Lifestyle Choices

Life, the biological chain that holds our parts together, is only as strong as its weakest vital link..

You are as young or as old as your smallest vital links—the cells. The aging begins when your normal process of cell regeneration and rebuilding slows down. This slowdown is caused mainly by the accumulation of waste products in the tissues, which interferes with the nourishment of the cells. Each living cell is a complete living entity with its own metabolism. It needs a constant supply of oxygen and sufficient nourishment. (more…)

With intrinsic biological aging, the skin’s outer layer is thinned (over time by about 20 percent). The surface of the skin remains smooth. The border between the epidermis and the dermis becomes flattened, making the skin less resistant to friction (you get more blisters in snug shoes!). In contrast, extrinsic photoaging causes a thickening of the outer skin layer, with up to 50 percent more cells being accumulated onto the skin’s surface, making it feel rough and dry. Think of the grainy, thickened skin on the backs of the hands of a gardener, for example. With photoaging, accumulation of pigment in the basal cells is more markedly irregular than in intrinsic aging, causing the so-called “liver spots” or “age spots” (medically called solar lentigos), the unattractive dark spots especially prevalent on the hands, arms, face and chest. (more…)

All cancer is genetic. That is to say, that in order for a normal cell to convert to a cancerous cell, a genetic mishap must occur. These genetic mishaps, or mutations, occur quite frequently and are usually of little consequence unless the event occurs at a critical location on one of the chromosomes. A single mutation does not lead to a cancer. Cancer results from two to three separate events over time. (more…)

Acne can very often be effectively treated by special cleansers and topically applied formulations. There are four main non-prescription acne medications which alone or in combination with prescription medications are the mainstay for acne treatment. All of these are also available in stronger prescription form.

Salicylic acid .is one of the most effective topical medications. This is a beta-hydroxy acid that is a peeling agent, because it is “keratolytic” and loosens dead surface cells that stick within pores, thereby curing clogged pores at the very onset. Sulfur and resorcinol are not only keratolytic, but also anti-bacterial. They are often mixed as flesh-tinted lotions to cover blemishes (Longevite Concealer). (more…)

When you refinish a piece of fine furniture, you often sweep off the old surface to reveal the quality of the fresh wood below. Similarly, one of the simplest and most effective methods of eliminating tiny wrinkles is to “sand” the surface of the skin mildly with a gently abrasive sponge or product. Particularly likely to respond to such treatment are the tiny wrinkles around the mouth and eyes. This mild abrasion mechanically removes some of the dead outer layers of skin cells so the skin does appear smoother. (more…)

Everyone suffers at some time from dry skin. When your skin is dry, you reach for a moisturizer. But effective moisturizing involves more than just day cream or lotion.

When doctors look at dry skin under a microscope, they see that it is actually an accumulation of dead cells adhering to the skin’s surface. These cells are made of the protein, keratin, which can absorb water, changing from dry, tile-like flakes to smooth, plump cells. Natural, moist, supple skin depends upon the complex interaction of these surface cells with the environment, with water, with your body’s secretions, or with moisturizers you apply. (more…)

Has it ever occurred to you that you have too much fat on your body and too little fat on your face? However, today surgeons are actually taking fat from the stomach or thighs and moving it to the face. The transplantation of fat, or lipotransplantation, is an old and until recently neglected method of treating deep wrinkles, which was revived about ten years ago by the French plastic surgeon, Dr Pierre Fournier. (more…)

This is a topic close to everyone’s heart. Many Western people are on the one hand increasingly conscious of their appearance and on the other hand doing irreversible damage to their skin by excessive sunbathing. Even sun- protected skin will age. Sunlight creates its own effect called photoaging, and the two processes together eventually lead to the typical changes of wrinkling, color variation and prominent blood vessels seen in old people who have spent much of their lives outdoors. We are now seeing this in younger individuals. Ultraviolet light and the changes it can effect will be discussed in detail, and then some of the theory behind skin aging and how to avoid it. (more…)

Unlike an outbreak of ordinary pimples, acne is a severe skin disorder common to adolescents that can be both painful and embarrassing. Many teens who suffer from acne also suffer from real confusion about its causes and proper treatment. According to noted acne expert Dr. James E. Fulton Jr., the disease can be treated effectively. The following is some of his helpful information on what really causes the trouble and on what you can do to fight it.

Acne starts with the pores, well below the skin’s surface and out of reach of both dirt and the drying soaps, tough scrubs, and cleansers commonly used to treat it. Breakouts are triggered by a hormone that stimulates the sebaceous glands so that they produce excess oil. The excess oil then prompts the pores to shed the cells in their lining more rapidly than usual. (more…)

The Body’s Clearing System

While the act of breathing is supplying your cells with the oxygen they need, it is also removing carbon dioxide and wastes from your system. Carbon dioxide is a by-product of oxidation and energy release. If it were allowed to build up it would poison the cells and eventually kill them. So tiny blood vessels carry the waste back to the lungs, where it is eliminated when you breathe out and exchanged for new oxygen when you breathe in. At least that is how it should work.

In most women, however, this vital process of taking in necessary oxygen and eliminating poisonous wastes is neither as efficient nor as complete as it should be. This can be due to many things, from tissue anoxia as a result of a diet too high in fats, from insufficient iron, B12, folic acid, or vitamin E resulting in anemia. (more…)

When there is a serious misalignment in the body, such as a chronic stoop that begins to distort the soft S-shape curve of the spine, heavy, shapeless piano legs, or twists, curves, and bulges in parts of the body, that stays there even after the loss of excess weight, cellulite treatment, and exercise, then you need professional help. There are a number of different disciplines that can be useful. Osteopathy or chiropractic, through manipulation and specific exercises, can realign spines as well as eliminate pressures on nerves or blood vessels in the spinal area. Left unattended, these pressures may result in serious back pain, varicose veins, poor lymphatic drainage to the legs, and bad cellulite. The Alexander technique can help straighten a spine bent by years of discouragement and rehabilitate the personality that carries it in the process. Tai chi and yoga work slowly and gradually, but are capable of restoring most bodies to perfect alignment and balance as well. But I’ve found two other techniques—Rolfing and connective tissue massage—to be especially helpful in treating body problems that, by interfering with perfect form, mar beauty. (more…)

Not only are your eyes the truest of all physical reflections of who you are, they are also an ageless expression of beauty. For there can be something breathtaking about the eyes of an old woman, as there is about the eyes of a child. Like any other part of your body, to be beautiful your eyes have to be healthy, and to be healthy they need care.

But the care they need is quite different from what we are usually led to believe. For eyes are not the delicate, poor, vulnerable things we have been taught they are—overworked, constantly struggling against inadequate light and overstrain, and longing for some well-deserved tinted glasses to rest them. Far from it. Your eyes are tough. They were made for use, and the more you use them, to read and to see with, and the more you exercise the muscles around them, and the more they are exposed to the full spectrum of natural sunlight, the healtheir and more beautiful they will be. And not only will your eyes benefit, so will the rest of your body. (more…)

Masks are one of the mysteries of the cosmetic world. The manufactured kinds come in many varieties and are designed for several purposes. You have to pick the right one for the right purpose. Many women don’t. This is probably why they are often disappointed. Dermatologists disagree about their effectiveness. While some swear by them, others consider them little more than cosmetic security blankets. Chosen carefully,

I believe, a mask can be a boon to beauty.

A mask is designed to perform one of the mire specific tasks: to deep- cleanse, to tone, to stimulate circulation, to moisturize the skin, or to exfoliate—that is, to remove the outer layers of dead epidermal cells so the skin is refined and left more receptive to whatever treatment product you choose to put on it after. Most commercial masks contain a great amount of water, which makes their evaporation rate rapid and gives the skin a cooling and soothing feel. But this is of little more than psychological help to the user. The deep response to elements in a mask comes through the vascular network in the dermis, where active ingredients coupled with physical tension from the mask drying on the skin bring about increased circulation and help stimulate cellular activity. (more…)

Nothing betrays your age like the state of your skin. When you are young, it is thick, glowing, soft, and elastic. As the years go by, a number of changes take place. The thickness of the skin diminishes by half. It loses its firmness. First, expression lines and minor discolorations form, then these tiny imperfections gradually become wrinkles and blotched skin, which is no longer able to retain water as it once could–skin that has lost its elasticity and turned crepey and old-looking. How fast all this happens depends not only on your genetic inheritance but also on the internal state of your body, your stress levels, and the care and protection you provide for your skin from the outside.

The aging process in your skin is really no different from anywhere else in the body, except that it can be faster. This is because, first, the skin’s cells tend to divide more often than most other kinds of cells, so genetic mutations are passed on more rapidly, and second, because your skin has to put up with so many external insults from what it is exposed to environmentally. (more…)

Forget the Cigarette

Smoking also makes skin age rapidly. This is probably because of a substance called benzopyrene, which is found in cigarette smoke and which uses up the body’s supply of vitamin C rapidly, making it unavailable for the support of healthy collagen. So the skin wrinkles earlier. Dr. Harry Darnell investigated the relationship between wrinkling and cigarette smoking for almost twenty years, looking at eleven hundred patients between the ages of thirty and seventy. He found that the skin of smokers wrinkles and ages up to twenty years sooner than that of nonsmokers. But the problem with cigarette smoke doesn’t end there. For it is not only the smoker whose skin can suffer from it. So can the nonsmoker’s. (more…)

Blackheads—the Cause

A blackhead—in medical terms, an open comedo—consists of a solid plug of oil that clogs the pore and then blackens due to oxidation on exposure to the air. If it is left alone it will simply stay there in the skin. Blackheads do not cure themselves.

Prevention and Cure

Blackheads on oily areas of the face (such as around the nose and chin) that are not inflamed can be removed easily by steaming the skin first or by applying hot compresses using flannel dipped in hot water and wrung out—hot water to which bicarbonate of soda has been added at a ratio of 1. tablespoon to each pint. This opens the pores and loosens the oily material. Then gently, with scrupulously clean hands and the tips of your fingers wrapped in facial tissue, you can ease out the plugs. Never use your nails. Finish off the treatment with the application of an antiseptic cream. (more…)

While all of the nutrients found in the Lifestyle Diet are important for skin, some are particularly vital to its look and health. Vitamin A, for instance. If you do not have enough of it in your diet or if you have some difficulty in assimilating and using the vitamin (many women do), this can bring about dry, scaly, and crinkled skin. For, among its many functions, vitamin A helps regulate the size and functions of the sebaceous glands. A shortage can result in enlarged pores, rough skin, and acne.

Without adequate vitamin C, the collagen fibers in the dermis suffer damage. Vitamin C and the biofiavonoids that are found in natural foods (such as the whitish inner skin of grapefruit) not only keep skin young by helping to protect the collagen fibers and keep them intact, they also ensure the health of the tiny capillaries that supply nutrients to the skin’s cells, protecting skin from fragile or broken veins (bruising) and early wrinkling. When capillaries are not strong and working properly, then the skin’s cells don’t receive all the oxygen and nutrients they need via the bloodstream, and their functioning suffers. Neither are wastes efficiently eliminated. This can lead to st_asis in the tissues, and cellulite, as well as contributing to early aging of the skin. (more…)

A living, breathing thing, skin is far more than just a superficial covering for your body. It is your largest organ. It covers a surface area of about 17 square feet and weighs between six and eight pounds. So complex is this stuff called skin that a piece of it with only the surface area of your thumbnail boasts a yard of blood vessels, twenty-five nerve endings, one hundred sweat glands, and over three million cells.

Lasting skin beauty is a question of lasting care, not spending lavishly on fancy creams and treatments. It is the everyday way you treat skin that matters year after year. But to know how to look after your skin you must first know something about it—what it is and isn’t, what it’s meant to do, and the many things that affect it for better or worse. For then you can see that its needs are met from day to day. In return it will give you what you desire: beauty that at the very least is skin deep. (more…)

Your skin is constantly giving up moisture, not just through the sweat ducts but through a process of transpiration in which water in the cells on its surface evaporates directly into the atmosphere. This is quite different from perspiring, which only happens to any marked degree when the body is warm. Transpiration occurs constantly. The lower the humidity in your environment, the more rapid will be the water loss and the greater the need to protect against it. And what most women don’t realize is that the humidity of the average centrally heated home or office is comparable to that of the Sahara Desert. Similarly, chemical pollutants, soaps, makeup, and anything that affects the hydrolipidic film decreases its effectiveness and leads to further dehydration.

I learned the truth of this for myself when I spent a month in a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas. There was no water to wash with, no air pollution, and no stress, for I was spending most of my days and nights in meditation. Neither was there a mirror. (more…)

1. The facts

Your skin is the largest organ of the body. Did you know that you have about 300 million skin cells that renew themselves regularly every 21-28 days? You shed approximately 4 per cent of your total skin cells daily, or about 50,000 cells per minute! In a lifetime you will shed about 13.5 kg of skin.

The skin is the body’s first line of defence against harmful bacteria and viruses. There are about 25,000 ‘good’ bacteria cells per square cm of skin. Facial skin is about 0.12 mm thick while skin on the body is about 0.6 mm thick. Skin on the lips and eyelids is the thinnestwhile skin on the palms and soles of the feet is the thickest. (more…)