Botox is one of those cosmetic enhancers that I look at with some interest, but also with a lot of trepidation. I just don’t feel that we know the long term effects of this drug well enough for it to be considered “safe” for long term use, as many women have begun using it, especially when the toxin must be administered about three to four times a year just to keep the targeted facial muscles adequately relaxed or frozen to prevent wrinkles and reduce their appearance.
I like to advocate the natural alternatives such as anti wrinkle creams and devices for wrinkles and facial tone such as the handheld soft light lasers that I’ve become fond of myself instead of Botox or any other invasive procedures, but I will admit I’ve had one of them done on myself to test it out (lip injections of Juvederm, which I liked a lot, minus the pain and the bruising afterward and the obvious drawback of having my lips repeatedly stuck with a needle).
This is one of the reasons why I am leery of such injections. Apparently a Botox-type of drug which uses a similar botulinim toxin that is injected into the surface facial muscles to relax them, called Dysport, is being linked to birth defects after a woman who received the injection gave birth to a baby deaf and blind. She had recieved the Dysport injections when she was just one week pregnant with the baby, which explains why, they don’t even recommend any type of injections when you are expecting, and this woman may very well have not even known she was pregnant at the time.
Botox is not without it’s potential side effects either. Some users have reported partial facial paralysis, difficulty swallowing, and even respiratory failure and death in it’s most severe cases, and this has been issued as a potential side effect on that drug. I guess my concern is that supposedly the toxin is not supposed to leak into your body, but it has to if it causes these other problems.
Not only that, how do we know for sure how long the toxin stays in our body, or if it can perhaps be built up to lethal amounts in the brain, or even cause permanent damage to the organs or brain after repeated treatments. I think that Botox-types of drugs are something I will still resist for as long as I can, until there are more studies. Crow’s feet will have to be a burden I’ll bear 
