[ExI] "How not to look old" Yahoo news

[PJ Manney]

The old fashionista saw:  "Choose between your face or your ass"
proves to be true.

PJ

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 1:42 PM, John Grigg <possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090210/hl_time/08599187771700
>
> It's a question surely as old as vanity itself: How can you look young
> forever? A forthcoming study in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive
> Surgery offers one surprising idea: as you age, don't be afraid to put on a
> few pounds. Fat, it turns out, can significantly smooth out wrinkles and
> give you a younger-looking face. (Read "Beth Teitell: On Not Looking Old.")
>
> The authors of the new study, a team led by Dr. Bahman Guyuron of Case
> Western Reserve University in Cleveland, are plastic surgeons who study
> faces for a living. They analyzed photographs of the faces of 186 pairs of
> identical twins taken at the Twins Days Festival, a sort of twin-pride event
> held every summer in (naturally) Twinsburg, Ohio. Because the pairs had
> identical genetic material, differences in how old they looked could be
> attributed entirely to their behavioral choices and environment. Guyuron's
> team had the twins fill out extensive questionnaires about their lives -
> everything from how many times they had married to whether they regularly
> used sunscreen. Then a panel of four judges independently estimated the
> twins' ages by looking at photos taken in Twinsburg. (See pictures from the
> Annual Twins Days Festival.)
>
> The Guyuron team's most interesting findings had to do with weight. Many of
> the twin pairs were of similar weight, but differences in how old they
> looked began to appear when one had a body mass index (BMI) at least four
> points higher than the twin sibling. For twin pairs under 40, the heavier
> one looked significantly older. But surprisingly, after 40, that same
> four-point difference in BMI made the heavier twin look significantly
> younger. (Read "Aging Gracefully.")
>
> The study's authors theorize that "volume replacement" - that is, fat
> filling in wrinkles - accounts for the rejuvenated appearance of the over-40
> twins. This theory was supported even more dramatically among twins older
> than 55. For them, having as much as an eight-point-higher BMI than their
> twin was associated with a younger appearance in the face. (Read "A Brief
> History of Multiple Births.")
>
> Guyuron doesn't recommend that people gain weight just to look younger, and
> one limitation of his study is that the Twinsburg photos included only
> faces. If they had shown the whole body, the judges may have knocked a
> couple of years off the age estimates of those who had kept a youthful
> figure - and added a couple of years for those who were well fed in the
> middle.
>
> The paper also makes clear that, weight aside, healthy living is crucial for
> keeping a youthful face. The siblings who smoked and didn't wear sunscreen
> looked significantly older than those who avoided cigarettes and tanning.
> Those twins who had been divorced also looked older (by about 1.7 years)
> than the twins who had not. (They also looked older than those who had
> stayed single, which reinforces a point I made in this article: you are
> better off staying single than getting into a bad relationship.)
>
> Finally - and this was the cruelest finding - those who had taken
> antidepressants also looked older than their twins who hadn't. In other
> words, if the misery of your divorce doesn't age you, your attempt to treat
> it with Prozac might. Guyuron and his colleagues believe this unjust fact
> has something to do with the drooping relaxation of facial muscles that
> antidepressants can cause.
>
> The bottom line is that if you care mostly about a young-looking face, don't
> smoke, don't spend time in the sun without protection, and try not to get
> into a bad relationship that will make you depressed. Instead, this summer
> at the beach, stay inside and have an ice cream. Make it a double scoop.
>
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