Anti-Wrinkle
Muscle Relaxants

Currently available muscle relaxant injections are a purified form of bacterial neurotoxin — a natural protein which is extracted from bacterial cultures. In high doses it is a poison. However, in much smaller doses that are injected directly into specific sites, it has both cosmetic and medical applications.

Why use muscle relaxants?

Muscle relaxant injections have been available worldwide for more than 30 years and have been used widely to treat various medical conditions including:

• Twitching or spasm of the eyelid
• Muscle spasm in the neck
• Facial or localised muscle spasms
• Muscle spasticity due to cerebral palsy and strabismus — a condition where the eyes are not properly aligned.

Muscle relaxant can also be injected into the skin to block the action of nerves that control the sweat glands, especially excessive underarm sweating or hyperhidrosis (the use of muscle relaxant for this condition is currently subsidised by Medicare after appropriate criteria are met). Muscle relaxant injection treatments are also recognised and subsidised by the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme for the treatment of a number of medical indications including chronic migraine headaches, urinary incontinence, spasticity and other disorders – these all have specific criteria which needs to be met.The use of muscle relaxants as a cosmetic treatment was only discovered when people using it to treat facial muscle spasms coincidentally noticed an improvement in their wrinkles.

How muscle relaxants work

Muscle relaxants work by causing temporary muscle paralysis where it is injected. It also blocks the activity of sweat glands. The major applications in dermatology are for facial expression lines and areas of excessive sweating. The toxin cannot spread throughout your body but is naturally broken down over time. This is why the effect of muscle relaxants is in general limited to three to four months. Regular injections may prolong its effect. In general terms, anti-wrinkle injections are used to reduce ‘dynamic’ lines (lines that appear as the face moves and not lines that are visible when the face is at rest). The most common application sites are the mid forehead frown lines, horizontal forehead creases and the crow’s feet or smile lines around the eyes. Because treatment with injection targets specific, individual muscles, the ability to form most facial expressions should not be affected.