The toxin that causes botulism, a rare but serious form of poisoning caused by eating contaminated canned or preserved food, is the most potent poison known to man. Botulinum toxin is deadly because it causes progressive paralysis throughout the body.
Most untreated victims die of suffocation when their respiratory muscles freeze.
But the very quality that makes botulinum so dangerous is what makes it so effective in reducing wrinkles. When the toxin is injected near the offending crease, the muscle tone underneath is weakened, causing the skin above it to flatten. The toxin has been used medically since the 1970s to treat uncontrollable eye spasms and other neuromuscular twitching disorders. Unlike silicone, collagen and fat injections, which merely fill in wrinkles, botox provides an entirely different approach to treating the aging face. It takes three to five days for botox to do its job.