While the primary focus of Botox procedures involves using it to relax facial muscles that are linked to dynamic lines and wrinkles, we’re starting to see increased interest in using its ability to modify muscular activity in other areas, including some tied to body posture.
An interesting off-label application involves using Botox to relieve tightness in the trapezius muscles (also known as ‘traps’) that can lead to hunched posture, and associated neck and shoulder pain.
How Your Trapezius Muscles Affect Posture
The trapezius is a large diamond or kite-shaped muscle positioned across the upper back and shoulders. It plays a key role in supporting and aligning the head and neck, but also comes into play when shrugging the shoulders and when lifting one’s arms overhead.
Why Trap Tightness Can Cause Problems
The trap muscles can easily become stressed while spending extended periods hunched over a desk, carrying poorly positioned heavy loads, or even repeatedly bending the neck to look down at one’s phone. When this happens, we tend to adjust the position of our neck and head to exacerbate the hunched posture, which in turn can strain the spine and compress the cervical vertebrae.
Over extended periods, such bad posture can result in adjacent muscles becoming fatigued, and can lead to a wide variety of problems, including reduced mobility, chronic stress, and migraines.
How Botox Can Help Relieve Trap Tightness
Botox (botulinum toxin) works by blocking the transmission of nerve signals that cause muscles to contract. A skilled practitioner with advanced knowledge of anatomy and muscle function can selectively apply Botox to allow overactive muscle fibers to relax, while not having a significant effect on the rest of the muscle group.
Judicious application of Botox can allow tightly contracted parts of the upper trap muscles to progressively relax and lengthen. The process is gradual, so results develop slowly over time.
As the Botox treatment slowly takes effect, it allows fibers within a large complex muscle like the trapezius to dynamically rebalance themselves. It acts to smooth muscle contours and reduce any resistance to correct body positioning. The effect is localized to specific areas that are over-stressed, so there is no significant loss of muscle strength. Botox can act to break the cycle between pain developing and muscles going into spasm in response. This allows body posture to gradually improve as the shoulders relax, and the head and upper body revert to their optimal neutral positions.
Short and Long-Term Benefits of Botox for Trap Muscles
It’s normal to see improvements start to develop 7 to 14 days after treatment, but it can take up to a month for the full effect to develop. In most cases, benefits will persist for between 4 and 6 months after treatment, although in some cases they’ll last considerably longer.
The effects of Botox are temporary, so if you don’t rectify the bad posture that led to the problem in the first case, eventually you’ll need to have the procedure repeated. For some patients, the Botox dose required to treat the problem may become smaller over time, as their body begins to learn how to avoid over-stressing specific muscle fibers.
Your practitioner may also recommend physical therapy; this can also help to address fundamental problems in your posture and reduce the chance of developing stress-related pain again in the future.
Schedule a Botox Appointment with Your Laser Skin Care
Your Laser Skin Care practitioners are medically qualified, with extensive experience performing trapezius Botox injections. We tailor all treatments according to each patient’s needs, and prioritize minimalistic application and natural-looking results. We invite you to contact us for more information on this or any of the other non-invasive cosmetic procedures we offer. We can help you choose the safest, most effective, and most cost-effective way to achieve your cosmetic goals. Call us at (323) 525-1516 to schedule a free consultation, or visit us online for more information.
