Skip the Straw…And the Water Bottles!

A phenomenon of the 21st century is portable drinks.  As a child, noone I knew carried a drink with them.  Think about it.  Bottled water was not a thing at all until the late 80s.  Water bottles were not a thing.  Workers might take a drink in a thermos to their 8 hour shift, but the average person did not walk around with a drink in hand 24/7.    This is hard for my kids to believe and understand.  It’s even hard for me to remember. 

Over the past 30-40 years it has been increasingly common to always have a beverage within arms reach.  My kids rarely leave the house without a water bottle.  There’s a lot of worries we can have for our kids as they approach adulthood.  But only a mama dermatologist worries about wrinkles around the mouth.

Around our mouth we have a circular muscle called the Orbicularis oris.  This muscle operates in a purse string fashion to pull our lips tightly together.  This is important for eating and drinking.  However this muscle is utilized more intensely with drinking out of water bottles and straws. 

In the past, we called the starburst lines around the mouth “smoker’s lines”.  However, many people come to me and complain they have these lines even though they never smoked.  I often find these people are huge water bottle addicts or straw users.  I envision that this will be even a more distinct problem as those 50 and under age.  Chronically drinking from water bottles and straws uses the same muscle and even more intensely than with smoking. 

It is true that smoking itself causes aging of the skin independent of the movement of the muscle.  Smoking causes breakdown of collagen, discoloration, and changes in skin texture adding to the aging process.

So, to avoid developing lines around the mouth, skip the straw and the bottle and drink out of an old fashioned cup.  If you can’t bear the thought of abandoning your straw, they do sell “anti-wrinkle straws” that don’t require as tight of a pucker.  You’ll thank me many years from now.

If you already have deep lip lines, Dr Rosenberger often recommends a multi-pronged approach for smoothing them. Continual use of RetinA is always a great idea. Injecting BOTOX around the mouth into the Orbicularis oris forces the muscle to relax. Filler theoretically can fill in these lines, but often doesn’t provide a natural look. Finally, Microneedling can be of benefit. 

Regarding BOTOX, Dr Rosenberger has been injecting the Orbicularis Oris to help with vertical lip lines for almost 20 years.  More recently, this injection has been popularized as a “lip flip” because it leads to more “show” of the lip giving the illusion of extra fullness.

No matter which treatment option, you pick, they all can be done in combination.  Prevention is the best strategy, so skip the straw and the bottle.  And I wouldn’t be a good dermatologist if I didn’t recommend sunscreen daily.

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