Dr Harris Clinic

Dr Harris Clinic Dr Harris is an aesthetic doctor recognised for his scientific approach and natural looking results.

“Alternative to filler” is becoming a category of its own.Partly because filler has become associated with overfilling. ...
06/09/2026

“Alternative to filler” is becoming a category of its own.
Partly because filler has become associated with overfilling. But filler and overfilling are not the same thing.
Lip filler adds volume and projection. Done appropriately, that’s the point.
Many treatments now sold as alternatives don’t do that. They have other effects, some of them worthwhile. What they don’t offer is another route to the same outcome.
“Not filler” had become an endpoint in itself.

Filler is being injected into the ear to make the face look lifted.The technique is real and the effect on appearance ma...
03/09/2026

Filler is being injected into the ear to make the face look lifted.
The technique is real and the effect on appearance may well be real too.
But “lift” has no agreed definition in aesthetic medicine.
We reviewed the filler literature for this - every published quantitative measurement of “lift” reflects change at the skin surface. None independently tracks displacement of the underlying tissues (link to the paper in my bio).
So a word with no agreed definition is now being pursued through increasingly inventive injection strategies.
What exactly are we trying to lift?

The labial arteries are predominantly deep, the superficial plane is less than 1mm, and we’ve shown that filler can be c...
30/08/2026

The labial arteries are predominantly deep, the superficial plane is less than 1mm, and we’ve shown that filler can be confined there with a horizontal needle technique. I can’t find the same for a cannula.
However, cannulas are often deliberately used deeper, closer to where the arteries are most commonly found.
So perhaps the question isn’t simply needle or cannula, but which matters more - the instrument or the plane where the filler is placed?
No study has compared the two in the lip with injection plane held constant.
So we don’t know.
Until we do, “cannulas are safer in the lips” is a broader claim than the evidence actually supports.

In rats, Botulinun Toxin can travel along axons. Cleaved SNAP-25 has been found in the spinal cord after intramuscular i...
27/08/2026

In rats, Botulinun Toxin can travel along axons. Cleaved SNAP-25 has been found in the spinal cord after intramuscular injection.
That does not establish that the same thing occurs in humans at cosmetic doses.
Central delivery of biologically active Botulinum Toxin following cosmetic treatment in humans has not been demonstrated.
Equally, decades of clinical use and post-marketing surveillance across therapeutic and cosmetic indications have not produced a clear central nervous system toxicity signal.
Reported safety signals are predominantly local and neuromuscular.
References in the comments.

None of it becomes medical at the moment it goes wrong. It was medical when the needle went in.
23/08/2026

None of it becomes medical at the moment it goes wrong. It was medical when the needle went in.

The question is how procedures involving injectable medical devices, prescription medicines and intravenous access came ...
18/08/2026

The question is how procedures involving injectable medical devices, prescription medicines and intravenous access came to sit so comfortably alongside nails, waxing and hair extensions.
Aesthetic medicine allowed this to happen. Regulation played a part, so did commercialisation, training and social media.
But the language came from us.
“Liquid facelift”, “lunchtime procedure”, “5-minute nose job”..
For years, medical procedures have been sold as quick, simple, low risk beauty treatments.
Beauty didn’t create this language. It learned it from us.
What are your thoughts?

Would you inject a product derived from cadaver fat, known as allograft adipose matrix, into your face?The tissue is scr...
16/08/2026

Would you inject a product derived from cadaver fat, known as allograft adipose matrix, into your face?
The tissue is screened and the processing is regulated. That isn’t what I’m questioning.
Across clinic websites it is sold as regenerative. As growing your own fat. As lasting up to 10 years.
But the manufacturer’s own instructions for use make no claims for regeneration. And the clinical evidence does not establish it either. Ten studies, 93 patients with reported retention ranging from 21.5% to 100%. A range that wide tells you the clinical behaviour is still uncertain.
The source document is public. It says less than we do.
Why are we so uncomfortable simply saying: we don’t know yet?

Why are you injecting behind the orbicularis oris muscle?Behind the muscle is where the anatomy you don’t want to distur...
09/08/2026

Why are you injecting behind the orbicularis oris muscle?
Behind the muscle is where the anatomy you don’t want to disturb actually lives.
The labial arteries are most commonly found there. The submucosal glands are there too, and our ultrasound research found glandular enlargement associated with deeper techniques.
Deeper filler placement is also associated with greater migration and shelf formation.
None of this means the posterior plane can never be used. But choosing it should not be the default.
Before the needle or cannula goes in, ask:
Why am I injecting here, and what evidence supports it?
References in the pinned comment👇

Regenerative aesthetic treatments are exploding in popularity. The evidence for regeneration is lagging so far behind.Pe...
07/08/2026

Regenerative aesthetic treatments are exploding in popularity. The evidence for regeneration is lagging so far behind.
Perhaps that’s because regeneration is such an appealing idea: not correction, but renewal. Your own tissues restoring themselves.
Who wouldn’t want to believe that?
By collective drift, I mean what happens when an idea becomes so compelling and is repeated so often, that we gradually stop asking what evidence would support it or importantly, what would contradict it?
Mechanisms become outcomes. More collagen, fibroblast activity or extra cellular matrix changes become “regeneration”, even when restoration of native tissue architecture and function hasn’t been shown.
None of this means these treatments have no value. They may, but a plausible biological mechanism isn’t evidence of regeneration.
Perhaps the greatest risk isn’t that the story is false.
It’s that it feels so true that we stop asking.

Have we normalised calling age-related anatomy a ‘deformity’?Traditionally, a deformity implies a structural abnormality...
05/08/2026

Have we normalised calling age-related anatomy a ‘deformity’?
Traditionally, a deformity implies a structural abnormality. But there is no consensus diagnostic threshold to define when age-related upper eyelid hollowing or a tear trough becomes a deformity.
Upper eyelid hollowing and tear trough hollowing describe the anatomy more precisely.
Simply naming an anatomical variant a deformity doesn’t make it one. Words have consequences.
Is it time we reconsidered the term ‘deformity’ in aesthetic medicine?

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