr. Bae:
Yeah, we can do that too. Just neuromodulator makes me sound smarter. But there’s a couple of different ways you can address that. So one is when you smile really big, you see these crow’s feet here. And so you can inject Botox there, that will relax the muscles. And so for those people that don’t know about Botox, it’s again, neuromodulator, you inject it under the skin, into the muscle. It relaxes the muscle so that when you smile, the muscles aren’t as activated and you don’t have those wrinkles and you won’t close your eyes as much. The other thing you can do is you can put Botox in the forehead. And a lot of doctors will do Botox all the way across the forehead, which will get rid of those forehead lines, but you don’t want to take away all the muscle tone from the forehead, because the muscles in your forehead also keep your eyebrows in a good position.
Dr. Bae:
So if you do Botox all the way across the forehead, it can take away all the muscle tone and your eyebrows can droop, which obviously not a good look, not one that people want. So what I do is I do Botox in a V pattern. I start in between the eyebrows and I go up onto the forehead in this V pattern, and that helps treat these lines. But since I don’t inject the muscles way out here, these muscles keep working. So when you smile or regardless, if you’re not smiling, you’re just in repose, these muscles keep working and they can keep your eyebrows lifted. Not like a Spock look that’s scary, but it can lift the outer part of the eyebrows. So between Botox in the eyes, Botox to the forehead in the way I described, can give you a little brow lift and that can also keep your eyes open when you smile really big. So it’s pretty cool that there is definitely a way to treat that and still maintain your facial expressions so people will know if you’re happy or sad. You won’t be just totally frozen.
Greg:
People know I’m always mad. But Dr. Bae, this reminds me, this is sort of a similar treatment you’ve talked about in the past that you had a client come in, was bothered, some people are bothered they expose too much gum when they smile maybe. And you said it’s a similar treatment for that. You don’t need major surgery. It’s Botox so your lip doesn’t come up as far, right?
Dr. Bae:
Right. So some people do have a lot of gummy show and one of the more permanent ways to treat that is to get a jaw surgery where they break the bone of the upper part of the jaw. I know everybody thinks of this as the jaw, this is the upper jaw where you break that bone and you can shorten that area and so it doesn’t have as much gum showing. Obviously, most people aren’t going to do that. There’s a much easier way to handle that. And what you can do is inject a very small amount of Botox into the upper lip. People do different areas depending on the doctor, but it’s all reasonable ways of treating it. But you inject Botox into the upper lip so that when you smile, the muscles are relaxed. And so the lip doesn’t go up as high when you smile.
Dr. Bae:
And because it doesn’t go up as high, it doesn’t show as much of the gum, so that fixes your gummy smile. The other thing that’s really cool about it is because your upper lip isn’t going up as high, it shows more of your lip. More of your lip rolls out, and that’s what people are talking about when they’re talking about the lip flip is just doing Botox here, treat your gummy smile. It makes your lip look fuller. Even though you didn’t get fillers, it looks like you got filler. There’s a photo I have on my Instagram page where this patient has a really thin lip when she’s smiling really big, and then she has a really full lip when she’s not smiling as big. It’s not because we put filler in her lips. It’s because we did Botox, did that lip flip, showed more of her lip. It’s a very cool photo. It looks really, really effective.
Greg:
This is why we love you, Dr. Bae. You give us the least expensive way to get what we’re looking for and the least invasive way to get what we’re looking for. So you’re not trying to get us for all we got. You’re trying to help us look our best, the easiest way possible.
Dr. Bae:
That’s right. I don’t get referrals by taking as much money and screwing people over. That’s not how it works.
Greg:
Well, good. We’re glad about that, and we do appreciate it. If you want to check out pricing for any procedure, make an appointment, or just get a consultation and go see Dr. Bae, you of course can do it right here on the website where you’re watching this video, or Dr. Bae is a crazy mad social media guru. He’s doing dances on TikTok. He’s all over Instagram. What’s your handle, Dr. Bae?
Dr. Bae:
It’s real Dr. Bae, R-E-A-L-D-R-B-A-E, not B-A-Y. Yeah, very easy to reach out on social media to find us or check out our website, realdrbae.com.
Greg:
Thanks, Dr. Bae. We’ll talk to you next time.
Dr. Bae:
Look forward to it.
