Marie Neidert, 43, first started getting Botox about three years ago as a way to manage her migraines, but enjoyed the cosmetic side effects too.
When the medspa she goes to switched to a different neurotoxin, she didn’t see the same level of tightening of her 11 lines and laugh lines, says Neidert, who lives in St. James, Missouri.
The new product was now only lasting “like a month and a half, two months,” Neidert tells TODAY.com. “And price-wise, I was like, this is ridiculous.”
She was paying about $600-700 for toxin every few months.
Neidert had seen other people on TikTok post about getting “great results” from self-injecting Innotox, a Korean injectable containing the same active ingredient as Botox.
“So I went down that rabbit hole,” she says, even asking her TikTok followers what they thought before she ordered.
She ended up ordering a bottle of Innotox for $210 from a supplier who previously sent her unregulated “fat dissolver” products, she says.
She had an aesthetician friend test the product and supervise her while she injected 30 units into her face at home. Within just three days, Neidert noticed her “frowny faces” tightening up.
Neidert has heard stories of people buying counterfeit toxins, though not specifically Innotox, and says she’s aware “it’s always a risk because it’s not regulated. But at this point in the game,” she isn’t worried, she adds.
Kelly Keene has self-injected Innotox a few times but for now is comfortable doing so only on the top part of her face.Courtesy Kelly Keene
Kelly Keene, 41, of Grifton, North Carolina, feels similarly.
“I really didn’t care about the risks — not one bit,” Keene tells TODAY.com. “Especially because, going on TikTok, you see so many other people doing it.”
Already a regular Botox user, she was up late one night scrolling through TikTok and decided to order Innotox online. During the two weeks she waited for it to arrive, “all I did was study how to inject myself,” she says.
She was shaking with nerves while injecting herself and was full of anxiety that night. “I was scared. I was like, what if this thing kills me?” she recalls.
But she’s done it a few times now and says she’s “definitely happy with the results.” She adds that she only injects around her eyebrows because she’s “too nervous” to do her “full face.”
Neidert and Keene are part of a larger trend of people purchasing Innotox — made by a Korean company and also referred to as “Korean Botox” or “K-Botox” — from third-party retailers online in an effort to smooth crow’s feet and brow lines on a budget.
Armed with information sourced from online videos and social media sites such as TikTok and Instagram, they’re injecting an imported, unregulated pharmaceutical product meant only for professional use into their own faces — and experts are shocked.