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Over the past few years, many celebrities and social media stars have gotten lip fillers to increase both the volume and size of their lips. This has caused lip fillers to become one of the top three non-invasive plastic surgery procedures for women.

Kylie Jenner recently admitted to removing the fillers that were inside her lips. She revealed that she had first gotten her lip injections at age 15 because a boy had made fun of her small lips.

Very few women are lucky enough to be born with full, pouty lips. The vast majority have to rely upon getting fillers such as Juvéderm or Restylane injected at a plastic surgeon’s office. This is not a permanent procedure, because in order to maintain the current size and shape of their lips, more injections will be required on a regular basis.

What Do Lip Fillers Do?

The purpose of a lip filler is to improve the shape, structure, and volume of the lips. The overall effects will last for around six months, after which maintenance injections will need to be administered to keep up the appearance.

Most women who get fillers get an injection of Hyaluronic acid (HA) into their lips. HA is a natural component of human skin and is broken down and naturally absorbed by the body. While the stated average lifespan of a lip filler injection is around six months, however, many people have reported that the lip injections will last for a few months longer.

How to Get Lip Fillers?

Lip filler injections are a medical procedure and should only be administered by a board-certified plastic surgeon. Knowing how much filler to use and exactly where in the lips to inject it is critical to retaining a natural look. Otherwise, the lips will come out bumpy and uneven if performed by an inexperienced spa technician or other non-medical professional.

Before getting the injections, a numbing agent will be applied to your lips. This is to ease any discomfort you might feel when the needle is inserted. After the procedure is done, you can return to your normal life as there is no downtime required.

The lips might bruise or swell for 24 to 48 hours afterward, and this can be managed by applying ice to the area. Lipstick and other cosmetic beauty products are advised against being used for a short period until the swelling goes away.

How to Get Rid of Lip Fillers

One of the main reasons women would want to get lip fillers removed is due to buyer’s remorse. They most likely went to a “Groupon beauty clinic” who performed the procedure at a cut-rate discount. The end result is most often a cartoonish-like inflation of the lips which does not look natural.

It’s been suggested that the reason Kylie Jenner got her lip fillers removed was due to her newborn baby. Kardashian-watchers noted that during her pregnancy she wasn’t putting on much makeup, instead opting for a more natural look.

Whatever the reason for wanting to get lip fillers removed, there are a few ways of going about it:

Stop getting maintenance – One of the easiest ways to reserve the plump lip look is to stop getting maintenance injections when they are due. This will cause the lips to lose volume to some extent – but won’t cause it to go away completely. In most cases, only 85% of the volume will disappear.

Get a Hyaluronidase injection – If Hyaluronidase is injected into the lips, it will cause the Hyaluronic Acid to dissolve over a period of time. It should be noted that Hyaluronidase will not reverse such brand name fillers as: Bellafill, Radiesse, and Sculptra. In situations like this the patient will have to wait for their body to absorb the fillers or get a steroid injection. A consultation with a plastic surgeon before deciding what to do will produce optimal results.

Possible Side Effects of Lip Filler Removal

It should be noted that getting rid of lip fillers is not as straight-forward as it seems. There are a few caveats that most people don’t take into consideration when they opt for the initial lip injections in the first place:

Lip fillers are not all fully reversible – Depending on what type and kind of filler was used, it’s possible that the procedure is not reversible. Unless the doctor used Teosyla, Juvéderm, or Restylane, there’s a good chance that the process cannot be reversed or it will take a long time for it to go away.

The above three mentioned injectables can be reversed via a hyaluronidase injection, which almost immediately begins to go to work in just a few hours.

Permanent changes can occur – Even after the hyaluronidase injection has been given and the lip volume starts to go down, most people only see an 80% – 85% reduction in the volume.

If a person has gotten repeated filler injections over a longer period, there is a chance that after the filler has been fully dissolved, the lips could still retain some fullness that will never go away on its own.