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As a make-up artist with my own cosmetics brand you might assume I have all the answers when it comes to looking good at 51. And, to be honest, I was broadly pretty happy with the way I looked, until I started hosting True Reflections, a celebrity beauty podcast at the beginning of last year.

Because podcasts aren’t just audio these days, we video everything too. And so I suddenly started seeing myself from every different angle in the video clips posted on social media – and, shockingly, what I was seeing was completely different from what I saw in the mirror every morning.

You think you look a certain way, but then you see yourself moving on a screen and you think”, ‘Whoa!’ I found myself watching the clips and thinking, ‘Oh love, what’s going on with your face?’ Everything was just starting to go a bit south. I honestly thought my jawline was absolutely fine until I saw those videos, and then you just look at yourself and realise that things have changed.

Child-free and not married, I’ve been a make-up artist for more than 20 years, working with celebrities from Joanna Lumley to Pamela Anderson and pretty much everyone – male, female, politicians, reality stars – in between.

I love the variety of what I do. One day I might be at an event doing the whole of the Cabinet, or in a car with a businesswoman en route to a photo call, trying to apply eyeliner as we careen around the corner, the next I could be on a private jet with an A-lister, doing their make-up before they touch down and hotfoot it to the red carpet.

Naturally working in beauty has made me think about my own skin. I’ve done it all: burnt my face with Oxy10 in my teens, fried my skin sunbathing in olive oil in my 20s, but I’ve always made sure I wash my face at night and now I’m religious about using sunscreen, vitamin C and retinol.

When it comes to tweakments, over the years I had always focused my attention on the top half of my face. Like so many women, I worried about the wrinkles on my forehead and around my eyes. I was about 38 when I started having a little bit of Botox in these areas and went on having it two or three times a year. And, about eight years ago, I tried a little bit of lip filler. But I had completely neglected the lower part of my face, forgetting that the jawline and mid-face are massive indicators of ageing.

Gia Mills says she has been a make-up artist for more than 20 years, working with celebrities from Joanna Lumley to Pamela Anderson

Gia before and after her procedure, in which she had 20 different micro-droplet injection points around her cheek area, right on the cheekbone and jawline

Although I knew I wanted to do something to salvage my face in this area, I didn’t know exactly what until I met Dr Ivona Igerc aka Dr Ivy, who my producer had booked as a guest on the show.

Her background sounded really impressive – she’s written books on aesthetics, worked all over the world, and held prestigious roles within the industry, working as a trainer for big aesthetics brands, and holding the role of president of the Asian branch of the American Academy of Facial Esthetics. But it was during the interview itself that I was truly blown away.

She’s been working in the industry for more than 25 years and really knows her stuff, particularly when it comes to complex facial anatomy. She doesn’t just focus on lines and wrinkles; she operates as a sort of sculptor, using a technique she calls ‘face design.’

She has spent years standing in front of monitors on Hollywood sets, tweaking women who spend their lives on the red carpet (although non-disclosure agreements mean she can’t say who) in such a subtle way that you’d never know they had anything done. I thought to myself, ‘This is exactly the person I need. Someone who understands the architecture of the face.’

I booked a consultation with her, and from the moment I sat in her chair, I told her, ‘I’m putting it in your hands.’ I loved her holistic approach. She didn’t just look at my wrinkles; she looked at the entire structure and symmetry of my face.

Dr Ivy explained to me that the face is made up of 43 muscles and two layers of ligaments, like a complex Swiss watch. She told me that while I had good bone structure, I had – like many women my age – started to lose volume in the fat pads of my mid-face and lower face. This deflation was what was causing those signs of ageing – the slight jowls and the lines around my mouth.

When it came to the actual treatment, Dr Ivy was incredibly strategic. Some doctors might throw Botox, threads, and fillers at you all at once but Dr Ivy used only high-quality hyaluronic acid (HA) filler.

She explained that she prefers a very pure HA from an Austrian biotech company, specifically without lidocaine [a local anaesthetic that is found in some fillers as it can make the injections less painful], because she believes lidocaine causes constriction of the fibres in the skin.

Gia was told that while she had good bone structure, she had – like many women her age – started to lose volume in the fat pads of her mid-face and lower face

Gia says the difference before and after was staggering, with her jawline now so much more defined, and yet the overall effect was still incredibly natural

The process was surprisingly quick – after I’d had the numbing cream applied and it had taken effect, the whole thing took less than half an hour. I won’t lie and say it was completely painless – it’s not like having a soothing massage, it’s more like having your legs waxed where you just have to suck it up for a couple of minutes – but it was absolutely manageable.

Dr Ivy started by drawing what looked like a little map on my face, studying me not just while I was sitting still, but while I was talking and moving. In total she used three millilitres of the hyaluronic acid, spreading it across around 20 different micro-droplet injection points. Rather than just plumping up the front of my face, she placed the filler in specific, deeper layers of the skin to rebuild my underlying structure.

So I had a little bit around my cheek area, right on the cheekbone. Then she worked on the back part of my face, injecting the fat pad that runs between the cheekbone and the jawline. She told me that by lifting from this side area, she could naturally lift the lower face without making me look puffy. She also worked around my jawline, lifting my chin slightly, and put a tiny amount in my lips as well to give some really subtle volume enhancement.

The most fascinating part was that Dr Ivy kept asking me distracting questions the entire time. She wanted me to talk, smile, and move my face constantly while she injected. She explained that if an injector only observes a static face, the patient can end up with giant cheeks that swallow their eyes the moment they smile.

The downtime was virtually non-existent. Immediately afterwards, she used red light therapy on my face. I had a tiny bit of a bruise, but I was instructed to put ice on it, and I easily covered it with a dab of my own concealer. A couple of hours later, I applied tinted moisturiser, and honestly, no one would have noticed a thing.

I went home with her post-care regimen, which includes an exosome cream that Dr Ivy explained works on a cellular level to stimulate my body to produce better quality collagen, effectively banking my own collagen for the future. Within days I could already feel a difference. My skin felt more youthful, the texture looked incredible under my moisturiser, and my face just felt marginally fuller and healthier.

But I couldn’t really gauge the full effect of the injectables straight away because the changes were so subtle. It wasn’t that overdone, pillowy look where your face is suddenly totally different. So it wasn’t until I went back in for my two-week follow-up and saw the difference between the pictures that she took then and my before pictures that it really hit me.

The difference was staggering. My jawline was so much more defined, and yet the overall effect was incredibly natural. According to Dr Ivy, untouched, it could last a year but she likes to see her patients every four to six months for little tweaks so you’re not starting from scratch each time.

Of course the true test is what other people think. The human eye is so clever at knowing when something is off, or when the golden ratio of symmetry and balance has been distorted by fake-looking filler. But since seeing Dr Ivy, nobody has realised I’ve had anything done.

Instead, when I’m working with my high-net-worth clients, they just look at me and tell me I look really good, or really well. That is exactly what I wanted. I want to look good for my age, and naturally well, not artificially young. Dr Ivy didn’t just rebuild my jawline; she gave me back the fresh, vibrant face I thought I had lost, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

Gia Mills is the founder of the Skin In Motion make-up brand and presents the True Reflections podcast.

Dr Ivy’s bespoke Face Design treatments start at £1,500, drivylondon.com

As told to Claire Coleman