- Your Smile
- Your Dress
- Your Handshake
- Your Vocabulary
A word about true and
false smiles:
Smiles are infectious,
and we actively seek to do business with people who seem pleasant and happy. We
also avoid doing business with those who are grumpy.
A false smile or fake
smile, is a smile where we only activate the zygomatic major muscles. The
zygomatic major muscles are easy to control and lift the corners of our mouths
up as we stretch our lips in a forceful display of our anterior teeth.
A true smile activates
the zygomatic major muscles and the orbicularis oculi muscles
(one of the muscles surrounding our eyes) causing us to squint. This squint
creates crow’s feet (or laugher lines) at the lateral boarders of our eyes.
These lines (often associated with aging and targeted by Botox) are interpreted
as genuine and honest joy. In fact, we call this true smile a Duchenne smile
and a fake smile a Pan-Am or Botox smile.
When interacting with
patients, practice using a Duchenne smile.
