What Happens When One Twin Has Botox And The Other Does Not?

One question a lot of people tend to have about anti-wrinkle injections is about the long-term effects of using them.

Whilst the short-term effects are very clearly seen in many before and after pictures of people using treatments such as Botox, it can be far trickier to see how the face changes over time if you get treatments on a regular basis compared to if you don’t.

However, a pair of identical twins are on hand to shed some light on the reality of long-term botox treatment, in a paper published by William Binder in 2006 with a follow-up in 2012.

The identical twins both live healthy lives in different parts of the world, with one in Munich, Germany and the other in Los Angeles. The only other major difference is that the twin in Germany has only had one or two injections in her life whilst the other has had at least 26 from the age of 21 up until the age of 44 when the follow-up took place.

This would have meant she had injections from 1989 until 2012, and the differences are somewhat pronounced.

The twin in Los Angeles with more Botox treatments had noticeably smoother skin, and with relatively shallow wrinkles compared to her Munich twin, and since both twins diligently used sunscreen, the differences in sunlight could be ruled out.

It provided a lot of insight into how much change can be seen over time through regular use of anti-wrinkle injections compared to someone who chose otherwise.

An interesting point that was not mentioned in the study is that this routine was long before the subtle, and more natural use of injections as part of “tweakments”, starting from the initial authorisation of Botox in 1989.

At the same time, by starting at 21, the treatment would have inherently been more preventative in nature, rather than trying to smooth out wrinkles that already existed.