Looking stern when you are not

Every expression leaves traces. When we concentrate, we draw the brows together — while reading, at the screen, in conversation. Thousands of times a year. What springs back in younger years becomes established as skin elasticity declines.

The result is a line that remains visible at rest. And because the brain reads drawn-together brows as a signal of anger or tension, an impression forms that has nothing to do with your actual mood.

Which of the three predominates in your case determines the sensible approach. This cannot be assessed from a photograph, only from the expression in motion.

For predominantly muscle-related lines, the effect is well documented: the muscle is selectively relaxed, the line softens over two to three weeks, and the gaze appears more open.

Dosage is decisive. Too much removes mobility — producing exactly the effect most people fear. Too little changes nothing. The corridor between the two is individual and depends on how strongly your musculature actually pulls.

How a good treatment can be recognised: not the day after, but two weeks later. Whether the forehead still moves when you are pleased. Whether both brows sit at the same height. Whether people say you look rested — not that you look treated.

Many patients arrive in their early to mid-thirties with a question that makes more sense than any later correction: what can I do so that it does not become deeper in the first place?

The reasoning is medically sound. A line develops in stages: first visible only in movement, then faintly recognisable at rest, finally permanently established. As long as the line disappears at rest, considerably less intervention is required than later on.

This does not mean every woman over thirty should be treated. It means that timing matters — and that restrained, infrequent treatments at this stage often achieve more than intensive corrections ten years later.

What prevention does not mean: no appointments by calendar, no treatment without examination, no measure simply because it is currently being promoted. If there is nothing to be done in your case, I will tell you so — even if you came wanting a treatment.

If the line remains clearly visible even with a fully relaxed forehead, the muscle is no longer the principal cause. The question then concerns volume and skin quality — and that requires different procedures or a combination.

Equally: if the impression of sternness comes less from the glabella than from descended mouth corners or a heavy upper eyelid, treating between the brows will change little. That too belongs in the examination, not in the advertising.