To relax facial muscles, temper creases, furrowed lines and crow’s feet, you now have two instead of one pair of designer shoes to choose from, so to speak.
By Alex Y. Vergara
By making Xeomin available locally to Filipinos, they now have a newer and perhaps better alternative to older forms of neurotoxins, which, as every beauty junkie knows, act as a muscle relaxant to help make deep-seated wrinkles on the forehead, between the eyebrows and around the outer corners of the eyes less pronounced.
Xeomin is the newest brand name in the long line of beauty “miracles” to come out in the Philippine market. It’s been around abroad for a number of years now, but it got the nod of the country’s food and drug administration (FDA) fairly recently.
So far, the A Institute is the only beauty clinic in the Philippines, which offers Xeomin to those who want and need of it. Doctors there also use Xeomin to relax jaw and upper mouth muscles to make prominent jaws and gummy smiles less noticeable, respectively.
The injectable, which goes by the generic name of botulinum toxin type A, takes effect within two to three days after it is injected. Just like its precursor, the much older onabotolinum toxin type A (under the brand name Botox), the effect can last up to six months. Unlike it, Xeomin isn’t known to develop any form of “resistance”—at least, not yet–among its long-term users.
According Dr. Henry Claravall, a resident plastic surgeon at the A Institute, botulinum toxin type A was approved in more advanced countries for non-cosmetic use to address paralysis and other medical conditions as early as 2004. Under the brand name Xeomin, it received FDA approval for beauty purposes abroad in 2009.
“Compared to older forms of neurotoxins, Xeomin consists of a more pure molecule,” said Henry, during the product’s formal introduction at the A Institute’s Aivee Café. “It doesn’t come with this specific protein that was later found out to cause resistance in certain patients.”
The protein, he explained, was designed to protect the main molecule when injected to a patient. It acts as a buffer or protective barrier to keep the active molecule from being “eaten” or destroyed by the body. The flipside to this measure, which they found out much later, came in the form of users’ developing subtle resistance to the product.
“Older neurotoxins have been known to induce some form of immune reaction or resistance from long-term patients,” said Henry. “They’re just like certain antibiotics. Once you take them too often, their effect becomes less and less.”
To compensate for this seeming resistance, not a few beauty doctors have been injecting more onabotolinum toxin type A on their patients. Whereas small doses would work before, say, on crow’s feet, it now takes more neurotoxin to address the same “areas of concern.”
Overtime, researchers and scientists have found out that incorporating such a protein, which makes the neurotoxin less effective, isn’t necessary. When Xeomin was being developed, they saw no need to add a protective protein to the final formulation.
Dr. Z Teo, CEO of the A Institute as well as the Aivee Group of Clinics and better half of fellow beauty doctor Aivee Aguilar-Teo, shared his personal experience with lifestyle journalists. He attributes his unconscious nighttime teeth grinding, which used to disturb his wife during bedtime, to his “intense” Type A personality.
“For the longest time, I’ve been getting my injections [of neurotoxin] from Aivee to relax my [jaw] muscles,” Z said.
Whereas the effect of such injections would last up to six months, Z, in recent years and much to Aivee’s irritation, started grinding his teeth only after two months.
He even asked Aivee, who’s also a practicing dermatologist, if she was injecting it right. She had. Based on a hunch that his body was starting to develop some form of resistance to the product, Z did his own investigation. But he ended up nowhere because the company that manufactures the neurotoxin insisted otherwise.
“A few years down the road, when Xeomin came up, its distributors introduced the product to me and told me that its manufacturers had stripped it off the protein [other brands use] so that users wouldn’t develop any form of resistance,” Z said. “And, I said, that’s it! That validated what I was thinking and feeling all along.”
Since Xeomin wasn’t available here, Z, a native of Singapore, used to get his injections in his home country. He has also been using it on his patients there. Thanks to this recent development, he could now get them as well in Manila. And his wife could once more get eight hours of uninterrupted sleep every night for up to six months.
Whether or not its users would eventually develop some form of resistance to Xeomin, Z, in all honesty, said: “I can’t answer that because studies are still being done. They’re not yet conclusive. But, at least, you now have two designer shoes to choose from, so to speak. If you don’t like Gucci, you can wear a Fendi. If you don’t want the Fendi, you still have the Gucci.”
