What is Botox?
Botulinum Toxin injections, more commonly known as Botox, is a medical injection that is designed to block signals from the nerve cells to the muscles. Because these signals are blocked, the muscles won’t contract, therefore you won’t have lines and/or wrinkles on your face. Botox has become an extremely popular procedure over the past few decades.
The History of Botox
Botox didn’t start out as a cosmetic product. During World War II, Botulinum Toxin was researched as a biological weapon. The plan was to poison Japanese soldiers with capsules filled with a powder form of Botulinum Toxin, but that plan was never put into action. In the 50’s, after the war was over, researchers began looking at other uses of Botulinum Toxin. After a lot of research and changing it to safer forms, the FDA gave its first approval for human testing in 1978 to Dr. Alan B. Scott, an ophthalmologist. He published his findings in a paper in 1981, stating that Botulinum Toxin was an effective treatment for Strabismus. Further research revealed other medical benefits of the poison including relief from different muscle spasms. Eventually, around 1990, the product was made commercially available by a company called Allergan, who changed the name to Botox. Over the next couple of decades, Allergan gained many FDA approvals for different medical uses of Botox and many other doctors began using Botox as a wrinkle reliever. By the early 2000’s, Botox injections became wildly popular not only as medical injections but as cosmetic injections. In fact, the procedure is so popular that it is easy to find medical professionals in all the major markets such as Botox Nashville TN, Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, and even smaller markets as well. There is no shortage of medical professionals offering Botox injections.
To understand just how prominent Botox has become over the past few decades, here are a few statistics:
- The number of Botox procedures performed in 2016 was over 4.5 million procedures, up 8% from the previous year.
- In 1997, only a little over 65,000 Botox procedures were performed. The percentage increase in 2016 from 1997 is 6956.6%.
- Almost 10% of Botox procedures in 2016 were performed on men.
- Botox has been the number one most performed non-surgical procedure since 2000.
- In 2016, Allergan generated almost $2.8 billion in revenue from worldwide Botox sales.
- Allergan is estimated to be making almost $4.3 billion in annual revenue from Botox sales by 2022.
Botox procedures are on track to becoming the most popular cosmetic procedure in the world if growth continues at the exponential rate that it has been growing at over the past couple of decades. Botox is almost like a fountain of youth to some people–a way to erase the evidence of aging and to have beautiful skin. Although it is mostly thought of as a cosmetic procedure, the medical benefits of Botox make it even more valuable. As a way to ease effects of many degenerative nerve diseases, Botox injections are proven to be a very valuable medical discovery.