Hazardous Botox

I've shared with you guys about beauty practice in many different cultures around the world, some of them might be frowned upon by urban people. However, it's a different story with Botox, a modern beauty treatment that practised by many women in almost every part of the world, especially those in developed countries.

I've always heard about Botox. "Celebrity A is using Botox, just look at her glowing skin. Oh, you know, she's of my grandma's age! How can her skin seem so young?" , yada, yada. Yet, I've never cared to really learn about Botox, until it's time to write this entry. Hehe, so thanks to you blog, I learnt something new!

Botox is actually a trade name for a substance injected into the skin which is known to inhibit muscle movement and prevent wrinkles developing or worsening. Well, to put it simpler, Botox is like an anti-ageing treatment. Get some Botox, and kick off some years of your skin.The name Botox or Botulinum toxin usually comes from the word "botulus" meaning sausage. This is because the substance is actually to a naturally occuring poison, occassionally found at dangerous levels in bad meat products, and it can paralyze and kill. (Whoaa...even the definition sounds dangerous). 

Appropriate amounts of Botox injections in units needed by the patients to erase wrinkles from various parts of the face. This treatment is carried out at Bella Luce Medispa, a skin care and spa service company in California, US
Photo taken from http://www.bellalucespa.com

Botox is a quick way of being beautiful (when beauty is associated with wrinkles-free face), so people get this treatment focusing on the safe side of it. However, there are actually lots of reported negative side effects of using Botox.

Public Citizen, a national non-profit public interest organization in US analyzed US Food and Drug Administration analyzed data on Botox from 1997 to 2006. Among the findings, 180 patients developed life-threatening conditions after being injected with Botox, with 16 deaths and 87 hospitalizations. Some Botox users suffered paralysis of the respiratory muscles and dysphagia (difficulty swallowing), leading to pneumonia and fluid in the lungs. Common mistakes are the frozen forehead and drooping eyelids. The frozen forehead makes a person look like a robot, where the face remains stiff and immobile. This makes me remember an English detective movie I used to watch years ago (sorry, can't remember the title though), in which one of the characters (a suspect of a homicide case) shows totally no emotions on her 'lines-on-skin-somewhat' test, where in the story it's mentioned that through the test, every normal human being should have her or his emotions seen by the movement of the lines. But this woman, she clearly has no emotions, meaning she has no line movements on her face, and later it's found out she's taken Botox injections.

One of the famous Botox mistakes. Jocelyn Wildenstein has allegedly spent USD 4,000,000 on cosmetic surgeries over the years
Photo taken from www.oddee.com