Before booking an appointment with a plastic surgeon to discuss tightening the sagging skin around your mouth and chin, you may want to incorporate a regimen of facial exercises into your daily routine. Just as resistance training sculpts your biceps, hamstrings and other muscles in your body, "you can reverse the sagging face through exercise," says Seattle-based Carolyn Cleaves, founder of Carolyn's Facial Fitness. Facial exercise routines can tighten sagging skin by toning the muscles under your skin, boosting blood circulation and stimulating collagen production.
Step 1
Place your fingers just below your jawline. With your head tilted back, curl your bottom lip over your top lip. While turning your head, tighten your cheek muscle and squeeze your eye shut while gently sliding your fingertips up over your jawline. Repeat the exercise five times on each side. Cleaves calls this movement the "Jowl Lifter" and says that it lifts and firms jowls and diminishes wrinkles.
Step 2
Make tight knots in the corners of your mouth. Bring your fingertips up to each side of your mouth and pull your arms out into a half circle. Count to 40. Cleaves calls this movement the "Grand Gesture" and says that it firms the corners of the mouth, fills out the cheeks and releases stress.
Step 3
Place your thumb pads under the chin, with one thumb in front of the other. Rest your fingers against your jawbone. While pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth, press and slide your thumbs, one after the other, from directly under the chin back to where your chin meets your neck. Make a rhythm of one thumb slide for every time your press your tongue. Repeat the exercise 40 times. Cleaves calls this movement the "Tongue Press" and says that it firms the double chin area.
Tips and Warnings
- Begin your facial exercise routine after cleansing your face and applying a light moisturizer. In addition to doing exercises that target your cheeks, jowls and chin, a routine that works all 57 muscles in the face will create a foundation that enables the whole face to lift properly, says Carolyn Cleaves, founder of Carolyn's Facial Fitness.
- Monitor your results carefully. While Cleaves says that facial exercise offers corrective benefits, Dan Kapp, a West Palm Beach plastic surgeon, says repeating movements with the muscles in your face can cause wrinkles.
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