Towie beauty guru who had twice-yearly anti-wrinkle jabs for a decade suffers facial paralysis and violent seizures four times a day in ‘worst case of Botox poisoning ever seen’
Belinda Hayle wants other people to know about one of the rarer side effects of the vanity injections
MUM-OF-TWO Belinda Hayle can never be left alone. Swallowing difficulties mean she’s at constant risk of choking on her food and she has violent seizures up to four times a day. Sometimes she can barely make it out of bed.
It’s a far cry from her former life as a successful semi-permanent make-up artist, with TV stars clamouring for her services.
"Back then I was known as ‘The Brow Queen’ for my specialism, enhancing clients’ eyebrows with a digital tattoo pen.
"My client list included Towie stars like Billie and Sam Faiers and Jess Wright, singer-songwriter Lisa Maffia, Brianne Delcourt from Dancing on Ice and the Olympic gold medallist Joanna Rowsell-Shand.
"I featured in Vogue and even briefly appeared on The Only Way is Essex myself. I was flown all over the world to give masterclasses too.
"Best of all, I got to give something back, regularly providing nipple restoration tattoos to cancer patients who’d had mastectomies for free. I really, really loved my job."
Working in beauty, Belinda, now 48, felt it was important she looked her best too, so she Botox type anti-wrinkle injections twice a year, starting aged 35.
"It flattened my forehead, kept my crows feet at bay and gave me a rested look,’ says Belinda.
"I was proud of looking good for my age and having anti-wrinkle jabs was just a small part of my beauty regime, no more serious than getting my nails done."
It was only after 10 years of treatments, in April 2015, that one jab felt different for Belinda.
"The injection itself was far more painful that usual," she recalled.
"Almost immediately I felt awful too, like I was coming down with flu."
The morning after Belinda had a real shock.
"When I woke up my face felt really wrong," she explains. "I couldn’t see out of one eye and when I grabbed a mirror I gasped in horror at my lopsided reflection."
Although scared, Belinda assumed she’d just had a bad reaction to the injection which would pass.
And after a week or so it seemed it had. Her face went back to normal and she felt well again.
But 10 days later she started to feel ill once more
"Because of the gap where I’d felt well, I didn’t link it to the jabs this time,’ she explains.
"I just knew that I felt constantly exhausted and even began to find walking difficult. I developed a tremor and struggled to hold my head up. I found it hard to swallow and got easily confused, finding it hard to form sentences.
"The skin on my arms became mottled and veiny and my hands turned a weird colour. They soon became so weak I couldn’t hold a tattoo pen for work."
That summer Belinda was taken to casualty by ambulance several times after collapsing with terrible pains in her head.
And after a battery of tests doctors diagnosed fibromyalgia, a long-term condition that causes pain all over the body, but Belinda wasn’t convinced.
"When I looked into it, it just didn’t seem to fit what was happening to me," she says. "I felt like I was dying."
In desperation eventually Belinda put her symptoms into Google and was taken to a forum for people who’d had 'Botox poisoning'.
"I couldn’t believe it," she said. "The stories on the site mirrored my experience so completely. It was like reading about myself.
"I felt a massive surge of anger. In all the years I’d had Azzalure (the Botox type jab) the only risk I’d ever been warned about was a droopy eyebrow, which would only be temporary.
"Every practitioner I’d visited had told me the chemicals would be out of my system after three months, even if something did go wrong.
"Now, looking online, I felt so angry. Some of the people on the site had been suffering for years.
"Terrifyingly, nobody seemed to have found an effective treatment."
What is botulism?
According to the NHS, botulism is a very rare but life-threatening condition caused by toxins produced by Clostridium botulinum bacteria.
These toxins are some of the most powerful known to science. They attack the nervous system (nerves, brain and spinal cord) and cause (muscle weakness).
Most people will make a full recovery with treatment, but the paralysis can spread to the muscles that control breathing if it's not treated quickly. This is fatal in around 5-10% of cases.
The time it takes to develop symptoms can vary from a few hours to several days after exposure to the Clostridium botulinum bacteria or their toxins.
Depending on the exact type of the condition (see Causes and types of botulism below), some people initially have symptoms such as feeling sick, vomiting, stomach cramps, or .
Without treatment, botulism eventually causes paralysis that spreads down the body from the head to the legs. Symptoms can include drooping eyelids, blurred or facial muscle weakness, slurred speech and breathing difficulties.
Botox - and similar anti-wrinkle jabs - uses the neurotoxin botulinum to block nerve signals to targeted muscles, temporarily paralysing them and reducing the appearance of lines and wrinkles.
But studies, including one in 2016 by the University of Wisconsin Madison and published in the journal Cell Reports, have shown that the toxin can migrate from the intended target to other cells in the body.
Belinda sought out a private specialist who confirmed the diagnosis saying she was the worst case of Botulism he’d ever seen.
She said: "Three years on from the jab I’m still under the care of private doctors and also have homeopathic treatments.
"I’ve been left with permanent facial paralysis. I’ve just had plastic mouth guards fitted to take the pressure off the nerves in my jaw and help me swallow.
";I’ll have to wear them all the time for the next three years, aside from taking them out to brush my teeth.
"My speech has been affected and I’m very self-conscious when I’m out. I recently had to leave my daughter Isabella’s 18th birthday dinner because I had a seizure and worried people were staring."
Belinda’s confidence has been shattered. Her husband Alan has had to become her carer and it’s affected her teenage children, Isabella and her brother Samuel, 17.
"I’ve caught them both crying about what’s happened to me which is awful,’ says Belinda, who can no longer see clients.
"Our business selling permanent make-up supplies has suffered too.
"On a good day I might manage the hoovering or to walk the dog. But some days I can’t even get out of bed. I still can’t nod my head, I’m constantly exhausted and I occasionally collapse to the ground in pain.
"Alan and I have now decided to raffle our home and use the proceeds to set up an animal refuge as we both love animals.
"We came up with the raffle because it meant we didn’t have to worry about estate agents and buyers trooping through the house when I’m feeling ill.
"There’s still life ahead for me but it’s a very different future to the one I planned."
Belinda knows her experience may be rare but she wants people to know what they’re risking with anti-wrinkle injections.
"I once feared losing my looks,’ she said. "But that’s nothing compared to what I’ve been through instead. This has devastated me.
"The hardest thing to deal with is knowing I chose to have 'Botox'. I did this to myself."
As her health problems mean she can no longer work, Belinda and her husband are raffling their 700k Surrey home for £5 a ticket, in the hope of founding an animal sanctuary they can run together. Find out more at
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