Not Ready For An Eye Lift? Try These Tweaks Instead

Here’s a question we hear a lot at TTG: If you have hooded, droopy eyelids but you don’t want to have surgery just yet… what is the next best option? Can Botox lift the eye area a bit? Or is there a better treatment? Great question, and one that will resonate with so many people. Here are some thoughts.

Will Botox help drooping lids?

Carefully placed injections of botulinum toxin can raise the brows, and yes, that will make your eyes look more open, so that will help a bit, and that may be enough. Take a look at this Instagram post from my friend @thisisfifty, who has been having toxin in her brows for exactly this reason for a while and loves it because it works a treat for her.

The ultrasound brow lift

There are energy treatments like ultrasound that can be used around the brow area to give a brow-lift. This seems to work better for some people than others, so you need a good practitioner to assess whether you’re a good candidate for it before you leap in.  Here’s a video of the time I tried the Ultherapy brow lift. I know people who have had great results from this; I did see a lift, but it was only a tiny one. I’m not sure I was a good candidate for it!

RF needling – across your eyelids

If radiofrequency microneedling is done in a careful, shallow, controlled way, it can be done all around the eye area and right over the eyelids, though you’ll need a few rounds of treatment for best results. I tried SylfirmX a couple of years ago; you can see the Sylfirm video on this link – though I only had one session when doing the filming, so of course I didn’t see a noticeable result.

The plasma option

NeoGen Plasma can be done not just around the eyes, but straight over the eyelids, to shrink the skin and give a more open-eyed effect. If you’re thinking about this one, consider the benefits of having several rounds of low-intensity treatment. You get all the benefits (this is the way that people like Shirley Ballas have done it) without the downtime you get from an intense treatment (which was the way that I did it). My skin did look amazing afterwards and definitely tighter all over, but if I were to do it again, I’d go for the no- or low-downtime option. Here’s my NeoGen Plasma treatment.

The laser eye lift

And then there are the stronger laser treatments, like CO2, that will definitely shrink the skin in the eye area. You’ll need to be prepared to have ocular shields, like protective metal or plastic contact lenses, that are placed inside the eyes during treatment to protect them from the laser light, and you’ll also need to be ready for a fair bit of downtime afterwards as the skin heals.

But let’s hear it for the bleph!

Having said all that, if, financially, you are up to paying for a blepharoplasty, and if you’re not opposed to surgery per se, I wouldn’t wait. Blepharoplasty is a quick, straightforward procedure with relatively predictable results, and a quick recovery time (one week of real rest, one week taking it easy). There is usually no pain during recovery, and, most of all, it makes a massive difference. There are also lots of great oculoplastic surgeons listed among the TTG-recommended practitioners here.

Finally: What NOT to do

Please think twice before going anywhere near the plasma pen, or anything related to it, particularly if it’s being advertised on Facebook by a non-medical practitioner at excitingly low prices. These treatments are usually given vague names like ‘Fibroblasting’ or ‘Plasma Fibroblast treatment’. You may have seen the ads, with the eye area covered with tiny dots: those dots are burns. The idea is that each tiny controlled blast of plasma triggers healing in the skin, which will shrink as it mends – and it will do that.

But while systems like NeoGen Plasma create plasma (which is what you get if you pass high energy through a gas) by passing radiofrequency energy through nitrogen gas, creating damage below the skin surface to trigger skin renewal, the plasma pens zap the skin with an electric current passing through air… And because air contains oxygen, it ignites, hence the burns on the skin surface. They will scab over and fall off in time, but people often need several rounds of treatment, which not only means multiple weeks of downtime, but raises the chances of scarring alarmingly high. Avoid.

Want to find out more about the best tweakments for your specific concerns? Head to our targeted concerns pages for all the advice you need.