Improve the Aesthetics of Your Lips and Smile with a Lip Lift

Few things are sexier or more attractive than full, luscious lips. While a lucky few may be blessed with natural lip fullness, most of us need some help to make our lips — and our smiles — look their best. 

Sure, lip fillers and the Botox®-fueled “lip flip” can help you achieve those goals. But there’s another option — a permanent solution that doesn’t require ongoing touch-ups to maintain the look you want. It’s called a lip lift, and for a lot of people looking to enhance their lips and smile, it’s just what they were looking for.

As a leading plastic surgeon in Plano and Frisco, Texas, Chelsea Snider, MD, uses the lip lift to help patients at Vida Bela Plastic Surgery achieve their unique facial aesthetic goals. Here’s how to tell if a lip lift is a good choice for you. 

Lip lift 101

A lip lift is a simple outpatient surgical procedure that removes a tiny amount of tissue above your lip or just below the nose. By removing that small strip of tissue, a lip lift shortens the distance between the top of your lip and the base of your nose while also exposing the natural pink lip tissue. 

Unlike lip fillers, where the goal is to add volume to the lips, a lip lift enhances the natural height of your lip, helping your lips appear fuller. It also subtly alters the contours of your smile, revealing more of your upper teeth.

Most lip lifts use an incision under the nose, which enables Dr. Snider to hide the incision in the fold at the base of the nostrils. Sometimes, though, the incision is placed along the edge of the upper lip — an area called the vermilion border. Both approaches shorten the distance between the nose and the lip, while the lip-oriented incision exposes more of the pink lip tissue.

Another type of lip lift, called a corner lip lift, helps people whose smiles naturally curve downward. This type of lip lift removes two tiny triangles of tissue at the corners of your mouth, gently lifting the corners and anchoring them in place.

Lip lift vs. lip fillers vs. lip flip

All things being equal, most people would probably opt for a nonsurgical option, like lip fillers or a lip flip, to enhance their lips and smile. But those options aren’t always the best solution depending on the results you’re looking for.

First, both fillers and the lip flip with Botox are temporary solutions. To maintain your results, you’ll need to have the injections repeated over and over. 

Fillers work to plump up lips, while a lift elevates the lips and exposes more of the lip’s vermilion edge, creating a fuller-looking pout. A lip flip uses Botox injections to temporarily paralyze muscles around the lips, smoothing tiny lines, and relaxing your lips, and “flipping” the upper lip slightly outward for a fuller appearance.

Lip lift candidates

Lip lift procedures can be a great choice if you want fuller lips without repetitive injections, or if the distance between your nose and lips is longer than what you want. 

Aging and gravity often pull the lips downward, elongating the space between the nose and upper lip and making lips look thinner. If that’s you, then a lip lift can address both issues in one procedure.

Or maybe you’ve tried fillers or the lip flip in the past, and it just didn’t give you the results you’re looking for. Some people feel fillers make their lips look too puffed and unnatural. A lip lift is designed to work with the natural contours of your lips for a soft, subtle result.

Lip lift recovery is quick, and many patients combine the procedure with other treatments for a more complete enhancement and rejuvenation. At your office visit, it’s important to discuss all your concerns and goals to make sure your treatment plan is optimized for you.

Learn more about the lip lift

Of course, the best way to learn if a lip lift will help you achieve your aesthetic goals is to consult with Dr. Snider. To schedule your visit at Vida Bela Plastic Surgery, book an appointment online or over the phone today.