Archive for January 2019
January 19th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Just as declustered water and deconstructed water, micellar water is a figment of the imagination of marketing departments in the skin care industry. Why do they do this? Because a fancy name adds to the price you can charge for a product? What the industry sells as “micellar waters” is a bottle containing water and oils. Water and oil are not miscible. You can see the two phases, the lighter, on top, is made of oily substances, the bottom phase is the water. When you shake the bottle, you can see little “bubbles” of oil swimming in the water. As soon as you stop shaking, the two phases re-form. Why…
January 17th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Plato said, regarding the invention of the written word by the god Theuth: And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of…
January 9th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Don’t confuse correlation with causation. Aging affects practically everything in the cell and the skin, but not every change is a cause. Progeria is a nasty genetic disease that makes the victims age rapidly and die early. It is awful. But nothing is too awful to be misused by advertising. It was found that the mutated gene results in the synthesis of a mutated, faulty protein called progerin. The corect protein, Lamin A, fulfills an important role; when it is replaced by a faulty version, the consequences are dire. Obviously, scientists are looking for a way to restore function, at least partly, to ameliorate the suffering of the people who…
January 9th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
Medicine and health: we are better off One of the most powerful people in the history of the world, Alexander King of Macedonia, Hegemon of the Hellenic League, Pharaoh of Egypt, King of Persia, and Lord of Asia, a.k.a. Alexander the Great, died in June 323 BC at age 32 of an infection that today could have probably been cured by a week of antibiotics. Why am I telling you this? Because most of us, inhabitants of this prosperous part of the world, in the XXI century, could live to 90, or at least to 80, in a healthy body with great skin and wonderful hair. All you have to…
January 7th, 2019 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
We don’t think about the value of our eyebrows until something goes wrong with them. This may happen as early as the teens, when we discover tweezers and decide that they can improve upon Nature (they can’t). By the time we are in our 20s, we may realize our mistakes and start using whatever is around to try and get back the lovely eyebrows we used to have. Not long ago, the only options to choose from were brow pencil, permanent tattoos, glued-on fake eyebrows, etc. Not only do they look fake (because they are), but they also weaken the remaining eyebrows. What about eyelashes? If you wear thick mascara it…