Dr. Vicki Belo on why 20 million people trust Botox to look young

I’m obsessed with porcelain, flawless faces. I love how some actors have an ageless glow and how some newscasters’ tight skin can steal the spotlight from the headlines. I love imagining how their regimens must be like, thinking of the discipline their taut skin entails.  During a one-on-one chat with renowned doctor to the stars Dr. Vicki Belo, I was determined to find out their beauty secrets. “True, a lot of actors and newscasters get Botox,” Belo reveals. Bearing that reality in mind, I instantly got hooked on getting to the bottom of Botox.

 Considering how commonplace Botox has become, it’s ironic how it’s still shrouded in so much mystery and laden with misconception. While I personally prefer my regimens and creams, I can’t deny the merits of instant fixes and popular options, like Botox. There’s definitely a reason why “more than 20 million individuals trust  Botox to keep their appearance consistent with their active lifestyles,” reports Allergan Healthcare Philippines, Inc., makers of Botox.

 This year, Botox marks its 10th global anniversary since earning approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its aesthetic use. And, to commemorate this milestone of its star product, the Allergan group hosted an intimate dinner bash last November 8, to honor its leading customer and trusted partner, the Belo Medical Group. The Belo Medical Group has been administering Allergan’s Botox to many satisfied customers and remains to be its top customer in the Philippines.

In the Philippines, “getting Botox goes beyond wanting to look young,” says Seung Je Cho, country manager of Allergan. With its impressive medical track record, Botox has definitely earned its spot in the medical halls of fame. In fact, aside from its strides in dermatology, Botox neurotoxin is approved to treat five other medical conditions including  abnormal head position or cervical dystonia; symptoms of severe underarm sweating; increased muscle stiffness in the elbow, wrist, and finger muscles for patients with limb spasticity; chronic migraine; and urinary incontinence due to neurological conditions.

 Aside from these medical breakthroughs, the most evident proof of Botox’s effectiveness are the years it staves off faces — making, I must admit, TV viewing all the more pleasurable. Getting intimate with Dr. Vicki Belo, this Q&A answers your curious questions on beauty, Botox , and beyond.

What is Botox, really?


DR. VICKI BELO: It really started for therapeutic purposes. It paralyzes muscles temporarily. They were doing it for patients with cerebral palsy or blepharospasm. Jean Carruthers, an ophthalmologist, was injecting people with Botox for blepharospasm; and they kept coming back because the treatment also got rid of their wrinkles. The patients would insist on having Botox even on the side of their face where there was no spasm. She later informed her partner, Dr. Alastair Carruthers, a dermatologist, about her discovery. Together, they wrote a paper based on their patients, and they presented it in 1990 to the American Society for Dermatological Surgery of which I am a member.

 So, did you immediately become a fan of the product?

At first I thought: “Are you really serious? We’ll inject people with toxin just to be able to stop their wrinkles? Isn’t that a bit much? Haven’t we gone over the line?” I didn’t use it right away. I wanted to be sure. I just kept observing and later on there were more and more papers about it. I gave myself a five-year deadline, thinking that if nothing bad was reported in five years, I would start doing it. So, finally, I started doing Botox 17 years ago, way before it was really available in the Philippines. I used to have to import it from the States.

 What does Botox have over other kinds of treatments?

The public doesn’t know and they don’t really understand what it’s used for. They think laser can do what Botox does, but it can’t. They think a filler can do it, but it won’t.

When we talk about Botox, we’re talking about muscles. It doesn’t do anything much to your skin. When you talk about beauty, especially of the face, you’re dealing with four things: the epidermis, the dermis, the fat, and the muscle. Botox targets the deepest layer, which is the muscle. In fact, no other thing targets the muscle. Thermage Laser doesn’t target the muscle, fillers don’t target the muscle.

 So where and when does it come in, in terms of one’s regimen?

The filler can only come after the Botox. If you have the corrugator muscles or what we call the 11 lines here (points above the eyebrows), you have to Botox first and stop the muscles from involuntarily causing that line. Then, you can follow with a filer to bring the line up.

Just putting the filler without putting the Botox isn’t going to work. That might even make it worse because you just keep squeezing and squeezing the crease with your muscles, and so the filler is squeezed out, too.

What makes a good Botox job?

You should look like yourself, except that you have fewer lines. Unless you request and tell me that you want your eyebrows a little higher, I can do it. But what I don’t want is a patient looking like Mr. Spock.

I’m very grateful to Allergan since it’s because of them that I can make my practice work really well. You can actually do a facelift with just Botox and fillers nowadays, you don’t even really have to cut anymore. The face will go on moving, your skin will go on aging. This is not a permanent solution. By doing it, you slow down looking older.

 It seems like there’s Botox everywhere. What makes one different from the other?

Botox is actually a trade name. It’s not a generic name. Now that its patent has expired after 20 years, though, there’s already Botox from China and from India, and they’re very cheap. But they’re also very unpredictable and not FDA-approved. There are no studies about them. And people use them because they’re cheaper. It’s scary.

People say, “You can easily Botox this and Botox that.” But you’d better ask for the bottle to see if it’s really Allergan. That’s the only real Botox. Everything else is clostridium botulinum toxin, yes. But, it isn’t exactly the same formula as Allegran. Sometimes, they put the clostridium botulinum in, but the carrier is different, so it’s more painful; or sometimes they don’t know how to regulate it. It takes a lot of money to have that kind of research and predictability, so that’s why we always insist on using Allergan Botox, so that you’ll know you’re sure. Besides, it’s your face, and you shouldn’t experiment.

 If you start on Botox, won’t you have to do it forever?

That is true. It’s not that you have to, but if you want to look rested and not problematic, then yes. The good thing is that the gaps in between get longer. If, say, you’re a Botox virgin, then you need to get your next (treatment) in three months, maybe. If you’ve had two sessions done already, it can go up to four months and five months, before you actually need a next treatment. The longest gap without the movement coming back is one year. For most people, the movement comes back after four to six months.

 “Paralyzing muscles” sounds a tad too stiff and frozen. How true is this?

The negative connotations are not real. I’ve been Botoxing for the past 17 years, and I’m not “frozen.” I mean, I have expression, there’s no doubt about that, but it’s an expression that I want. It’s the expression that I want to come out.

You see, in doing this (frowns and scrunches forehead), the motions are often involuntary and the message that you project is that you’re worried or you’re not a nice person; you look sungit. And that’s not the message that you want to project. A lot of nice people end up looking worried or cranky because they do that.

The first question we ask when someone comes in is, “How much of it (your lines) do you want gone?” We can do a frozen face with no expression, with no lines at all, but I advise against that. I want patients to have expressions, but soft.

 But don’t we like our facial lines to give us more character/wisdom/history?

Yeah, right! Well, it depends on what character you want to create or channel. Seriously, it’s very European to say that. They don’t care about their lines. They say, “I’ve earned those lines. They’re my lines.” In the US, they don’t want any lines. Filipinos don’t want any lines either. If you’re worried about “creating character,” do it in other ways, not with lines on your face.


 For inquiries, call the Belo hotline at 819-BELO (2356) or e-mail info@belomed.com.

source: philstar.com

Cosmetic Surgeons Push 'Skin Doctors'

The true test of a cosmetic product’s efficacy is when professionals like cosmetic surgeons prescribe or endorse the product to patients either as alternative to invasive procedures or as a post operative skin treatment.

A lot of cosmetic surgeons stumble on and buy the cosmetic products even without any promotion or advertising push during their “trips” to the malls or to reliable retail shops of cosmetic products. Sometimes, they try the product personally and upon noticing beneficial changes on their skin they recommend it to their patients.

One time, Marshelly Grace Lazaro (owner of Cytherea Global Cosmetics Inc., exclusive distributor of Australian product Skin Doctors) got a surprising call from the store manager of Rustans about a walk-in customer who presented a prescription of a cosmetic surgeon for Skin Doctors’ eye tuck (eye bag remover).

She called the doctor and found out that the doctor bought and used it before, saw it was effective in removing eye bags and recommended it to his patients. So she offered to supply the doctor with Skin Doctors to sell directly (for added income) to his patients but the doctor refused. He said he was happy just endorsing products that work.

“Before I deliberately avoided tapping the cosmetic surgeons thinking that they are my competitors only to find out that they push our products, even giving complimentary samples to their patients,” Lazaro said.

Some cosmetic surgeons offer Skin Doctors for patients who don’t want surgery while others offer it as a complimentary product after a face lift. There were other patients who came from a face lift, botox or other surgical beauty procedures who also obtained complimentary smaller sizes of Skin Doctors products from the clinics to help them recover faster and avoid bruising and reddening of their skins.

“Now I have more clients who are cosmetic surgeons than ordinary dermatologists. Since the ordinary dermatologists sell cheaper products from Korea, Thailand and sometimes sourced locally. I think I am the first distributor of Skin Doctors who went to retail at once. The other Skin Doctors distributors just followed,” Lazaro admitted.

Lazaro began exclusively distributing Skin Doctors in the country in 2004 selling them at first through professional channels, dermatologists and spas or clinics. She discovered Skin Doctors during her travel to Australia when she noticed several pages of full-page ads about the product so she rang the company and had an appointment. After the meeting, she signed a contract, gave downpayment for the stocks to be shipped to her and was given monthly sales quotas, which at first seemed too stiff for her. But later she found out that after educating customers (in workshops done in the outlets), the products would sell themselves.

Skin Doctors is so named because it has 30 products for every conceivable skin concern. “We have three products for the eyes (for eye bags or periorbital puffiness, periorbital dark circles or under eye circles and eye lines); for the face there is a product to remove melasma (or the patchy brown discoloration of the skin on the face), product for whitening, skin firming without the use of collagen; skin renewal; preventing photo aging (from UV exposure); skin resurfacing through gamma hydroxyl; zit zapper that works on pimples overnight; removing and preventing wrinkles; a product for post operative bruising and for the body there are removers of varicose veins and cellulite.

“It is really complete, which is why I am happy with Skin Doctors. But sometimes it is difficult to manage such a wide array of product variants. But Rustan’s is happy since the comprehensive skin care line make customers faithful shoppers,” Lazaro said.

Because of the strength of the brand in Australia and the UK, PharmaCare, the biggest pharma company in Australia bought Skin Doctors but opted to keep Lazaro as exclusive distributor for the Philippines, despite the fact that some offered to distribute the products in the Philippines. The new management saw the feasibility of retailing the products more than selling through professional channels (the old strategy) for most of its country dealerships. In Hongkong, the top market in Asia, retailing is also getting bigger.

Because of her youth and good looks, Lazaro is able to attract equally-attractive and eloquent sales people to man the counters at Rustans in Glorietta and Shangrila (now temporarily being renovated); Cebu and the stand-alone outlet in Davao, which opened two years ago.

The top selling product of Skin Doctors is the eye tuck, increasingly among young call center agents whose jobs require night work. In close second is super facelift – cream for firming and tightness and then skin whitening.

“Some who undergo botox experience a downtime after a treatment. They can’t be presentable for how many weeks only to find out that after some time, they need to go through a firming procedure again. Our cream has no downtime. Just apply daily and you will notice the improvement,” Lazaro said.

She developed a strong friendship with the 75-year old brother (back then) of tycoon John Gokongwei who profusely thanked her for bringing Skin Doctors to Cebu; he no longer had to go through the scheduled eye bag removal by just using the 15ML cream (that he bought for P5,000). Her sales staff convinced Gokongweig to cancel his surgery since Skin Doctors would do the job he needed. “Now he is our product evangelist,” Lazaro said.

source: mb.com.ph