Dr. Maricia

Dr. Maricia |Advanced Facial Aesthetics|
|Allergan Aesthetics AMI|

Posts are educational and do not replace medical advice👩🏻‍⚕️

01/09/2026

Be lekker✌🏼❤️

31/08/2026

Progressive performance isn’t built by training harder every day — it’s built by balancing the stress of training with enough fuel and recovery to adapt.

Train with purpose. But train smart. Training workouts are not about going full throttle. It’s about applying just enough stress to trigger adaptation. 📈

Fuel the work and the growth. Stick to whole foods- your gut is important for optimal nutrient absorption.

Recover deliberately. Schedule full rest days.
Then progress. Then test. Then adapt training.

It’s a long process that requires time, patience and consistency.

More intensity without adequate nutrition and recovery doesn’t always mean more results. The goal is to create enough stimulus to improve, while giving your body the resources to rebuild stronger.

Performance happens in the balance.

28/08/2026

WHO IS ACTUALLY QUALIFIED TO PRACTISE MEDICAL AESTHETICS? 🇿🇦

Medical aesthetics is medicine — not a beauty treatment with a needle.

In South Africa, the minimum professional foundation for independently practising aesthetic injectable medicine is qualification and registration as a:

🩺 Medical Doctor — MBChB/MBBCh or equivalent, registered with the HPCSA
🦷 Dentist — BDS/BChD or equivalent, registered with the HPCSA and practising within the scope of dentistry

But the degree is only the starting point.

The HPCSA requires every practitioner to perform only those procedures for which they are adequately educated, trained, experienced and competent, and under appropriate clinical conditions.

That means:

• A weekend course does not make someone a medical practitioner.
• An “aesthetics diploma” does not create a new legal scope of practice.
• Being trained to inject something does not automatically mean you are legally entitled to inject it.
• Somatologists and beauty therapists cannot expand their scope into medical injectable procedures simply by completing an injection course.

Treatments such as botulinum toxin, dermal fillers, biostimulators and injectable medical aesthetic procedures involve diagnosis, prescribing, anatomy, pharmacology, complication recognition and emergency management.

These are not skills that begin with learning where to place a needle.

They begin with a medical or dental qualification — followed by appropriate postgraduate education, supervised training and ongoing competency.

Before allowing someone to inject you, ask:

“Are you registered with the HPCSA as a medical doctor or dentist, and are you appropriately trained to perform this procedure?”

You are entitled to check.

Medical aesthetics should be practised as medicine.

26/08/2026

Mephisto brow: when Botox lifts a little too well. 👀

The “Mephisto” or “Spock” brow happens when the central forehead is relaxed more strongly than the lateral frontalis fibres, allowing the outer brow to pull upwards and create an exaggerated arch.

It doesn’t necessarily mean the treatment has “gone wrong” — it reflects the balance of muscle activity after treatment and is usually easily corrected with a small, precisely placed dose of botulinum toxin into the active lateral frontalis.

The goal with forehead toxin should never simply be to freeze movement. It is to create balanced muscle activity, natural brow position and harmonious expression.

Precision matters.

24/08/2026

Not all botulinum toxin is created — or regulated — equally.

In South Africa, botulinum toxin is a Schedule 4 prescription medicine. Established products including BOTOXÂŽ (onabotulinumtoxinA), DYSPORTÂŽ (abobotulinumtoxinA) and XEOMINÂŽ (incobotulinumtoxinA) have been registered for use in South Africa. SAHPRA records specifically list XEOMINÂŽ, including XEOMIN 50 Units, as a registered medicine. (SAFLII)

So how do you know what is actually being injected?

✓ Check the SAHPRA registration. Search the product on SAHPRA’s Medicines Online Directory. A toxin being approved somewhere else in the world does not automatically mean it is registered for use in South Africa. (MedsInfo)

✓ Know the actual brand. “Botulinum toxin”, “Botox” or “toxin” is not enough. Ask to see whether you are receiving BOTOX®, DYSPORT® or XEOMIN® — and the original vial.

✓ Check the box AND vial. Brand, strength, batch/lot number and expiry information should correspond, with intact professional pharmaceutical packaging.

✓ Check traceability. Your practitioner should be able to identify the batch/lot number and demonstrate that the product came through an authorised pharmaceutical supplier.

✓ Look at brand-specific packaging and security features. Genuine products have manufacturer-specific labelling and packaging. Counterfeits, however, are becoming increasingly sophisticated.

⚠️ Packaging alone cannot prove authenticity. A counterfeit box can look convincing. The strongest verification is a SAHPRA-registered product + identifiable batch number + legitimate pharmaceutical supply chain.

And remember: BOTOXÂŽ, DYSPORTÂŽ and XEOMINÂŽ are different pharmaceutical preparations. Their units are not automatically interchangeable. XEOMINÂŽ, for example, contains incobotulinumtoxinA purified without complexing proteins. (Medicines.org.uk)

If your injector cannot tell you exactly what product they are injecting, its batch number and where it was sourced — that is a red flag.

Know your toxin. Know your injector. Ask to see the vial.

19/08/2026

If you don’t know where your botulinum toxin came from, you don’t know what is being injected.

The illegal importation and use of unregistered botulinum toxin products is not simply a regulatory technicality — it is a patient-safety issue.

In South Africa, medicines must be SAHPRA-registered or specifically authorised through Section 21, and registered medicines may only be imported through appropriately licensed channels. (SAHPRA)

The consequences of bypassing these safeguards are real. The CDC recently reported 13 patients severely ill with suspected botulism after botulinum toxin obtained from unlicensed sources. All 13 were hospitalised and received botulism antitoxin, with some requiring intubation and mechanical ventilation. (CDC)

Earlier investigations also linked counterfeit or improperly sourced toxin to hospitalisations and neurological symptoms including ptosis, diplopia, dysphagia, weakness and breathing difficulty. (U.S. Food and Drug Administration)

Botulinum toxin is a prescription medicine (administration by medical doctors and dentists only). Origin, regulation, cold-chain integrity, dose reliability and injector qualification matter.

Know what is being injected. Know where it came from.

17/08/2026

COME TRAIN WITH ME.

Today’s goal: keep the stations manageable, but make the running progressively less comfortable.

It took about 1:40:00 to complete for me at paced effort on about 100g of carbs (Toast and honey befor workout, 1 energy gel every 30 minutes, 2 litres 💦 and electrolytes…BOOM)

Give it a shot to test your fitness🙌🏼💪🏼

⚡️ 1,000 m SkiErg
⚡️ 1,000 m RowErg

Then 3 rounds of:

400 m threshold run → sled push
400 m threshold run → sled pull
400 m threshold run → burpee broad jumps
400 m threshold run → walking lunges
400 m threshold run → farmer carry
400 m threshold run → wall balls

3–5 min recovery between rounds.

That’s 2.4 km of threshold running per round, repeatedly asking the legs to find pace again after every station.

I don’t train to beat the person next to me.

I train to be stronger, faster and harder to break than the version of me that showed up yesterday.

The competition is always yesterday’s self.

14/08/2026

“I’m just doing toning exercises.”

Here’s the problem: “toning” isn’t a separate type of training.

That firm, defined look most women are aiming for comes from two things:
building muscle + having low enough body fat for that muscle to show.

Light weights and endless high-rep exercises don’t magically create “long, lean” muscle. Your muscles can grow, maintain, or shrink — they don’t become “toned” because you changed the exercise.

If you want more shape:
➡️ Lift progressively heavier weights
➡️ Train close enough to failure to actually challenge the muscle
➡️ Eat enough protein for repair, fat for hormones and fuel your training with carbs
➡️ Give it time, it takes very long with persistence and consistency

And no, lifting heavy won’t suddenly make you “bulky.” Building significant muscle is much harder than most women realise.

Stop training to “tone.” Train to build muscle. Eat for performance and recovery. The definition comes afterwards.

12/08/2026

Rapid weight loss can change more than the number on the scale — lean body mass can be lost alongside fat mass.

Rebuilding it requires a deliberate shift from simply losing weight to rebuilding strength, function and metabolic health.

The foundation:

• Heavy, progressive resistance training — muscles need sufficient mechanical tension to adapt and grow. Think sets where the final 2–3 repetitions are genuinely challenging, around RPE 8/10 or ~2 reps in reserve, rather than simply moving light weights for more repetitions.
• Adequate protein, distributed across meals throughout the day
• Enough total energy and carbohydrate to fuel training and recovery
• Quality sleep and recovery to allow adaptation
• Micronutrient sufficiency, particularly after prolonged periods of reduced intake
• Consistency — rebuilding lean tissue takes time

After rapid weight loss, the goal should not be to keep chasing a lower number on the scale. The next phase is about building a stronger, more functional body.

Weight loss is one phase. Building lean mass is the next.

07/08/2026

Botulinum toxin isn’t permanent — and 3–4 months is an average, not a guarantee.

Results develop gradually after treatment, with the peak aesthetic effect often appreciated around 4–6 weeks, before muscle activity gradually begins to return.

Some patients may notice their results wearing off sooner due to:

• Stronger or more active facial muscles
• High levels of physical activity
• Individual metabolism and biological variation
• The area being treated
• Dose and treatment pattern
• Very expressive facial movement
• Treatment intervals and previous treatment history

And sometimes, one area simply lasts longer than another.

The goal isn’t to chase complete immobility. It’s about the right dose, in the right muscles, at the right intervals to create balance while maintaining natural expression.

If your results consistently wear off earlier than expected, it may be worth reassessing the dose, muscle activity, treatment pattern and individual response rather than assuming the treatment “didn’t work.”

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