Let’s talk about fillers, with Doctor Rekha Tailor

Fillers are big news – everyone wants perfect, plumped lips – and it seems that you can get them pretty much anywhere. Beauty salons, hairdressers, even gyms often have their own, in-house ‘botox and filler specialist’. But how can you tell whether it’s safe, and how much do you REALLY know about what’s being injected into your body, and the person doing it? So how can we make sure people are aware of filler and botox safety regulations?

The owner of Health & Aesthetics, medical doctor Dr Rekha Tailor, wants everyone to ask more questions before having any kind of injectable treatment.

Here are her top 3:

WHO IS INJECTING ME?

This is probably the single most important thing to consider. Your face is a complex and sensitive structure, with many underlying components, like nerves and blood vessels – not to mention your eyes. When having any kind of injectable treatment, it’s important to have the confidence that you’re in the hands of a medical professional who understands your facial anatomy; and knows which areas are safe to inject, and which to avoid.

Yet, in the UK, injectables like dermal fillers are unregulated, meaning anyone could inject them – you could even do it yourself, with no legal consequences. Botox is a prescription only medicine and should therefore be only administered my a medical practitioner. However, this is not the case in the UK.

Some ‘specialists’ have had just one day’s training, or even less. They know how to use the product they’ve been trained to use, but they haven’t spent years at medical school learning about anatomy and wider medical practice. And worryingly, these ‘specialists’ have no training or knowledge regarding how to deal with potential complications. So you could be at risk – not just of infection and complication, but of permanent damage.

Widespread advice is to always make sure you are being treated by a fully-trained medical practitioner. But I’d go a step further, and recommend you choose not just any medical practitioner but someone who is fully trained in performing aesthetic procedures. I’m an experienced medical doctor, and I specialise in non-surgical cosmetic treatments – with many years of training and practice. My husband is also a highly experienced medical doctor, but he’s a gynaecologist, so his specialism is at the other end! We both know how to use a syringe, but which of use would YOU choose to inject cosmetic fillers into your face?

ARE YOU SOMEWHERE CLINICALLY CLEAN?

If you’re just having an injection or two, you might assume that there’s no risk of infection. The risk is small, certainly, particularly compared with having surgery, but there’s still a risk.

So a safe, clinically clean environment is essential. Your beauty salon, hairdresser or someone’s house might look spick-and-span, but is unlikely, as a matter of course, to practice the same high level of cleanliness that you’d find in a medical room?

At Health & Aesthetics we practice an extremely high level of hygiene. As a medical doctor, I oversee standards and ensure they are comparable with those required for any medical procedure, and my team of skilled aestheticians are trained to maintain the same high standards.

WHAT’S IN THE BOX?

It amazes me how many people don’t know, or even care, about the product they are about to have injected. Always ask to see the box, and check that it is FDA or CE marked, or both. Find out more about what FDA approval and the European CE marks mean here . This is really important, as either of those marks is an indication of quality. Don’t let anyone inject you with something that doesn’t carry at least one of those marks.

And don’t ever take it for granted, even if you’re in a clinic, rather than a salon. There are around 180 injectable fillers on the market here in the UK. Fewer than 10 of those are FDA approved, and these are the ONLY ones available in the US. So, whilst some of those other 170 products might carry the European CE mark and be quite safe, they haven’t been as rigorously tested. And some of them might not even carry the CE mark. Remember, fillers and other injectables are currently completely unregulated in the UK, so without those quality standards, how do you know it’s safe?

If a non-medical person is claiming to inject Botox, is it really Botox or something else that is being injected? It could potentially damage your health and well being.

At Health & Aesthetics, we only use the highest quality products, and will always tell you which product we’re recommending, and why, as well as exploring your medical history to make sure you’re suitable for the treatment.

ABOUT DR REKHA TAILOR

Doctor Rekha Tailor is one of the UK’s leading non-surgical cosmetic specialists and is a highly trained medical practitioner with over 28 years’ clinical experience, including over 13 years in full time Aesthetic Medicine. She is a full member of the British College of Aesthetic Medicine and the Royal College of General Practitioners. Dr Tailor has received specialist training in all the treatments and products offered at Health & Aesthetics and oversees all treatments, administering many herself.

Find out more about the range of injectables available at Health & Aesthetics here.

To arrange a consultation contact Health and Aesthetics today.