Bringing Harmony to Hormonal Skin

Take Control of Your Complexion

While most of us think of hormonal fluctuations as internal changes tied to the reproductive system, such physiological shifts can have a profound effect on other parts of the body as well. Whether the result of age, lifestyle or environmental factors, hormonal imbalance can not only set the body and mind spinning; it also takes its toll on the skin. Fortunately, modern skin care has recognized the key role hormones play in skin health and developed solutions specifically designed to address this concern. By introducing ingredients that encourage hormonal equilibrium, we can take a holistic approach to imbalanced skin.

How Hormones Affect the Skin

Hormones can affect the skin in a number of ways. For most, the introduction to imbalanced skin begins in adolescence with blemishing and excessive oiliness often accompanying the body’s first hormonal peak. While for many, the temperamental skin of our teen years fades with age, for others it is a concern that continues well into adulthood. Even for those with relatively well-balanced skin, intermittent fluctuations—such as during menstruation, starting or stopping birth control or the onset of menopause—can wreak havoc on one’s complexion, particularly in terms of moisture balance.

Hormones affect moisture balance by stimulating the skin’s sebaceous glands—natural, oil-producing glands—to produce more or less sebum, or natural oil, than normal. Elevated levels of the male hormone testosterone, for instance, tend to encourage sebum overproduction, often leading to an oily, blemish-prone complexion. Decreased levels of the female hormone estrogen, on the other hand, often result in drier skin as sebum production is scaled back.

Sebum production, however, is not the only factor influenced by the body’s internal chemistry. Recent scientific evidence suggests a strong link between estrogen and collagen production, with elevated levels of the hormone playing a key role in stimulating production of the structural tissue. According to a University of Michigan Health System study published in September 2008, topical estrogen treatments increased the level of collagen significantly in areas unaffected by chronic sun damage.

Addressing Hormones in Skin Care

Acknowledging the critical role of hormones in skin health, CosMedix incorporates natural, hormone-balancing ingredients into several of its skin care formulas. Ingredients like soy isoflavones, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and pregnenolone (both from yams) keep hormonal fluctuations in check, encouraging a healthy moisture balance even during periods of flux.

A phytohormone (literally, “plant hormone”), soy isoflavones act as a weak form of estrogen, binding to the body’s estrogen receptors to either block overproduction of the hormone or act as a supplement when production is low. In addition to their role as hormonal regulators, soy isoflavones also help induce collagen production and protect against damaging free radicals.

Pregnenolone and DHEA are prohormones—precursors used to make hormones—found naturally in the body and believed to play a role in skin immunity and hydration. As the body ages, its natural reserves diminish, leaving the skin at greater risk for disease and irregular sebum production. By reintroducing these and other key hormonal elements to the skin, CosMedix encourages a return to healthy sebaceous and immune activity.

Because hormonal fluctuations affect women in different ways, CosMedix offers custom solutions based on condition. Whether plagued by hormonal dryness and dehydration or hormone-stimulated oily skin, CosMedix’s advanced correctives target the source of the imbalance to restore epidermal equilibrium and reveal beautiful, well-balanced skin.

Balancing Act
Commonsense Ways to Combat Hormonal Skin

Watch What You Eat
When the body is poorly nourished, acidic or overwhelmed by toxins, the skin visibly suffers. A healthy diet, rich in fiber, iron, calcium and essential vitamins (think grains, fruits and leafy vegetables), can help restore balance, remove toxins and minimize the hormonal response.

Cut out the Caffeine
Stimulating adrenaline production, caffeine alters the brain’s chemistry, inviting a flood of stress hormones which can adversely affect the skin. By limiting your caffeine intake, you can help control artificial fluctuations and help encourage hormonal stability.

Get More Sleep
Our sleep cycle is essential to maintaining proper hormonal regulation. Interrupting or abbreviating the body’s circadian rhythm can result in imbalance and increased stress—both of which can trigger skin conditions.

Courtesy of CosMedix.com

Ultra Lite Weight Management Program – Professional Critique

A recent report by Dr John Ryan, GP/Nutritionist and Mrs Jeanie Ryan, Dietitian/RN recently reviewed Ultra Lite’s products and protocols.

They concluded that the Ultra Lite Program offers a sensible, nourishing diet with appropriate supplementation and supervision. These alone could achieve reasonable weight loss. The addition of a goal for mild ketosis ensures weight is being lost more effectively, and that the unwanted fat is lost, rather than fluid alone.

They reported fat loss during ketosis in the Ultra Lite program involves a number of processes, each of which has positive outcomes for the body:

• Favouring of salads and carbohydrates with low glycaemic index have a positive effect on blood sugar and is associated with a reduction in blood sugar levels which will assist in the prevention of diabetes.
• Lowering the quantities of processed high carbohydrate foods and using fruits and vegetables with high antioxidant content are highly beneficial against cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
• Using foods with omega 3 fats with fish and flaxseed oils have anti‐inflammatory effects and positive effects on mental processes such as learning and mood.
• Burning body fat and using it as energy to produce weight loss in the obese may prolong life, increase self esteem and decrease the risks for heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
• Having a positive ketone measure in the urine, even though this is quite low, is an indication of body fat loss and may be a significant incentive to continue the weight loss program. A defining feature of the Ultra Lite program is the goal to keep the readings positive. The safe low goal of 0.5 is quite achievable on the diet (the total range being as high as 4).

Recent evidence showed that a low carbohydrate diet, when compared to a predominantly low fat diet, resulted in more weight loss and greater abdominal fat loss (the most serious area for fat accumulation), better lipid profile (particularly triglycerides), less insulin resistance and possibly greater satiety and compliance. 1,2,3,4

Another strong reason to use the Ultra Lite program for effective weight loss. Call Shrinc Clinic today to start your journey to your ideal weight witht he support of our qualified Ultra Lite practitioners. Call 1800747462 or visit www.shrinc.com.au


References:
1.    Acheson KJ. Carbohydrates and weight control; where do we stand? Current Opinion Clin Nutrition Metabolism Care. 2004 July; 7 (4) 485‐92
2.    Noakes M. et al. Weight Loss, diet composition and cardiovascular risk. Current Opinion Lipidol. 2004 Feb; 15 (1) 31‐5.
3.    Johnson CS et al. High‐protein, low fat diets are effective for weight loss and favourably alter biomarkers in healthy adults. J. Nutr. 2004 Mar; 134(3); 486‐91.
4.    Yacy WS Jr et al. A low carbohydrate diet, ketogenic diet versus a low fat diet to treat obesity and hyperlipidemia: a randomised, controlled trial. Ann Intern med. 2004 May 18; 140(10) 769‐77.

Source: Carryn Pty Ltd, 117 Idonia Street, Bridgeman Downs, Brisbane. Queensland. 4035.

How do I Make Sure My Surgeon Really is a Plastic Surgeon?

It's not always as straight forward as it should be, as believe it or not, practioners have been known to lie or mislead about their qualifications, so unfortunately you can't always rely on what they say, or even what they publish about themselves!

If you want to be sure that your doctor really is a genuine, formally trained and accredited plastic surgeon, call the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) to verify his or her membership.

What about doctors who are members of the Australasian College of Cosmetic Surgery (ACCS)?

Members of the ACCS are not usually  plastic surgeons, however they may be formally trained surgeons of other kinds eg. ENT's and general surgeons or they may be dermatologists or GP's, however any training provided to them at this college will not be recognised training, as the college itself ,currently lacks any accreditation with the Australian Medical Council (AMC) which is the only body nationally that can certify medical training on behalf of the Australian Commonwealth.

Its highly controversial but legal for non plastic surgeons to perform cosmetic surgery, and to describe themselves as cosmetic surgeons, and you need to be aware that some unscrupulous cosmetic surgeons will try to equate themselves with plastic surgeons and may use the terms cosmetic surgeon and plastic surgeon interchangeably.

If you want a plastic surgeon, not a cosmetic surgeon, do your homework properly and give the doctor or doctors you are interested in, a thorough 'consumer check-up'.

If a doctor says or implies that he's a plastic surgeon, don't just take his word for it, check it out!

Your right to choose, and your hard earned money and your body are on the line, so take it seriously!

Source: Deidre Nolan http://www.blognow.com.au/thedeidrenolanreports/

Excessive Liposuction - Aggressive surgeons endanger patient outcomes and well being

Excessive Liposuction

Factors that increase the dangers of liposuction include 1) lack of good judgment in patient selection, 2) excessive duration and intensity of exposure to anesthesia, 3) excessive amounts of surgical trauma per month, and 4) ineffective post-liposuction care.

What is Too Much Liposuction?
Excessive amounts of surgical trauma can be regarded as toxic to patients. Increasing doses of liposuction-induced surgical trauma produce increasing risks of toxicity in the form of surgical complications. It is not possible to precisely identify the threshold for dangerous amounts of liposuction. However, one can be certain that removing 6 to 9 liters of fat on one day is many times more dangerous than removing 2 to 3 liters of fat on each of three separate surgeries spaced at least one month apart. Liposuction of 5% of the body's subcutaneous surface area is obviously safer than liposuction of 40% of the body surface area. Cosmetic surgery is not emergency surgery, liposuction patients should not be exposed unnecessary risks of excessive liposuction on a single day.

Excessive liposuction is not safe. This patient had too much liposuction on a single day resulting in gross irregularities of the skin. The goal of liposuction should not be to remove the maximum amount of fat, but rather to achieve the best cosmetic results. Mega liposuction is never necessary and often it is dangerous.

Excessive Liposuction is Difficult to Define
Excessive liposuction might be defined as a volume of liposuction that is excessively dangerous. The designation of excessive liposuction often depends on the size and health of the patient. Removing 1 liter (2.2 pounds) of fat by liposuction might be excessive in a patient weighing 50 kg (110 pounds). On the other hand, removing 4 liters (9 pounds) of fat in one procedure might not be excessive in a 100 kg (220 pound) patient. There is no clear cut dividing line between to the amount of liposuction that can be considered safe and an amount of liposuction that is too dangerous. Patients and surgeons must use common sense.

Toxic Dose of Liposuction
Increasing doses of a toxin can be expected to produce increasing risks of a toxic response. Drinking a very small amount of alcohol usually has no detectable effect. Increasing doses of alcohol first produce a mild subjective effect, then mild intoxication (inebriation), followed by moderate intoxication (drunkenness), and dangerous intoxication (unconsciousness, coma, death). The severity of a skin burn can be measured as a percentage of the body-surface area that is burnt. The probability of death increases with increasing percentage of body-surface area that is burnt. Similarly, an increasing amount of liposuction trauma (increasing percentage of body-surface area subjected to liposuction) increases the risk of unconsciousness, coma, and death.


Small Monthly Doses are Safer
Drinking a moderate amount of alcohol on three separate occasions at least a month apart is not as dangerous as drinking three times that amount on one occasion. Similarly doing a moderate amount of liposuction on three separate occasions at least a month apart is not as dangerous as doing three times that amount of liposuction on a single occasion.

Tumescence for the Wrong Reasons
Tumescent liposuction totally by local anesthesia was invented to improve patient safety. However, some surgeons and anesthesiologists use the tumescent technique in order to maximize the volume of fat removed during a single surgery. Liposuction of 5 liters or more of fat in a single liposuction procedure is overly aggressive, and potentially life threatening.

Ability to Survive Trauma has Limits
The body cannot tolerate an unlimited amount of trauma. Increasing degrees of liposuction-associated trauma produce increasing degrees of tissue injury and blood coagulation. Eventually, there is either excessive bleeding or excessive clotting and then death. Excessive liposuction is also associated with prolonged recovery, and disappointing cosmetic results.

Too Many Unrelated Surgical Procedures
The risk of complications is greatly increased by combining liposuction with multiple unrelated surgical procedures such as facelift, breast surgery, nose surgery, or laser surgery. The combination of an intra-abdominal gynecologic surgery and abdominal liposuction is also very dangerous. This risk of complications when a patient has multiple unrelated surgical procedures explains why non-cosmetic surgeries are rarely combined. Because of the fear of complications, surgeons do not expose patients to the risks of simultaneous but unrelated therapeutic surgeries such as gallbladder surgery, hip surgery, and colonoscopy. The risks associated with having multiple cosmetic procedures including liposuction on the same day may often out weigh the benefits of having only one convalescent period. Liposuction is probably the safest of all cosmetic surgery procedures provided that it is not combined with other unrelated surgical procedures.

Mega-liposuction
Mega-liposuction is defined as the liposuction of a huge volume of fat on a single day. The volume of fat that is generally regarded as huge is about 8 liters (two gallons). Because patients have died as a result of mega-liposuction, it cannot be regarded as safe. Even in a hospital setting, mega-liposuction should be regarded as a dangerous experimental procedure. Mega-liposuction is associated with mega-complications. Serial liposuction procedures on separate days are far safer than a single heroic mega-liposuction procedure.

Utilitarian Definition of "Too Much Liposuction"
If nausea, vomiting, excessive pain, bruising and swelling occur regularly after liposuction, then perhaps that surgeon regularly does too much liposuction. If a liposuction surgeon cannot expect all patients to be ambulatory within 30 to 60 minutes after surgery, then perhaps the amount of liposuction and anesthesia are excessive. Liposuction might be excessive if 1) pain regularly confines patients to bed for more than 24 hours, 2) nausea regularly prevents patients from eating a normal meal soon after surgery, or 3) discomfort regularly prevents the return to desk-type work within one to two days after surgery.

Source: http://www.liposuction.com/safety/excessive_lipo.php

Fish Oil Reduced Youth Psychosis

Sydney Morning Herald,
NICK MILLER
February 2, 2010

FISH oil supplements can dramatically reduce the chance of young people developing psychosis or schizophrenia, Australian researchers say.

Lead researcher Paul Amminger said colleagues had laughed when he proposed the study, but the results surprised even him.

The adolescent psychiatrist from the University of Melbourne's Orygen research centre says doctors should now consider fish oil as a genuine alternative to expensive and more risky anti-psychotics when a young patient is showing early signs of mental illness. And he believes the oil's omega-3 fatty acids might help prevent depression and drug abuse.

In the study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry journal, 41 high-risk patients were given four fish oil capsules a day for three months. Only two of them developed a psychotic disorder, compared with 11 of another 40 who took a placebo.

Orygen, home of the Australian of the Year Pat McGorry who was a co-author on this study, has played a world-leading role in promoting the power of early intervention on youth psychosis.

However this has sparked some controversy, associate professor Amminger said.

''People argued that [pharmaceutical] medication might have too many side-effects at the early stage of developing a disorder,'' he said.

High-powered anti-psychotic drugs can come with metabolic changes, sexual dysfunction and weight gain which are often not acceptable for young people, leading to high drop-out rates.

Very few people dropped out of the fish oil treatment regime, and a 12-month follow up showed the effect seemed to protect the brain even after the patient stopped taking the pills.

''I hope the whole scientific community takes on this idea and takes this area more seriously,'' associate professor Amminger said. ''Originally some of my colleagues were laughing at us for saying we might prevent schizophrenia with something like fish oil.''

The researchers are now planning two new studies based on the results.

___________
Shrinc Clinic stock practitioner grade Fish oils in both a capsule form, and a potent liquid format. BioCeuticals OmegaSure Liquid Fish Oil is a pleasant tasting, orange flavoured fish oil. It provides a good source of beneficial essential fatty acids - eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). EPA and DHA play a key role in a number of physiological processes in the body. OmegaSure Liquid Fish Oil is an excellent choice for individuals who don’t consume the recommended 2-3 dietary serves of fish per week or those who find capsules difficult to swallow. Call 1800 747462 to speak with our qualified health practitioners or visit www.shrinc.com.au

VelaShape Media Coverage - American Health and Beauty

americanhealthandbeauty.com, a popular consumer resourse for latest news on aesthetic procedures posted VelaShape as the #1 procedure for Cellulite in 2009.  Click Here to read the report.

VelaShape Media Coverage - Access Hollywood

“The Real Housewives of Orange County” star Gretchen Rossi discusses The Gretchen Project (http://www.gretchenproject.com) that “educates women on how to look and feel their best. "Even skinny women have cellulite!" she explains. Access Hollywood released a special extended online video of the interview with OC's favorite Housewife, Gretchen Rossi.  She discuss the benefits of non-surgical cosmetic treatments like VelaShape and is even shown baring her legs to have the treatment performed for all to see!  Click Here to view the clip.