How to Get Rid of Turkey Neck: What Works, What Doesn't

The short answer

Turkey neck is loose, sagging skin under the chin, usually with visible vertical banding across the front of the neck. Whether you can improve it without surgery depends on which of the two problems you actually have. If the issue is thin, crepey, poorly hydrated skin with mild laxity, then consistent topical care and sun protection genuinely help, and you should expect a modest improvement in texture and tone over about three months. If the issue is a hanging fold of excess skin or fat under the chin, no cream will fix it and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. That situation responds to in-office treatment or surgery.

Most people over 55 have some of both. The useful move is to treat the part that responds and stop spending money on the part that does not.

This page names the studies behind every claim, including the ones that undercut the things we sell. Where a number is widely quoted and does not hold up, we say so and show you what the original paper measured instead. There is a table at the end that ranks every option on the quality of its evidence rather than on how it is marketed.

What causes turkey neck?

Four things stack up, and they are not all skin problems.

• Collagen decline. Skin collagen falls by roughly 1 percent a year across adult life, in sun-exposed and unexposed skin alike, and women have less of it than men at every age (Shuster, Black and McVitie, 1975; restated with the 1 percent figure in Shuster, 2020). You will often see this stated as "starting in your mid-twenties." No study specifies a start age, so we have dropped it. The neck shows the loss early because the skin there is thin to begin with.
• Menopause accelerates it. Brincat and colleagues (1987) found skin collagen and skin thickness declining at about 1 to 2 percent per postmenopausal year, and the decline tracked years since menopause rather than chronological age (Brincat et al., 1985). You will read everywhere that women lose 30 percent of dermal collagen in the first five years after menopause. That figure has no primary study behind it. It originates in a 2005 narrative review and conflicts with the measured data, which works out to roughly 5 to 11 percent over five years. We used to quote the 30 percent version on this page.
• Sun damage. The neck is one of the most exposed and least protected areas on the body. Most people stop applying sunscreen at the jawline. Cumulative UV breaks down elastin, and it is the largest cause of neck texture that you can still do something about.
• Fat and tissue descent. Submental fat under the chin, plus general descent of tissue, blurs the line between jaw and neck.

The platysma: what the vertical bands actually are

This one deserves its own section, because the standard explanation is wrong and we were repeating it.

The platysma is a thin sheet of muscle across the front of the neck. In most people its left and right halves do not fully interlace in the midline under the chin, leaving a gap. Three cadaver studies agree on how common that is: de Castro (1980) found it in 50 cadavers at roughly 75 percent partial separation, 15 percent fully joined and 10 percent no crossing at all; Pogrel and colleagues (1994) found some degree of midline gap in 85 percent of 20 cadavers, measuring 6 to 24 millimetres wide (mean 11.8 mm) a centimetre behind its apex; and Kim and colleagues (2001) found crossing fibres absent or minimal in a similar share of 70 cadavers. Pogrel's paper is where the connection to this condition comes from, and it is careful about it: a wider, more U-shaped gap "may" give less medial support to the overlying skin and a greater tendency to what surgeons call a turkey gobbler deformity.

Two corrections follow from that. First, the gap is a variation you were born with, not something age creates. No study has ever watched the medial borders separate over a lifetime in a living person. We previously wrote that "with age its edges separate," and that is not supported.

Second, and more useful: the visible cords are not a sagging phenomenon at all. Trevidic and Criollo-Lamilla (2017) studied 25 patients with permanent one-sided facial paralysis after neurosurgery, followed for up to ten years, each person acting as their own control. In 76 percent of them, platysma bands were visible on the working side of the neck and absent on the paralysed side. The paralysed side also showed no sagging of neck skin. Their conclusion was blunt: bands are caused by muscle activity, not by relaxation and skin laxity, and "the skin follows the muscle."

That is why no cream, oil or massage tool moves those cords, and why relaxing the muscle is the only thing that does.

How to get rid of turkey neck: what each option actually does

Option	What it realistically does	Timeline	Worth it if
Daily sunscreen on the neck	Prevents further photoaging. Does not reverse existing damage, but it is the best-evidenced thing on this list	Preventive, lifelong	Always. This is non-negotiable and most people skip it
Peptide or retinoid neck cream	Improves hydration, texture and crepiness. Modest firmness gain. No trial has tested either on the neck specifically	Texture in 2 to 4 weeks, firmness in 8 to 12	Your issue is thin crepey skin and mild laxity, not a hanging fold
Neck exercises	Strengthens the platysma. The one decent study measured the neck and found no significant change	No measured timeline	You enjoy them. Do not expect visible neck change
Microfocused ultrasound (Ultherapy)	Blinded reviewers see improvement in roughly 40 to 60 percent of patients at 3 months. Results vary a lot and are less likely at higher BMI	3 months for assessment; durability past 6 months barely studied	Moderate laxity, you want to avoid surgery, and you accept it may do nothing
Monopolar radiofrequency (Thermage)	A modest and non-uniform tightening effect. In one controlled trial most patients did not notice the benefit the instruments measured	1 to 4 months	You have realistic expectations and the cost is not painful
Injectable muscle relaxant for the bands	Softens the vertical cords while the muscle is relaxed. Does nothing for loose skin, fat, or bands at rest	About 2 weeks to effect, roughly 3 to 4 months of effect	Visible vertical cords are your main complaint
Neck lift surgery	The only thing that removes excess skin and addresses the muscle structurally. It works, and it is surgery	Weeks of recovery, lasting years	You have a genuine hanging fold and have decided you want it gone

Why sunscreen is first on the list

Because it is the only item here with a randomised trial behind it.

Hughes, Williams, Baker and Green (2013) randomised 903 adults under 55 in Nambour, Queensland to daily broad-spectrum sunscreen or discretionary use, and followed them for four and a half years. Skin aging was measured from silicone impressions of the skin, graded blind on a validated six-point scale. The daily sunscreen group showed no detectable increase in skin aging over the whole period, and 24 percent less aging than the discretionary group (relative odds 0.76, 95% confidence interval 0.59 to 0.98).

Two honest caveats. The measurement site was the back of the hand, not the neck, and the outcome was surface microtopography, which reflects fine lines and elastosis rather than sagging. So this trial supports daily sunscreen for preventing photoaging in general. It does not prove anything about neck laxity. It is still the strongest evidence on this page, and it costs almost nothing.

Do turkey neck exercises work?

The honest answer is that the best study on facial exercise measured the neck and found nothing.

Alam and colleagues (2018) ran a 20-week facial exercise programme and published it in JAMA Dermatology. Participants did 32 exercises, 30 minutes daily for the first eight weeks and then every other day. Two blinded dermatologists rated standardised photographs on 19 separate facial aging scales plus an estimate of apparent age. Apparent age fell from a mean of 50.8 years at baseline to 48.1 at week 20 (p = 0.002), which is a real and quite appealing result.

But only 2 of the 19 individual scales improved significantly, and both were cheek fullness. The neck volume scale did not reach significance (p = 0.11), and neither did the jawline. The programme included a neck exercise. It simply did not show a measurable neck effect.

Three things to know about that study before you take even the cheek result to the bank: 27 women enrolled and only 16 finished, there was no control group, and the founder of the exercise programme was a co-author. It is a pilot, not proof.

Set that beside Trevidic's paralysis findings above and the picture is fairly clear. If vertical bands are produced by platysma activity, then training the platysma is at best beside the point. There is also a small risk worth naming: repeated hard contraction and stretching of already-thin skin is not obviously good for it. If you find the exercises relaxing, do them. Just do not do them instead of sunscreen.

What the in-office treatments are actually measured at

These get marketed with numbers that come from studies of a different part of the face. Worth knowing which is which before you spend four figures.

Microfocused ultrasound

The "86 percent of patients responded" figure in a lot of Ultherapy marketing comes from Alam and colleagues (2010), and it is a brow measurement: 30 of 35 patients showed a brow lift averaging 1.7 millimetres. That paper states openly that it could not quantify lower-face tightening at all, for want of fixed anatomical landmarks. It is not neck evidence.

The best neck and lower-face data is weaker. Oni and colleagues (2014) treated 103 patients and evaluated 93, with three blinded reviewers assessing 3D photographs at 90 days: 58.1 percent showed improvement in skin laxity. The study had no control group and was sponsored by the device manufacturer. Body weight mattered a great deal: among patients with a BMI over 30, 54.5 percent showed no detectable change, against 12.2 percent of those with a BMI of 30 or under. Fabi and Goldman (2014) retrospectively reviewed 48 women treated on the face and upper neck, where blinded reviewers rated 67 percent improved at 180 days, against 77.7 percent by the treating physician. That gap between blinded and unblinded assessment is worth remembering every time you read a satisfaction statistic.

The least flattering numbers come from the manufacturer's own registered trials. In one face-and-neck study with a year of follow-up, masked assessors judged 48 percent of patients improved at 90 days, and by one year 52 percent of patients described themselves as dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. There is no randomised or sham-controlled trial of microfocused ultrasound for the neck. Two meta-analyses conclude the effect is moderate and that long follow-up is mostly missing.

Monopolar radiofrequency

Thinner still. The only neck-specific study is Alster and Tanzi (2004), an uncontrolled series in which the neck group was 20 patients and the published abstract reports no effect size, only that "significant improvement" was seen in the majority. The one randomised trial that measured laxity under the chin, Fritz, Counters and Zelickson (2004), compared one treatment against two in 20 patients: the two-treatment group did better across the board but only the nasolabial folds reached statistical significance, and the authors twice described the overall change as "modest in most patients."

Bassichis, Dayan and Thomas (2004) is the one to read if you are deciding whether to book. With 24 treated patients and 12 untreated controls, objective brow elevation did improve, but the authors reported that patient satisfaction did not correlate with the objective data, that improvement was not uniform between patients, and that the majority of patients did not perceive a benefit. The widely circulated "5,700 patients" tightening figure is not a trial at all; it is a recall survey of 14 physicians.

Relaxing the bands

This is the one in-office option whose evidence has genuinely improved, and it is the only one with placebo-controlled trials. Two phase 3 randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies published in 2025 (Fabi et al.; Shridharani et al.) tested a botulinum toxin injection for platysma prominence against placebo, using a validated five-grade photonumeric scale rated at maximum muscle contraction. In the larger of the two, 41.0 percent of treated patients improved by two grades or more at day 14, against 2.2 percent on placebo. On the stricter combined measure the regulator approved on, it was 32.3 percent against 1.9 percent.

Read those numbers carefully, because they are the clearest illustration on this page of how a treatment can be both genuinely effective and much narrower than it sounds. The scale is rated while the muscle is contracting, so what improved is the dynamic band, not skin laxity and not the bands at rest. The trials ran to day 120 and no further, so the familiar "three to four months" is the limit of what has been measured rather than a known duration. Participants were about 95 percent women with a BMI capped at 30. And in the repeat-treatment study, a small number of patients had difficulty swallowing or facial weakness. This is a medical procedure with a real risk profile, and it is a conversation for a qualified injector, not for a skincare blog. We are not naming doses or protocols here on purpose.

What topical care can honestly do

Set the expectation correctly and topicals are worth the effort. Here is the realistic ceiling: smoother texture, less crepiness, better hydration, and a modest firming effect from consistently supporting collagen production. That is a visible improvement in a mirror at conversational distance. It is not a jawline.

We should be straight about the evidence here too. No controlled trial has tested a copper peptide or a retinoid on neck laxity specifically. What exists is facial data. The best controlled copper peptide trial, Badenhorst and colleagues (2016), was a randomised double-blind split-face study in 40 women aged 40 to 65 over eight weeks, measuring one wrinkle near the eye with 3D imaging. Wrinkle volume fell 24.1 percent on the GHK-Cu side against 15.0 percent on the control side. That trial was funded by the company that made the tested serum, and its authors credited the delivery system rather than the peptide for the result. It supports copper peptides as worth formulating around. It is not a neck result, and we are not going to pretend it is one.

What to look for:

1. A collagen-signalling active. Retinoids have the most facial data, but the neck is where they most often cause irritation and peeling. Copper peptides are the gentler route to the same goal and are far easier to use daily on thin skin. Our GHK-Cu before and after page goes through that evidence claim by claim, including the parts of it that are weaker than the industry suggests.
2. Real lipids, not just water. Neck skin has fewer oil glands than the face, so it dries out faster. A base that replaces lipids rather than just adding humectants holds the improvement.
3. Something you will actually apply every day. Consistency beats potency here by a wide margin, and it is the only variable fully under your control.

Apply upward from the collarbone toward the jaw, and extend whatever you use down onto the chest. Then put sunscreen over it in the morning. If crepey texture rather than looseness is your main issue, the more specific guide is crepey neck after 50, and if the softening is mostly along your jawline it is worth reading about sagging jowls instead. If what you see is one or two deep horizontal lines etched straight across the front of the neck rather than looseness, those are flexion creases and tech neck wrinkles covers why they behave differently. For the full routine, see our neck skincare routine, and for products, the neck and decolletage collection.

How to tell which situation you are in

A rough self-check, not a diagnosis. Look in a mirror in good light, head level.

• Pinch the skin under your jaw gently. If it feels thin and finely lined but springs back reasonably, you are mostly dealing with crepiness and texture. Topicals will help.
• Now look for a fold that hangs when your head is level. If there is loose skin that drapes rather than just looking thin, that is excess skin. Creams will not remove it.
• Now tighten your neck muscles deliberately, as if grimacing downward. If two or more vertical cords stand out sharply when you contract and soften when you relax, that is platysma activity. It is a muscle finding, and it is the one that responds to relaxing the muscle rather than to anything applied on top of it.

If you are mostly in the first category, start with the routine above and give it twelve weeks. If you are clearly in the second or third, a consultation with a board-certified dermatologist or plastic surgeon will tell you more in twenty minutes than a year of creams.

Every option ranked by evidence quality

We could not find this table anywhere, so we built it. Each option is rated on the strength of the study design behind it for the neck specifically, not on how well it is marketed. You are welcome to cite or reproduce it with a link back.

Option	Best evidence for the neck	Design	Placebo or sham control?	Measured effect	Evidence grade
Daily sunscreen	Hughes et al. 2013, n=903, 4.5 years	Randomised controlled trial	Yes (discretionary-use control)	24% less skin aging; no detectable increase in the daily group. Measured on the hand, not the neck	Strong, but off-site
Botulinum toxin for bands	Fabi et al. 2025; Shridharani et al. 2025, n=408 and n=381	Phase 3 randomised double-blind	Yes, placebo	41.0% improved 2+ grades vs 2.2% placebo at day 14; measured only at muscle contraction, only to day 120	Strong, narrow endpoint
Neck lift surgery	Decades of surgical series	Case series, no RCTs (an ethical limit, not a gap)	No	Removes excess skin. The only option that does	Established by mechanism
Microfocused ultrasound	Oni et al. 2014, n=93, 90 days	Prospective, single arm, blinded reviewers, industry funded	No	58.1% improved by blinded review; 54.5% no change if BMI over 30; 52% dissatisfied at 1 year in the maker's own trial	Weak to moderate
Topical copper peptide	Badenhorst et al. 2016, n=40, 8 weeks	Randomised split-face, double-blind, industry funded	Yes (vehicle control)	Wrinkle volume down 24.1% vs 15.0%. Face, not neck. No neck trial exists	Moderate, wrong site
Monopolar radiofrequency	Alster and Tanzi 2004, neck subgroup n=20; Fritz et al. 2004, n=20	Uncontrolled series; randomised dose comparison	No sham-controlled trial exists	No effect size published for the neck subgroup. Submental difference not significant in the randomised trial; "modest" in the authors' words	Weak
Neck exercises	Alam et al. 2018, n=16 completers, 20 weeks	Single-arm pilot, no control, programme founder a co-author	No	Neck volume scale not significant (p=0.11). Only cheek fullness improved	Negative for the neck

What we are not claiming

We sell skincare, so this needs saying plainly. No topical product, ours included, removes excess skin, changes platysma muscle activity, or produces a surgical result. There is no controlled trial of any topical product on neck laxity, ours included. Any brand implying otherwise is misleading you, and until this page was rewritten we were quoting a collagen statistic and a platysma mechanism that we could not support either.

What a well-formulated neck cream can do is improve texture, crepiness and hydration, and modestly support firmness over months. If you want the honest ranking of what matters: daily sun protection first, consistent topical care second, relaxing the bands if cords are the complaint, in-office tightening third and with low expectations, and surgery when the anatomy genuinely calls for it.

FAQ

Can you get rid of turkey neck without surgery?

Partly, depending on the cause. Thin crepey skin and mild laxity respond to consistent topical care and sun protection. Visible vertical cords respond to relaxing the platysma muscle, which has placebo-controlled trial evidence behind it. Genuine excess hanging skin does not respond to anything non-surgical. Most people have a mix and can improve the skin-quality portion meaningfully.

What is the fastest way to get rid of turkey neck?

Surgery, honestly. A neck lift is the only fast and definitive option. Everything non-surgical works on a scale of weeks to months: texture improves in two to four weeks with good topical care, firmness takes eight to twelve, muscle relaxation shows at about two weeks, and energy-based tightening is assessed at three months.

What causes turkey neck?

Collagen loss of roughly 1 percent a year, accelerating to 1 to 2 percent per year after menopause; cumulative sun damage on skin that is rarely protected; activity of the platysma muscle, which produces the vertical cords; and fat plus tissue descent under the chin. Sun damage is the largest modifiable cause.

Do turkey neck exercises work?

The best study of facial exercise measured the neck and found no significant change. Alam and colleagues (2018) ran a 20-week programme and found significant improvement only in upper and lower cheek fullness; the neck volume scale did not reach significance at p = 0.11. That study also had 16 completers, no control group, and the exercise programme's founder as a co-author. Exercises are not harmful in moderation, but they are not a neck treatment.

Is it true that women lose 30 percent of their collagen in the five years after menopause?

No, and this page used to say it. The 30 percent figure comes from a narrative review rather than a study. The primary measurements, from Brincat and colleagues, put the decline at about 1 to 2 percent per postmenopausal year, which is roughly 5 to 11 percent over five years. The decline is real and it does track years since menopause rather than age, but the commonly quoted figure is several times too large.

Do the vertical bands on my neck mean my muscle has separated?

Probably not in the way it is usually described. In about 85 percent of people the two halves of the platysma never fully join in the midline, and that is a variation present from birth rather than something age produces. The cords you can see are produced by muscle activity: in 25 patients with permanent one-sided facial paralysis, bands appeared on the working side and were absent on the paralysed side in 76 percent of cases, with no extra skin sagging on the paralysed side (Trevidic and Criollo-Lamilla, 2017).

At what age does turkey neck start?

Most people notice it between 45 and 60, though sun exposure matters more than the number. Collagen declines steadily across adult life and the drop accelerates after menopause. Someone with heavy lifetime sun exposure may see it in their forties.

Does losing weight help turkey neck?

It can go either way. Losing submental fat sharpens the jawline, which helps. But significant weight loss on skin that has already lost elasticity can leave more visible loose skin, not less. If your neck concern is skin laxity rather than fullness, weight loss is unlikely to improve the appearance. Body weight also predicts how well ultrasound tightening works: in Oni and colleagues' study, more than half of patients with a BMI over 30 showed no detectable change.

References

1. Shuster, S., Black, M. M., & McVitie, E. (1975). The influence of age and sex on skin thickness, skin collagen and density. British Journal of Dermatology, 93(6), 639-643.
2. Shuster, S. (2020). Osteoporosis, like skin ageing, is caused by collagen loss which is reversible. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 113(4), 158-160. Source of the "1 percent per annum" restatement.
3. Brincat, M., Kabalan, S., Studd, J. W., Moniz, C. F., de Trafford, J., & Montgomery, J. (1987). A study of the decrease of skin collagen content, skin thickness, and bone mass in the postmenopausal woman. Obstetrics and Gynecology, 70(6), 840-845.
4. Brincat, M., Moniz, C. J., Studd, J. W., et al. (1985). Long-term effects of the menopause and sex hormones on skin thickness. British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 92(3), 256-259.
5. Hughes, M. C. B., Williams, G. M., Baker, P., & Green, A. C. (2013). Sunscreen and prevention of skin aging: a randomized trial. Annals of Internal Medicine, 158(11), 781-790.
6. Alam, M., Walter, A. J., Geisler, A., et al. (2018). Association of facial exercise with the appearance of aging. JAMA Dermatology, 154(3), 365-367.
7. de Castro, C. C. (1980). The anatomy of the platysma muscle. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 66(5), 680-683.
8. Pogrel, M. A., Schmidt, B. L., Ammar, A., & Perrott, D. H. (1994). Anatomic evaluation of the anterior platysma muscle. International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, 23(3), 170-173.
9. Kim, H. J., Hu, K. S., Kang, M. K., Hwang, K., & Chung, I. H. (2001). Decussation patterns of the platysma in Koreans. British Journal of Plastic Surgery, 54(5), 400-402.
10. Trevidic, P., & Criollo-Lamilla, G. (2017). Platysma bands: is a change needed in the surgical paradigm? Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, 139(1), 41-47.
11. Alam, M., White, L. E., Martin, N., et al. (2010). Ultrasound tightening of facial and neck skin: a rater-blinded prospective cohort study. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 62(2), 262-269. Source of the "86 percent" figure, which is a brow measurement.
12. Oni, G., Hoxworth, R., Teotia, S., Brown, S., & Kenkel, J. M. (2014). Evaluation of a microfocused ultrasound system for improving skin laxity and tightening in the lower face. Aesthetic Surgery Journal, 34(7), 1099-1110. Industry sponsored, no control group.
13. Fabi, S. G., & Goldman, M. P. (2014). Retrospective evaluation of micro-focused ultrasound for lifting and tightening the face and neck. Dermatologic Surgery, 40(5), 569-575.
14. Alster, T. S., & Tanzi, E. (2004). Improvement of neck and cheek laxity with a nonablative radiofrequency device. Dermatologic Surgery, 30(4 Pt 1), 503-507. Neck subgroup n=20; no effect size published.
15. Fritz, M., Counters, J. T., & Zelickson, B. D. (2004). Radiofrequency treatment for middle and lower face laxity. Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery, 6(6), 370-373.
16. Bassichis, B. A., Dayan, S., & Thomas, J. R. (2004). Use of a nonablative radiofrequency device to rejuvenate the upper one-third of the face. Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, 130(4), 397-406.
17. Fabi, S., Humphrey, S., Biesman, B., et al. (2025). Improvement of platysma prominence with onabotulinumtoxinA: safety and efficacy results from a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled phase 3 trial. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 92(2), 285-291.
18. Shridharani, S. M., Ogilvie, P., Couvillion, M., et al. (2025). Improving neck and jawline aesthetics with onabotulinumtoxinA by minimizing platysma muscle contraction effects. Aesthetic Surgery Journal, 45(2), 194-201.
19. Sugrue, C. M., Kelly, J. L., & McInerney, N. (2019). Botulinum toxin treatment for mild to moderate platysma bands: a systematic review of efficacy, safety, and injection technique. Aesthetic Surgery Journal, 39(2), 201-206.
20. Badenhorst, T., Svirskis, D., Merrilees, M., Bolke, L., & Wu, Z. (2016). Effects of GHK-Cu on MMP and TIMP expression, collagen and elastin production, and facial wrinkle parameters. Journal of Aging Science, 4(3), 1000166. Funded by the maker of the tested serum.

Revision history

October 12, 2026. This version was restored. Two concurrent editing processes rewrote this page on October 5 and the weaker version was the one left live for a week. It reintroduced the unsupported 30 percent menopause collagen figure and cited a microfocused ultrasound paper we could not verify exists. Both are gone again.

October 5, 2026. This page was rewritten to name the study behind every claim. Four things were corrected rather than just expanded:

1. The claim that women lose "about 30 percent of dermal collagen" in the five years after menopause was removed. It has no primary study behind it. The measured figure is 1 to 2 percent per postmenopausal year.
2. "Skin loses roughly 1 percent of its collagen a year from your mid-twenties" lost the age of onset, which no study specifies.
3. The platysma explanation was corrected. The midline gap is a variation people are born with, not an age-related separation, and the visible cords are produced by muscle activity rather than by sagging.
4. Effect sizes, control groups and funding sources were added for every in-office treatment, including the ones that make them look worse than the marketing does, and a note that no controlled trial has ever tested a topical product on neck laxity, ours included.