Most people will not look in the mirror and automatically think they need temple fillers to lift their eyes or get rid of that tired, aged look.
Yet this area of the face can make people look dramatically older in more ways than one.
To find out why we first need to understand the role your temples plays in maintaining a youthful appearance.
The temple also known as the pterion is the area on the side of your face that sits at the edge of your eyebrows and runs to the tip of your ears and back to your hairline.
When your temples are full and plump, they help to shape and contour your face, giving it a smooth, youthful appearance.
They also help to balance the appearance of the face, giving a heart-shaped facial structure to women.
In men, the temples help to solidly define the upper face and lend it an attractive, masculine look.
Although the temple area is often neglected in non-surgical cosmetic procedures, it is essential to the structure and balance of your face, giving it dimension and definition.
How Ageing Affects the Temple
Unfortunately, our temples don't stay the same way forever.
As we get older, the distribution of fat, bone density and overlying tissue in the temple area changes.
The skin naturally loses collagen and elastin, which are essential proteins that help keep the skin firm and plump.
As a result, the skin becomes thinner and more dehydrated, leading to a loss of volume in the temple area.
To make matters worse, the temple area is quite bony and has little tissue volume and fat pads.
This means it's likely to take up a gaunt appearance faster than other areas of the face.
The underlying temple muscle and fascia (your connective tissue) will also weaken, resulting in less structural support in the temple area.
Since there's already a natural concavity to the temples-actual hollows in the skull itself- the hollowing effect on the temples is more apparent.
The more obvious this becomes, the more the underlying skull shape is emphasised. This can result in what is sometimes described as the "peanut effect": a broad forehead, narrow temples and narrow cheeks.
While temple hollowing is largely due to the natural ageing process, people who are naturally slimmer or have lost an extreme amount of weight will experience even more temple hollowing over the years.
Also, people who are very athletic or exercise a lot tend to lose a lot of fat here.
The effect is particularly harsh on people with naturally pronounced cheekbones.
If you fall into one of these categories, you need to be wary of the effects of the hollow at the temples.
While temporal atrophy is often the result of an ageing face, it can sometimes be a cause as well.
- Hollow temples can also worsen the appearance of crow's feet.
- Hollow temples can also cause the end of the eyebrows to droop because of the loss in support to the tail of the brow. The technical term for this is brow ptosis, the descent of the eyebrows from their normal anatomical position to a point where they appear to "fall off a ledge", resulting in a cosmetically unpleasing sharpness in the eye area.
The end result is a shift from a youthful, "full' appearance to a more skeletal, angular or aged look.
This usually begins in the mid-20s and becomes more pronounced in the 40s and 50s.
Why People Often Ignore Hollowing Temples
- Oftentimes, it's the consequences of temporal atrophy - not the hollows themselves - that catch our eye. People notice the lower half of the face softening and drooping, but they can almost never pinpoint the cause. So it's rare that patients ask specifically for temple fillers, but many recognise a general change in shape.
- Another possible reason, especially in women, is that their hair covers this area quite well. It is only when they start to push their hair back, or when the hollowing worsens and is accompanied by a loss of volume in the cheeks, that they notice how aged or tired they look.
How to Reverse The Effect of Hollowing of the Temples
Although you may find it difficult to pinpoint exactly what has changed in your face, an experienced doctor will identify the problem and suggest the right treatment.
Our top recommendation is hyaluronic acid (HA) temple fillers. When you first have hyaluronic acid injected into your temple area, you'll notice how it quickly makes the tissues look plumper and firmer than it was before treatment.
That's because hyaluronic acid acts like a natural water magnet immediately attracting water to itself.
The moisture gets absorbed by the tissues in the temple area and keeps it looking plump and firm for about 6-12 months.
The result is that the patient's temple area is now contoured and has a youthful appearance again.
This helps to improve the balance of your overall facial shape Most patients can not believe just how much of a difference a temple filler can make!
Many patients have reported feeling up to 5 years younger after a single treatment with a temple filler.
Other Benefits of Filler Treatment for Hollow Temples
- Our eye associates round and full shapes with youth. This makes the temples an incredibly impactful area to rejuvenate. Restoring fullness to the temple area balances the mid-face and creates a soft, youthful contour from the temples to the cheeks.
- If you do not like the position of your eyebrows (i.e. they sit too low on the forehead), you can bring them into a more flattering position on the face by filling in the temples, which can help cancel out the drooping.
- The temples also affect the structures surrounding them. When you fill in this area with hyaluronic acid filler, it also minimises the middle to lower parts of the face, such as the cheek lines and nasolabial folds. This is why the head of our medical aesthetics clinic, Dr. Farmah, opts for a filling technique that also targets the surrounding areas of the temples to achieve the most natural, even appearance possible.
Precautions For Temple Fillers
Concavity at the temples is not always a bad thing. A natural hollowing of the temples can actually make overly round faces look a little slimmer as well as accentuate the cheekbones.
While we can use a numbing cream to make the procedure more comfortable, not everyone can tolerate the sensation of the cannula sliding under the skin of the temples.
This is not to say that the treatment is painful (most of our patients find it only slightly uncomfortable).
That said, this area is more difficult to traverse than other areas of the face, so you may feel more pressing and pulling when the injector is at work.
The temple contains several important blood vessels and nerves, such as the anterior and posterior deep temporal arteries.
The clinical consequence of this is that accidental injection of temple filler in the wrong place can lead to all sorts of complications.
Therefore, the temporal region is considered one of the more complex areas of the face where a good knowledge of the underlying anatomy is of paramount importance.
Therefore, any practitioner performing temple fillers should have advanced training and experience.
Should You Get Temple Filler?
As with all treatments, the first step when considering dermal fillers for the temples is a thorough consultation. This stage is crucial.
It allows the aesthetician or dermatologist to understand your goals while ensuring that the recommended fillers are best suited for your temple hollowing and volume loss.
If you are convinced by Temple fillers...
If you looking to enhance your upper face with fillers? Discover the transformative power of temple fillers and reclaim a more youthful appearance. Visit our dedicated page on temple fillers to view the secrets behind rejuvenated facial contours.
If you would like to discuss whether temple fillers are the right treatment for you, please call us to book an appointment.
