What she says is that deep down, the ability of anybody to feel what others are feeling (empathy), depends a lot on facial mimicry.  Apparently for example, if you see somebody grimacing in pain, you immediately grimace yourself, and this leads to a deeper feeling for the other person’s suffering.  However if you have been Botoxed, the grimace is not there or so pronounced, and therefore you do not feel so much for the suffering person.

This problem can lead to a serious breakdown in relationships, because if you have had botox treatment, the ability to empathize with your partner is supposed to be less, and can lead to misunderstandings, because you do not feel so much what the other person feels.

Thus comes a paradox: Botox is supposed to help develop better relationships because you look younger and less stressed or more pretty.  Could this cause the partner to love you more while causing you to love your partner less?  Should this be listed as a side effect of botox?

What kind of side effects are possible with botox treatments?

In order of decreasing frequency, the most common botox side effects are listed as:

Headache
Flu syndrome
Pain at injection site
Swelling at injection site
Bruising (due to accidental nicking of small blood vessels on injection)

The above side effects of botox treatments are minimal, tolerable and transient.  What is of more significance to the patient and the injector is the muscular effect.

To understand these botox side effects, one needs to look at how botox treatments work.  Botox injections work by paralysing or weakening the muscles (depending on the dosage) into which the injection is administered.  Obviously if the botox injections were given into the wrong muscle by untrained hands, the wrong muscle is affected.  For example, if botox injections are given too deep for the treatment of crows feet, one can theoretically cause weakness of muscles that move the eyeball, leading to double vision.  Or if too high a dosage is given too deeply into the muscles for the treatment of square jaws, marked weakness in the chewing ability is produced due to paralysis of all the muscles of chewing.  Or if botox injections are given too low in the forehead for the treatment of forehead or surprise lines, this can result in droopy eyebrows.

It is fortunate that the side effect of muscle weakness is only temporary, and lasts for a maximum of 4 – 6 months, which is the length of time that the beneficial effect of botox treatments lasts.  In order to increase the speed of recovery, it is recommended that the affected muscle be regularly exercised.  Application of hot compresses is also suggested to speed up the rate of breakdown of the injected botulinum toxin.