Looking Like Your Mother

The Anti-Anti-Oxidants

I've been trying to get more good stuff into my body, not just on it, so I picked up two anti-oxidant boosters over the past few months, to add to my water, Dr. Brandt's and Pure Inventions. Dr. Brandt contains green and white tea extracts, lo han, lotus and grape seed extracts. What I like about Brandt's product is that I don't notice it. Dr. Brandt's booster passes the drinkability test with an A+. Pure uses green tea, lo han and stevia extract, as well as lotus, kudzu root and Chinese licorice. Kudzu is supposed to suppress one's desire for alcohol? Who knew - a rehab center in a eyedropper. How very showbiz.

But after getting into the water groove, I found an article in the February 28, 2007 Journal of the American Medical Association (pdf here) that evaluated whether antioxidant supplements had an impact on death rates - death rates on people - not lab rats. The results were not so encouraging, as Science Daily helps make a little clearer."Our systematic review contains a number of findings. Beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E given singly or combined with other antioxidant supplements significantly increase mortality. ...Our findings contradict the findings of observational studies, claiming that antioxidants improve health."
...
"There are several possible explanations for the negative effect of antioxidant supplements on mortality. Although oxidative stress has a hypothesized role in the pathogenesis of many chronic diseases, it may be the consequence of pathological conditions. By eliminating free radicals from our organism, we interfere with some essential defensive mechanisms . Antioxidant supplements are synthetic and not subjected to the same rigorous toxicity studies as other pharmaceutical agents. Better understanding of mechanisms and actions of antioxidants in relation to a potential disease is needed," the researchers conclude."

Using anti-oxidants to fight free radicals in an effort to improve cell health has always kind of lived on the edge of verifiable science. Certain aspects of the theory were proven, and then reasonable minds concluded that if those things were true, then certain other things must be true, too. Not everyone agreed on those "other things." Now it looks like we are in for a scientific battle.

And this, of course, is way, way cool, because you know who will benefit? We will. By the time this is done, research scientists will have a better understanding of how our bodies fight disease and cell aging. From that understanding comes cures. Will I keep drinking the boosters? From what I have been able to figure out so far, the extracts I'm drinking weren't part of the study, and not all anti-oxidants fared badly in the study. The scientists found some evidence that selenium may actually prolong.

So, yeah. I'll keep up with the teas and other polyphenols, back off on overdosing on vits A & E, and keep checking for updates.

Liar Liar Brain on Fire

I really should be posting on Paris, and how Raf Simons tops and shoes deserve applause and that YSL should stop putting men in its women's line and fat man's wear already. (Not everyone cares for Raf this season, but if you you don't let the legs throw you, one can see that Raf's details will be surfacing for years.)

I should also be doing something to honor Elizabeth H. Blackburn, the cell biologist who tells us that stress eats away at telomerase, the enzyme that keeps our chromosome tips (telomeres) in shape. These tips - think of them as the plastic bits on the end of shoelaces - are our best defense against degrading, fraying chromosomes. It is in the degrading and fraying that we age. I mean, I am glad she has found out this information, not that it is likely I can do anything much about the stress levels in my life. It's just kind of, well, I guess, good to know, in a way. Shoot. I am so aging fast, aren't I.

Thanks, Liz. Thanks a lot. You'll be picking up your Nobel prize while I'll be signing up for one of those feel-good yoga classes.

But all this "should be" writing has to wait because it is Margaret Talbot's piece "Duped" in the July 2 New Yorker that so completely took over my Saturday morning. Talbot takes on No Lie, a company promoting fMRI as a brain scan lie detector test, and I couldn't be happier. Why? Because I know for certain that if I ever had to take a lie detector test, I would get the chair.

Call it a hunch.

I was in the 4th grade. I remember the classroom, how the desks were arranged, and that the teacher had dark hair. During a test, a girl seated to my left (towards the windows and on the other side of me from where the teacher sat) asked if she could copy from me. I recognized the anomaly, felt sorry for the girl, and cooperated by failing to shield my paper. Several days later, the teacher kept the two of us after class and accused us of cheating. I was flummoxed by the charge. I had no recollection of the event.

My recall returned within 24 hours of meeting with the teacher. I remember the room I was in (bathroom) and what I was doing (about to take my bedtime bath) when the memory came back. I was disturbed about the empty space in my head and mortified as to how it must have appeared to the teacher and the student. I tried to explain my relapse recovery the next day, but I had little optimism it would be received well. From that event I learned that I could never fully trust my memory and that for the rest of my life I was either going to have to live in isolation or completely and absolutely behave.

It also meant that I would make one lousy lie detector test taker. I would always be in doubt, always second-guess, always panic.

It doesn't help either, that over the next few decades I earned a living on my imagination. If you train your brain to work in free fall, and someone asks you to recreate something that just happened two hours ago, such as "Honey, what did you do with the keys?", then you are fully capable of building an imaginary treehouse and thinking that you may have put those keys under the treehouse threshhold mat for safekeeping. Ok, maybe not that much leeway, but in response to that question I can see myself putting keys on the table and believing it, and five minutes later see myself putting keys in a coat pocket in the closet and believing, no, it happened that way, instead. During the process of trying to locate keys I am not lying. In fact, I am trying so very hard to be correct. But knowing that I have the capacity for these near misses makes my heart pound, my blood pressure skyrocket and my brain activity sparkle and crack over the most mundane things that regular functioning folks take for granted.

Then there is the free association. Think Robin Williams manic. The lie detector man says, "I'm going to ask you a series of baseline questions and then the zinger" or something like that. Maybe he doesn't tell me that is what he is doing, but I know how it works. When asked the zinger question, if I am lying, then the brain scanning device should show more brain activity than the level of activity produced during the other questions to which I do not feel I have to lie. The theory is that lying takes more brain work than telling the truth. The trouble I face is kind of the complement to, how did one of Ms. Talbot's sources put it:

"With brain imaging, the assumption is that the conflict is cognitive: the liar has to work a little harder to make up a story, or even to stop himself from telling the truth. Neither is necessarily right. 'Sociopaths don't feel the same conflict when they lie,' Phelps says. 'The regions of the brain that might be involved if you have to inhibit a response may not be the same when you're a sociopath, or autistic, or maybe just strange.'"

I'm a little strange, not necessarily in the sense that I won't emit a response (provided I can remember what I did the hour before), but that I am likely to emit a damning response for an entirely wrong reason. Let's say, for example, that someone shot my mother. The No Lie technology is in place. The interrogation process is that before being told that a loved one has been murdered, all family members are taken into custody and brain scanned.

Interrogator: Date of Birth

Me: Should I give him both my real birthday and the one I use when I buy things on the internet to protect my privacy? He probably has them both and I don't want to seem like I am hiding anything. No, but that answer will sound too stupid and I am not stupid just sometimes uncertain as to how internet things work. "Jun 5, 1967."

Interrogator: Lots of activity. She doesn't want to tell me her age. She has probably lied about this one a lot and doesnt want to blow her cover, heh, heh, heh.

Interrogator: Name of Father:

Me: "Charles"

Interrogator: Name of Mother:

Me: Oooh, I was supposed to call her yesterday. Now I'm in so much trouble. "Maureen." It was on my to do list and everything. She thinks I'm such a screw up. What is wrong with me. Now I'll have to take her shopping at Chicos to make it up to her. Boy I don't get that store. How many tunics can there be in medium ugly.

Interrogator: What kind of car do you drive:

Me: "Volvo"

Interrogator: Have you ever touched a hand gun?

Me: Stupid guns. That damn Charlton Heston. I used to have the ... "No" ...biggest crush on him from his old movies I watched him in at my grandpa's. Stupid NRA. He and his false teeth and Columbine and what does he know about today's kids and their stress. It's crazy today and he hangs out in his rancho commando compound in his jammies.

Interrogator: Lots of activity. Bingo.

Interrogator: Where do you live:

Me: River Oaks

Interrogator: Are you right or left handed:

Me: These guys are scientists of sorts. I should tell someone here of the phenomenon that two of my kids are left handed, despite having right ... Right. ... handed parents.  I mean, I wonder if I was supposed to be left handed or if it means that there is something special about their brains. Maybe I should have them tested. Maybe I should ask someone.

Interrogator: Lots of activity. I wonder if she knows about the bullet entry issue.

For me, a truthful response can result in way more a brain activity that anyone might expect. And maybe that would get me off the hook eventually, lots of brain activity to the word "popcorn" and question "do you like clouds?" might actually save me, if it doesn't get me put away into an insane asylum first. But the brain scan is being touted as a tool as valuable to truth finding as DNA analysis, so enough about me. What we know about the brain is that we don't know enough to be comparing results with DNA exactitude - not even close. So the public needs to raise a stink before it is forced upon us, and the Talbot article is a great place to start the edumacational process.

There is nothing more frightening that junk science.

Except for, perhaps, my lousy memory.

OTC Xenical A Good Crutch

This Times article about the OTC version of Orlistat (Xenical) from GlaxoSmithKline is a bit old, but it relates to a more recent event: Alli (Al-Eye, as in warrior friend) has been available now since June 15, at CVS for example. 

As a weight-loss tool it is effective and safe. Finally, something to kick the crap out of all the bullshit diet products that line the drug store shelves and fill late night infomercial channels. The product still requires the user to exercise and eat smart, but the ability to succeed at doing those two things is greatly increased if you can still enjoy the taste of real food in the process.

I have been using the prescription strength for a few years now, but limited to food fest holidays and whenever I know I am going to be stuck in a lot of restaurants and forced feedings. It takes the stress out of the unwanted change-up in my normal, sane eating routine.  I have only enough willpower to not buy artery-clogging, butter-laden stuff. If I find myself surrounded by desserts, cheeses, and BBQ - or people insisting on eating three huge squares on every day of every vacation, saying "No" becomes more of a challenge. Suddenly, I feel as unhealthy as a sixty year old man in a vacation trailer park, sitting under a canopy, listening to a radio in socks and sandals, eating an entire bag of chips while he's waiting for dinner. Once that state of mind sets in, I am very, very little fun to be around.

The trick, of course, is not to think, "Aha! Now I can eat 25% more fatty-type foods 'cause this pill will wash it all away." Because xenical only works to block fats, the best way to use Alli is to think of it a training device for recognizing fat contents in foods and limiting consumption through awareness, while providing enough diet leeway to keep willpower momentum going.

Fat kills and being out of shape depresses and ages. This is one product that can help.

The Looking Like Awards

#2. Find Your Libido.  Want to stay happy and with your partner and interested in how you look in jeans? Then have sex. And not the giving in, "oh, ok," kind. I mean the, "I'm sorry you don't feel well honey, but do you mind if I ride you anyway?" kind. Why? It freaks them out in a good way, and in the long run, you end up feeling more in love. When you feel more in love, it shows.

How, you may ask, is this more sex thing accomplished? A lack of interest can stem from two sources: low self-esteem and lack of drive. Suffering from one of the two is bad enough and leads to not enough sex. Suffering from both is devastating.

Most articles and discussions focus on the self-esteem. This isn't one of them, and I'm no Dr. Phil.

Do yourself a favor and talk to your doctor about your sex drive. Get off the anti-depressants that kill your libido; there are more on the market every day that are losing that nasty side effect. Or ask what counteracts it - tell you doctor you are willing to experiment, even. Say these words: "I don't understand. I used to want to have sex all the time. Now I don't. I am still happy and nothing has changed. Could it be physical, Doc?" Don't let them tell you that you are a woman and therefore depressed or stressed or a curiousity beyond understanding. That type of reasoning is so last century. I have experimented with all sorts of drugs and supplements over the years, trying different midlifer youthfulness cocktails on for effect. Sometimes I have take a combination of things and experience a Viagra-like rush, all stupid and reckless and distracted. When that happens, I'm reminded of the physicalness of it all.

Once the drive is back, it is amazing how quickly the self-esteem issues seem less important. I wonder? Does this make us more like men?

Sex is not an answer for all problems, but not being interested in sex and not making the effort to do anything about it is not fair to anyone in a relationship.

The Looking Like Awards

Some things are really worth shouting about, and although I can make a lot of noise here, I would like to make a little extra over those things that I wish I could pay for every woman to have done. When I find such a treatment or product, I will list it under the above title.

#1.  Get thee to a dermatologist and have every screaming freckle and age spot blasted away by an ablative laser process. So you look like an ashtray for two weeks, I did it and I still think it was one of the best treatments for the time, money, and results, hands down, forearms down, upper chest down - you name it. It took years off the look of my old arms and shoulders and chest and made wearing summer clothes feel so sexy again.

Do it quickly though. If memory serves, the Doc won't do it too late in the Spring season. Otherwise, you will have to wait until Fall in order to keep the new skin from getting too sun damaged.

Allergan Post Script

"I'm from Allergan," the man sitting next to me said, and shook my hand.

I was about to make a joke about how selling Botox and Juvaderm to doctors must be as tough as selling push up bras to twenty-four year olds, but we got interrupted by someone who came up to him and referred to the man as Allergan's president.

I love it when I almost step in it.

Now, if the impromptu show of hands at the meeting was any gauge, and more doctors across the country feel the same way and prefer Allergan's Juvaderm filler to the current filler workhouse, Restylane, and Botox becomes the new wonder scar minimizer, adding to its already widespread expression erase use - well, how can I put this. My mom used to buy stock based on what products she had in the kitchen.

Yes, But What About the Guinea Pigs

Hey, hey, hey, Ms. Natasha Singer. Not all of us beauty watchdog bloggers:

"have never met a beauty product or treatment they didn’t love. The fill their columns with wildly enthusiastic prose about the latest blush, the newest procedure or research that they laud as cutting-edge."

It's kind of a shame that most of the bloggers this Time reporter points to male medical doctors, or celebrity hounds. Bloggers, like Dr. Rob Oliver, are guys commenting from the sidelines. Others just want to pry and mock. Not all of us are like that, as The Beauty Brains demonstrates. I prefer being the blogger who gets out from behind the computer screen and visits the doctor, the one who talks to the best friend getting the treatments. And why not? I'm the chick in this tough, youth and beauty obsessed society, the one who is actually getting older and isn't always so cool about it. I'm the one who only has so much money to spend, and not always so certain where - or even whether - it should be spent. That makes me kind of, um, regular. Plus, I've had the good fortune to be able to subject myself as a gunea pig for enough years and through enough types of treatments to know first hand about a lot of what works and what doesn't.

If I were to alight from my high horse for one second, however, it would be to mention that the sensational nature of these sites does offer a benefit: a face full of caveat emptor. If it is labeled anti-aging, if it is labeled "beauty," if is a potion or lotion and comes with promises - then let the buyer beware. Always good advice. 

Happy Looking Like Your Mother's Day.

Infomercial Information

Wow, I was only looking for a rerun of Talk Soup, and my reward was one informercial on a a $60 instant face lift and another on a life saving colon blow. The guy selling the intestinal cleanse product had his hair slicked back, sported a pencil thin mustache, and talked about how his four year old daughter produces feces the size of his forearm. I want to blame my new low level of disgust for television on Soup's Joel McHale somehow, but he would never sink this low, not even for a laugh.  I think.

Anyway, for your own protection,

Informercial Watch
Informercial Scams
Fitness Infomercial Reviews

I was thinking of spoofing on some of the Home Shopping Network sales ladies, something I had studied for the first time over the weekend, but it's going to take a while before the shock of Mr. Pencil 'Stash wears off.

Actifirm

I have never heard of Actifirm before.  The marketing is slick, packaged in a syringe (a la botox) that is not really a syringe.  Cute. Ick.  I guess it's time to investigate.   

Hoobadoobadoo

I shudder to think what a reference to Hoodia, a weight loss supplement will bring in terms of trackbacks and comments directing people to garbage sites, but I am curious. That CBS News article suggests there is some validity to the claims.  The issue remains, however, over how much of the hoodia plant actually gets into the pills.  I also didn't know that hoodia is in Trimspa. 

I have ordered a bottle to test, from the Hoodoba site which claims to be the supplement product that intrigued 60 Minutes enough to send Leslie Stahl out into the African bush.  Mostly what I want to find is something that takes my mind off snacking and drinking wine in the evening as I read and write.  Cutting out the wine alone would do the trick and get me back to summer weight, but that involves a combination of willpower agents I seem to have in short supply lately. 

I will let you know how this works out, and may experiment with a hoodia supplement competitor from GNC and maybe even the Trimspa. I must say, however, that the thought of taking something promoted by Anna Nicole Smith is an appetite suppressant by itself.