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- What is Innotox? People on social media are self-injecting 'Korean botox' at home</p>
<p>Sarah Jacoby, TODAYJuly 1, 2025 at 11:00 PM</p>
<p>Botox (pictured above) has been used by many for years. But now, some people on social media say they are gravitating toward Innotox, made by a Korean company and also referred to as "Korean Botox" or "K-Botox." (Peter Cade / Getty Images)</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>She was paying about $600-700 for toxin every few months.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"So I went down that rabbit hole," she says, even asking her TikTok followers what they thought before she ordered.</p>
<p>She ended up ordering a bottle of Innotox for $210 from a supplier who previously sent her unregulated "fat dissolver" products, she says.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Kelly Keene has self-injected Innotox a few times but for now is only comfortable doing so on the top part of her face. (Courtesy Kelly Keene)</p>
<p>Kelly Keene, 41, of Grifton, North Carolina, feels similarly.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"It's just really not something that you could learn comprehensively yourself online, as a layperson," Molly O'Rourke, a registered nurse and nurse injector at 207 Laser, a medical spa in Portland, Maine, tells TODAY.com. "My fear is just for the general public to buy into this."</p>
<p>In one video O'Rourke saw, the user showed where she was going to inject the product along the neckline. "They're showing injection points over your thyroid and over the muscles that help you breathe," she says. "If you go too deep, they're going to affect your breathing. ... That sort of thing really freaks me out."</p>
<p>Eventually, O'Rourke saw so many red flags online that she posted a video of her own warning people not to follow the trend.</p>
<p>"Don't inject yourself with fake Botox products from the internet, I beg of you," O'Rourke says in the Instagram video. "Just leave it to the professionals. We know what we're doing. It's deeper than you think. It's harder than you think."</p>
<p>"I'm all for wanting to learn to do something yourself, but this isn't one of those things."</p>
<p>The rise of self-injecting via social media</p>
<p>Cosmetic self-injections aren't an entirely new phenomenon, but they are "terrifying," Dr. Michelle Henry, a board-certified dermatologist, tells TODAY.com.</p>
<p>"This is something that I see, the use of unregulated aesthetic products. It's scary and it's dangerous," Henry says, adding that she's had "patients come in with self-injected filler that they've gotten online ... and ended up with infections and bumps."</p>
<p>Self-injection of filler and Botox-like products has picked up in recent years primarily due to cost and lack of trust in providers, research suggests. There has also been a significant increase in overall demand for cosmetic injectables.</p>
<p>While Innotox is approved for use in other countries, it is not approved for any use in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration. And, experts say, any product like this should be administered by a trained professional.</p>
<p>Medytox, the maker of Innotox, tells TODAY.com in a statement that it "only sells prescription products to authorized medical providers and medical distribution companies. Medytox is unaware that some of the product is being offered online in unapproved countries or available to consumers."</p>
<p>"Medytox certainly does not endorse the self-injection of botulinum toxins by consumers," the company says.</p>
<p>In at least a portion of social media videos, "people were looking at some of the right areas when they were doing their injections," says Dr. Evan Rieder, who is board-certified in both dermatology and psychiatry.</p>
<p>"But there's so many issues," he tells TODAY.com. "One, what is this product? Where is it coming from, and what's in it?"</p>
<p>In several of the social media videos reviewed by TODAY.com, users direct their followers to purchase from third-party retailers. And some social media users, who appear to have no professional training or licensing in the use of injectables, promote affiliate marketing codes for those retailers as well.</p>
<p>Medytox tells TODAY.com in a statement that it "was not previously aware" of people purchasing its products through third-party retailers and that it planned to "investigate this unauthorized activity. ... Only medical providers in countries that have approved Medytox products should be using our brands."</p>
<p>The FDA is aware of people selling these types of products and has taken some enforcement actions in the past, an agency spokesperson tells TODAY.com. And while the FDA is "concerned about websites that may be misleading or fraudulent," it does not comment on potential or ongoing investigations.</p>
<p>TikTok tells TODAY.com that because Innotox is not FDA approved, any content showing Innotox being used or marketing it is against community guidelines and will be removed. TikTok says it has already taken steps against some accounts and videos.</p>
<p>According to Meta, Instagram prohibits ads for drugs, products or supplements that are, as they described, potentially unsafe, and only qualified advertisers can post ads for prescription drugs. Meta also prohibits content selling prescription drugs (except in certain circumstances) and limits content mentioning cosmetic procedures to users over 18. Some of the Instagram posts promoting Innotox violated Meta's policy and were removed, a spokesperson tells TODAY.com.</p>
<p>Unregulated products and health risks</p>
<p>Both Henry and Rieder raise concerns about unregulated products that purport to contain botulinum toxin, the active ingredient in Botox, Innotox and many other products on the market. There have been previous cases of fake products leading to life-threatening side effects, they note.</p>
<p>But even if the Innotox that people are self-injecting is the real deal, there are still plenty of safety concerns, the experts say.</p>
<p>Botulinum toxin is a neurotoxin that works by preventing the release of a neurotransmitter, which then prevents muscle contraction. When used in appropriate doses and injected carefully, it can be an effective way to manage some signs of aging, as well as a few other medical issues.</p>
<p>"It takes a long time to understand these muscles. And while it looks like on Instagram you put a dot and you inject, you really exactly where the muscle is," Henry explains.</p>
<p>The facial maps and videos shared on social media make it seem like a "paint-by-numbers" process, Rieder adds, "but not every map that's written out about the facial muscles is accurate for everyone's face."</p>
<p>Henry says she always tells her patients, "It looks easy when I do it because it took me 20 years to make it look easy. In that minute that you think I'm just pushing my finger, I'm considering your allergies, your medications, what you're going to do tomorrow, how you're lying down and the angle of my needle."</p>
<p>"There are ways that I won't even inject myself," she adds.</p>
<p>Neither Rieder nor O'Rourke feel comfortable injecting themselves, either, even with their years of experience.</p>
<p>On the milder end of side effects, "if you have real neurotoxin there and you're just injecting it into the wrong places, you could have facial muscle weakness or facial muscle paralysis," which can last for months, Rieder says.</p>
<p>Because the effects of botulinum toxin products can take up to 14 days to become noticeable, O'Rourke notes, "you could think that you're in the clear and then all of a sudden, you can't open one of your eyes and you don't know what to do."</p>
<p>At the more severe end, "if you have too much botulinum toxin (in your body), you get flaccid paralysis, meaning all of your muscles stop working and contracting, including the muscles you need to breathe, and that's how patients die," Henry says.</p>
<p>There are sterility concerns as well. "(The product) could be improperly stored or they can be contaminated," O'Rourke says.</p>
<p>And while the fact that Innotox is pre-mixed is often a selling point to inexperienced folks, it's actually an added challenge.</p>
<p>Most neurotoxins in the U.S. come as a powder, which gets diluted with saline before injection, Rieder explains. But experienced providers tend to change the dilution amount based on the area of injection due to the risk of side effects or migration with too much fluid.</p>
<p>"If you don't know what you're doing, it's probably easier," he adds. "But for those of us who are looking at the nuances and the subtleties and doing different dilutions for different indications, it's not an advantage."</p>
<p>Of course, not everyone who self-injects these products will have a problem, Rieder notes. But if something does go wrong, people at home may not have the knowledge to treat it appropriately or recognize when it's time to get medical attention, the experts say.</p>
<p>If you're having eye issues after an injection, for example, "we can prescribe you eyedrops, or we can try and reverse it by flooding the area with saline," O'Rourke says. "There's so many ways to combat adverse effects that I don't think people at home even know exist."</p>
<p>What seems cheap may end up very expensive</p>
<p>The urge to buy unregulated cosmetic products and inject them at home is driven partly by cost concerns, the experts say.</p>
<p>In the U.S., Botox costs $10 to $14 per unit, and with a minimum of about 10 units between the brows, "even at the cheaper end, you're still going to be spending $200 every three to four months," O'Rourke says.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a bottle of 100 units of Innotox is advertised at prices from around $60-100 on third-party sites.</p>
<p>"In this economy, people are looking at their budget and saying, OK, where can I cut corners?" O'Rourke says. She calls Botox "a luxury service" and tells clients that it's "expensive because it's not necessary."</p>
<p>She likens it to the culture around trendy fast-fashion and consumers thinking, "I don't care where it comes from, as long as it comes to me and it's cheap."</p>
<p>Ultimately, though, "cheap is very expensive," Henry says. "These are novice people injecting their faces using a toxin that lasts 10 months. When you mess up, you have 10 months of looking this way, and what you're going to pay for a doctor to try to fix that is going to be double what you paid for the toxin."</p>
<p>Self-injecting is simply not worth the risks, even if you think it's saving you money, the experts agree.</p>
<p>If you're considering using an online pharmacy or website to buy pharmaceutical drugs such as Innotox, check out the FDA's additional safety tips. And you can report unlawful sales to the FDA if you think a site may be selling medication illegally.</p>
<p>You should also first chat with a licensed medical professional about your options, the experts agree.</p>
<p>"We have a lot on the market now that gives us all a little bit more flexibility in pricing," Henry says. "But we really shouldn't make decisions about our beauty and health around cost that way, especially for elective things."</p>
<p>While Neidert feels comfortable continuing to inject the Innotox she purchased, she says she worries "about the people who come across the TikTok page of a WhatsApp number ... and they just send their money to these people. They don't know what they're truly getting."</p>
<p>O'Rourke adds: "You might save a few bucks ... and it might seem like a beauty shortcut, but it could end in permanent damage."</p>
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