The things people do for beauty
I'm glad I've never been into following fads. It's not worth risking your health to try to meet some impossible standard of how you "should" look.
I'm glad I've never been into following fads. It's not worth risking your health to try to meet some impossible standard of how you "should" look.
How far would you go for the perfect lash? New eyelash transplant surgery uses hair from back of scalp LOS ANGELES - Think you’ve seen it all when it comes to cosmetic surgery? Look more closely. Eyelash transplant surgery wants to become the new must-have procedure for women — and the occasional man — convinced that beauty is not so much in the eye of the beholder as in front of the eye itself. Using procedures pioneered by the hair loss industry for balding men, surgeons are using “plug and sew” techniques to give women long, sweeping lashes once achieved only by glued on extensions and thick lashings of mascara. And just like human hair — for that is the origin — these lashes just keep on growing. “Longer, thicker lashes are an ubiquitous sign of beauty. Eyelash transplantation does for the eyes what breast augmentation does for the figure,” said Dr Alan Bauman, a leading proponent of eyelash transplants. “This is a brand new procedure for the general public (and) it is going to explode,” Bauman told Reuters during what was billed as the world’s first live eyelash surgery workshop for about 40 surgeons from around the world. Under the procedure, a small incision is made at the back of the scalp to remove 30 or 40 hair follicles which are carefully sewn one by one onto the patient’s eyelids. Only light sedation and local anesthetics are used and the cost is around $3,000 an eye. The technique was first confined to patients who had suffered burns or congenital malformations of the eye. But word spread and about 80 percent are now done for cosmetic reasons. For many women, eyelash surgery is simply an extra item on the vast nip/tuck menu that has lost its old taboos. Grows and grows More than 10 million cosmetic procedures — from tummy tucks to botox — were performed in the United States in 2005, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. The figure represents a 38 percent increase over the year 2000. Erica Lynn, 27, a Florida model with long auburn hair, breast implants and a nose job, had eyelash transplants three years ago because she was fed up with wearing extensions on her sandy-colored lashes. “When I found out about it, I just had to have it done. Everyone I mention it to wants it. I think eyelashes are awesome. You can never have enough of them,” Lynn said. Bauman, who practices in Florida, does about three or four a month. Dr. Sara Wasserbauer, a Northern California hair restoration surgeon, says she has been inundated by requests. “I have been getting a ton of eyelash inquiries ... If I had $10 dollars for every consultation, I’d be a rich woman.” The surgery is not for everyone. The transplanted eyelashes grow just like head hair and need to be trimmed regularly and sometimes curled. Very curly head hair makes for eyelashes with too much kink.
Blindingly white: Teeth bleaching gone too far Celeb-inspired obsession with bright smiles can lead to dental damage By Diane Mapes MSNBC contributor Oh, those gleaming white teeth. Whiter than a picket fence. A Tic Tac. A porcelain toilet. They blind us from billboards, bedazzle us from screens and make us squint at magazines. How can we ever compete? With bleach, of course, courtesy of our dentist, "whitening spas” and a battalion of over-the-counter concoctions: white strips, age-defying chewing gum, paint-on gels, leave-in trays, even brightening toothpaste and mouth wash. “I’m obsessed,” says Jamie Burkhart, a 23-year-old college student from Cleveland, and self-proclaimed “bleachorexic” who has been brightening her smile for about a year with Crest Whitestrips. “I have ridiculously white teeth, but I still don’t think they’re white enough.” Teeth whitening is the No. 1 requested cosmetic service today and its popularity continues to soar, according to the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. Outside the dentist’s office, it’s every bit as popular. Americans spent more than $1.4 billion on over-the-counter teeth-whitening products last year alone. But as successful and satisfying as bleaching has proved for the millions of Americans looking to instantly boost their confidence, hide their age and/or keep up with the Catherine Zeta-Joneses, some have found it to be a real pain. Even worse, those who take it too far may end up doing real damage. “There are people who can never get enough,” says New York City dentist Dr. Irwin Smigel, president of the American Society for Dental Aesthetics. “I’ve had situations where people have needed root canals because they’ve overbleached, where tissues were damaged. You can wear away some of the enamel and your teeth will become translucent and unnatural. They’ll become blue or blue gray.” Burn, baby, burn And then there's the burn. A study in the Journal of the American Dental Association found half of people who bleached their teeth experienced temporary sensitivity from whitening treatments, everything from mild tingling to burning gums to knee-buckling “zingers” and/or extreme sensitivity to sound or even air. Meredith Kummell, 32, of San Francisco says she was “popping Advil like candy” after her BriteSmile session, an in-office whitening procedure that uses a special lamp coupled with a light-activated bleaching gel. “It wasn’t the most pleasant experience, but I don’t regret it,” she says. “I’m pretty vain and this is something about yourself that you can fix for a reasonable amount of money.” Unfortunately, sometimes we take that “fix” too far. Burkhart, the college student, just piles on more Crest Whitestrips whenever she feels the need for a retouch. Her first “touch up”? Three months after her initial 14-day treatment. (According to the package, one bleaching session should last for a year). But she’s not worried about gambling with her dental health. “My roommates and I joke that our teeth are going to fall out when we’re 32 and we’re going to have veneers,” she says “But it doesn’t really faze me.” Your teeth won’t fall out, assures Martin Zase, president of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry and a dentist in Colchester, Conn. “All of the products used in the dentist office are safe and most of theproducts are safe as well, but there are a few that are acidic and acidic products increase the likelihood of decay if you overuse.” Bleachers should aim for a color that matches the whites of their eyes, he suggests. And they should also make sure they consult with a dentist, even before using over-the-counter products, because those who go it alone often end up going too far. “Your teeth look better so you do it some more and you don’t know when to stop,” Zase says. Carol Ann O’Keefe, 51, of Seattle, can speak to that. Like many baby boomers, she decided to tap her dentist for at-home bleaching trays in order to remove years of accumulated smoke, coffee and wine stains from her teeth. But the temptation proved too much. “You were supposed to do it three times a day for an hour or two each time, but that was kind of a pain in the butt so I thought, I’ll just do it overnight,” she says. The result? “After six months, my teeth started to get like a pearl look,” she says. “They looked thin, like if you put a light behind them, you could see through them. I thought if a little bleach is good, a lot must be really good, but it’s not that way. Your teeth will never be porcelain white, like your toilet.” That Hollywood smile But why would we even want our teeth to look like our plumbing fixtures? “I hold ‘Laguna Beach’ responsible,” says Kummell, the Advil-popping teeth bleacher. 'Laguna Beach’ or ‘Survivor.’ They all have perfect teeth and when you see that constantly, you start to think, mine aren’t perfect.” Tips for safe teeth bleaching — Always get a dental check-up before using any kind of bleaching product (even at-home kits). Your dentist can recommend a bleaching system best for your teeth, advise you regarding teeth or gum sensitivity, and alert you to potential problems, such as cavities (bleaching with a cavity may lead to root canal). — Always follow bleaching directions. Do not overbleach. — Aim for a natural look, not “refrigerator white.” — Remember fillings, caps, crowns, veneers, etc., will not be affected by bleach. — If you’re planning on whitening your teeth in conjunction with other cosmetic work (veneers, crowns, etc.), bleach first, then wait a month before having the work done. Courtesy of Dr. Thomas Marxen of Cosmetic Dentistry in Woodinville, Wash., and Dr. Irwin Smigel, president of the American Society for Dental Aesthetics O’Keefe, who bleached to the point of translucence, points to gleaming white TV teeth, as well. “I see people like Jessica Simpson with these bright white teeth and I can’t figure it out,” she says. “My teeth will never be Oprah white.” The problem is that few people’s will. “What’s being sold to us is the image of the perfect Hollywood smile,” says Victoria Pitts, associate professor of sociology at Queens College, CUNY, and author of the forthcoming “Surgery Junkies: The Cultural Boundaries of Cosmetic Surgery.” “But Hollywood smiles are full of veneers. They don’t simply bleach their teeth; they don’t have the original surface of their teeth. The standards are getting more and more impossible to achieve. Are we chasing a chimera? Absolutely.” A quick glimpse at history shows white teeth have been on the agenda long before the advent of seductive Hollywood smiles and billion-dollar bleaching campaigns. “People have been doing this for thousands of years,” says Dr. Scott Swank, dentist and curator for the National Museum of Dentistry in Baltimore, Md. “The Greeks had formulations and at the beginning of the Renaissance, Europeans were certainly putting compounds on their teeth in a conscious effort to whiten them." Unfortunately, those compounds were essentially the equivalent of today’s Clorox. “It ate the enamel away,” he says. “They had whiter teeth for a while, but then they started to see severe decay.” Thankfully, teeth-whitening technology has evolved. With any luck, our tendency to take a good thing too far will do the same — hopefully, before we end up actually needing to pop for those perfect Hollywood veneers.
Teen's tongue piercing causes ‘suicide disease’ Severely painful nerve disorder the latest on list of complications CHICAGO - The teenager said the stabbing pains in her face felt like electrical shocks that lasted 10 to 30 seconds and struck 20 to 30 times a day. Her doctors diagnosed trigeminal neuralgia, a nerve disorder sometimes called “suicide disease” because of the excruciating and dispiriting pain it causes. Doctors tried painkillers, then stronger medication, but in the end, a cure proved more simple: The young woman removed the metal stud from her pierced tongue. Two days later her pain vanished. The account in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association is the latest documentation of complications, some life-threatening, linked to tongue piercing. Other problems include tetanus, heart infections, brain abscess, chipped teeth and receding gums. One woman developed so much scar tissue that it resembled what she called a “second tongue.” In the newly reported case, the young Italian woman’s mouth jewelry apparently irritated a nerve running along the jaw under her tongue. That nerve is connected to the trigeminal nerve, one of the largest in the head. “There are people who have been dropped to their knees” by trigeminal neuralgia, said Alana Greca, a registered nurse and director of patient support for the Trigeminal Neuralgia Association. “That’s how intense and how horrendous the pain can be.” The teenager is lucky her pain disappeared, Greca said. “Certainly, this was an isolated case, an extremely rare complication of this kind of piercing,” said Dr. Marcelo Galarza, a neurosurgeon at Villa Maria Cecilia Hospital in Ravenna, Italy, who reported the case to the journal. The tongue is “a particularly dangerous place to pierce” because it is rich in blood vessels that can spread infection to major organs and because it is near important nerves and the upper airway, he said. Jeanne Fritch, owner of Personal Art, a piercing and tattooing studio in Lake Station, Ind., said she has not heard of a similar case in her 21 years in business. Fritch recommended people interested in tongue piercing see only professional, experienced piercers and use only “implant grade” metal jewelry. Good mouth hygiene while the tongue heals also is important, Fritch said. Stefania Fraccalvieri, the patient in the report, is now 21 and a student in Rome. Her advice to people considering tongue piercing: “Don’t do that. My experience was so bad. I was so sick and now I feel much better.”