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For a good New Year’s state of mind, look at the bright side

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 do (apart from having some money) is to make the decision that you will take charge of your body and that you will take advantage of what science and civilization have achieved.
It is true that some illnesses have not been vanquished: some types of cancers can be cured, but others can’t, or at least not yet. We are still at the mercy of the common cold and even some old contagious illnesses are making their way back (not science’s fault, but, rather, anti-science’s “vaccines are evil” fault).

Aging

We can fight (and win) against many illnesses, but what we cannot eliminate is aging. However, even for this unavoidable aspect of life, we have made some great advances. Worn out joints can be replaced, hearts can be repaired, eye cataracts can be removed, and the aging of skin and hair can be slowed down and even reversed.

What happens during aging? It is complicated, but here are a few examples.
At the molecular level: for proteins, oxidation, glycation, loss of structure and function; for DNA, accumulation of DNA mutations; for lipids, oxidation and breakdown.
At the cellular level, so many things change, and for the worse: mitochondria lose effectiveness and produce less energy, telomeres shorten, membrane permeability is affected, and cell capacity for division decreases.
At the tissue level: cells die and are not removed fast enough.
At the physiological level, organs age and lose capacity to heal. The heart starts failing electrically, scars accumulate here and there, lungs lose capacity. Mutations of crucial genes lead to cancer.

And how about skin aging?

From my book:
The most visible manifestations of skin aging are wrinkles and sun spots. These are changes we can see with the naked eye but they are caused by microscopic changes in the structure of skin as well as subtle changes in the biochemical composition of the skin.
Now it is time to look at the bright side: we can change destiny.

Don’t be a bystander: take charge of your body

“When we’re young, aging looks sort of yucky; frankly, even though it is extremely un-P.C. to say so, it looks sort of yucky when we get there, too. Hence, the magical thinking around skin creams.”
Dominique Brownin, NYT, 2016

“I feel bad about my neck”
Nora Ephron (book, pub. 2006)

Science has not eliminated aging, but it allows us to slow it down and even reverse it. But, however significant the scientific and medical achievements might be, they will not work on us without our active involvement. If we look at our bodies as if we were bystanders, leaving the MDs to make the heavy lifting, it is us who lose.
We know how much genes matter, but the environment also matters. We have decision power for most of the environment: we make our own environment when we eat, drink, sleep , exercise and decide how we are going to live our lives (note: this is true only for people who live in relatively rich countries, and have the economic power to make decisions over their bodies). We have decision power on how we are going to treat our skin and scalp and eye brows and eye lashes.

Let’s not feel guilty about the bad decisions we made in our past; instead, let’s try to fix those mistakes as best as we can. Did you pluck your eye brows when you were a teenager? Did you use heavy mascara in your 20s and lost your eyelashes? Use SAS eye brow and eye lash serum to get some of them back. And the most important thing: be sensible about your skin and hair, and don’t pile on your past mistakes, because if you go instead for tattooed eyebrows or threading eyelashes you are wasting a big opportunity.

Did you lose a lot of hair because of the way you mistreated your scalp, or maybe because of a medical issue? Let’s get some vitality back with hair serum with KGF and SAS hair serum.

Be wise: don’t treat your skin as if it were a wall. Your skin is alive; learn about its structure and function and act accordingly.
But, above all, let’s be nice to ourselves. I know, it is not easy especially for busy people. But recently, I have seen how fast you can lose your vitality when you look at your body as if it were somebody else’s. You can get old fast.

You can take your medicines or not; you can follow your doctor’s instructions or not. You can exercise or not. How about you stop reading because you can’t see well, because you need a new prescription for your eyeglasses? I am sure you don’t approve of this approach.

The same is true for your skin. You don’t “have” sensitive skin. Rather, your skin is, right now, sensitive and there is something that you can do about it, like stop using that alcohol based toner formulated 50 years ago. Your eyelashes look pitiful, nothing like that ad in the magazine. Don’t go for mascara; go for the eyelash serum with KGF. If you used to pluck your eye brows when it was fashionable to do so, go for the KGF serum and give them a second chance.

After 60 or 70, it is easy to give up. But it does not have to be like that. Look at your body as a work in progress, a result of the interaction between your genes (which are not your fault!) and the environment. The good thing about skin is that, however much we neglected or mistreated it, we can always reverse some of the damage, and we can always make it feel more comfortable. Now that it is winter and the heating and air dryness are playing havoc with our skin, use Skin Actives ELS serum to repair the skin barrier and replenish the essential fatty acids missing from your skin.

Obviously, we are not to blame for getting old, or for our skin getting wrinkled and thin or our scalp losing hair, but we have some say in how fast and how badly we age. Medicine has advanced so much, but it is up to us to use that knowledge to our advantage.

Skin Actives can help you to keep your skin as healthy and young as it possibly can. We can’t promise perfect skin, it does not exist, but it will feel good, protect your body efficiently and give you a lot less trouble than if you use products made by other companies.

Again from my book:
If we could change these structural manifestations and return the skin to a physiology that resembles that of younger skin, we could argue that we would be turning back the clock. This is not just theory, as many clients of Skin Actives Scientific can attest to; it is a fact that many of these changes can indeed be reversed in such a way that the visual manifestations of aging are reversed to some extent. You can rejuvenate the skin by protecting it from further damage and by providing tools to reverse damage inflicted by age and the environment on cellular DNA. It is crucial that you protect your skin’s stem cells, which will allow this most important human organ to heal and regenerate.

It is worth trying.