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Longer, Thicker Eyelashes, anyone..?

A New Drug, Latisse, Makes Eyelashes Grow Longer, Thicker

June 5th, 2009

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It is a medical breakthrough. No, not a cure for cancer, but for the short lashed. The FDA has approved a prescription medication that makes your eyelashes grow.

We have known for years that prostaglandin medications used to treat glaucoma have an interesting side effect –they make patients’ eyelashes grow. Now a prescription drug is available that is specifically for treatment of hypotrichosis of the eyelashes, (which means sparse lashes).

Eyelashes are hair, just like the hairs on your head and legs. Not all hairs are created equal though; eyelashes are designed to grow a certain (short) length, then stop. The number and thickness of your lashes is determined by your genetics.

Latisse (bimatoprost opthamlic solution 0.03%) is a prescription drug made by Allergan, the makers of Botox. It’s a prostaglandin, an active biologic compound named after the prostate gland, the first place they were found. Latisse has been shown to increase the number, thickness, and darkness of lashes.

Latisse can be applied to the upper eyelashes only and should not be applied directly into the eye. It takes about eight weeks to notice results, and it can take 16 weeks to see the full effects of the drug. Unfortunately, you have to continue using Latisse to maintain the results; if you stop using it, then your eyelashes will go back to the way they were before you started treating them.

Side effects of using Latisse include disoloration of your eyelid. Fortunately this appears to be reversible; the color fades when affected people stop using it. Latisse can also cause darkening of the iris in your eye. Your eye color is genetically determined, but medications can change the color. Latisse might cause increased brown pigmentation of your iris. This side effect, unlike the darkening of your eyelid however, is permanent.

Latisse costs about $120 dollars a month and, of course, is not covered by health insurance. It is apparently already popular among the celebrity crowd: reports say Jenny McCarthy has been using it.  The question is how long will it be before someone starts applying it to their eyebrows? I could be the poster boy.

Photo: Nicholas Kenrick (flickr)

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Source : The Dermatology Blog

ANTIGRAVITY

On a more interesting note, yoga elewhere around the world has evolved into a fun, physical form of activity. The new craze that hit the United States and soon to take off in United Kingdom is 'Antigravity Yoga'. This interesting form of yoga uses a hammock made of structural fabric suspended from the ceiling from two overhead points and acts like a swing or soft trapeze, where one can perform acrobatic moves like yoga, pilates and dances. Anti-gravity yoga is believed to increase one's overall health and physical agility while having fun performing challenging yoga postures longer and in correct alignment. 

Visit Antigravity Yoga for more information 

Queen of Darkness

At 90, the psychoanalyst Hanna Segal has spent decades probing the murkiest corners of the human psyche. She talks to Jon Henley about her search for truth, the healing power of art and what her years in practice have taught her about life.

 Jon Henley The Guardian, Monday September 8 2008.

Hanna Segal opens the door at the second ring. She turned 90 two days previously and is small, creased and walnut-brown, with a crop of startling white hair and a pair of eyes that look suitably gimlet-like but are, she observes dispassionately, not much use to anyone these days.

"Like the rest of me, really," she adds.

"I haven't been analysed myself for a couple of years now, but I would love some help in coping with a body that's started to behave as if it were a psychotic infant. It's like some narcissistic baby. Nothing is good enough for it. Nothing is ever quite right."

Segal is one of the most eminent psychoanalysts ever to have practised in Britain. Splendidly, despite living in this country for nearly 70 years, she speaks English with a great, gutteral mittel-European accent. Even better, while she has been forced to abandon her beloved pipe, every few minutes she takes a small wad of tobacco from a tin at her elbow, pops it surreptitiously into her mouth, and chews. Who does that, these days? It is impossible not to warm to her.

Hers is rather a strange profession, though. All that poking around in the dark, walled-off corners of people's minds, hunting down explanations for bizarre adult behaviour in obscure childhood events that invariably involve breasts or toilets. A lot of people have no time for it.

Segal, obviously, does. "The more I think about it," she says, "the importance lies in seeking truth. Not 'The Truth' with a capital T, an omniscience, but truth that is the same as reality. All we are really looking for, in a patient on the couch, is a distinction between lies and truth."

She no longer has a couch in her study, although the room, on the ground floor of large house in north London, is suitably sombre and book-lined. She stopped seeing individual patients a couple of years ago, although she still supervises major cases, from all over the world, by telephone.

But the kind of people who came to see her were, she says, generally those who "seek to avoid truth, and so end up in delusion. What you are aiming to achieve is a change in the direction of the mind, a bend towards truth. And while all science aims at truth, psychoanalysis is unique in recognising that the search for truth is, in itself, therapeutic."

The latter phrase is one penned by Segal and colleagues for the obituary of Melanie Klein, of whose work Segal is pretty much universally recognised as the most prominent postwar interpreter. Kleinian psychoanalysis is one of the two main schools within the British Psychoanalytical Society, the other being Freudian (after Anna, Sigmund's daughter).

The nuances between the two are not immediately apparent to the layperson, but if you ask Segal why, many years ago, she opted for the former rather than the latter, she answers that Freud's masterwork, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, read "like a textbook. It didn't speak to my imagination at all." Klein's Psychoanalysis of Children, on the other hand, "was a revelation. It opened up a whole new world."

Segal read both books on the advice of the distinguished Edinburgh psychoanalyst Ronald Fairbairn, just after the outbreak of the second world war, in Edinburgh. She had fled there from Paris, where her parents were then living and where she had grudgingly decided to complete the third year of her medical studies. The Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 had made it impossible to finish her degree at the University of Warsaw.

"I wanted to get back, desperately, with some of my friends, to help fight the invader. But I couldn't; there were just no more trains. So more by luck than reason, really, I survived. If ever I had managed to get back I certainly wouldn't be here today."

Segal was born into a well-to-do Jewish family in August 1918 in Lodz: "Poland's equivalent of Manchester. A horrible, industrial place. Ugh." Her father was a successful lawyer, although when she was 12 or 13 the family moved with him to Geneva, where he had taken a job editing one of the publications of the League of Nations. The international school she found herself in was an eye-opener. "It did me a power of good. I'd been brought up deeply patriotic, but there I learned that Poland was not the centre of the universe. Thanks to that school, I have no particular religious tradition that alters or moulds my view of the world. All that was knocked out of me. It was immensely formative, terribly important."

It was in Geneva that Segal first read the works of Sigmund Freud. "I read Proust first, before Freud," she says. "And I think I simply realised that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, more fascinating than human nature. And human relations."

So when the time came to choose a career, psychoanalysis was almost a natural choice. It satisfied her interest in human nature, assuaged a powerful social conscience ("I have to feel I am doing something useful. Something that might help people"), and allowed her to explore the third great passion in her life: art. Segal's major contribution to the world of psychoanalysis is most probably in aesthetics and what is known as symbolisation. Two of her best-known books are entitled Dream, Phantasy and Art, and Delusion and Artistic Creativity.

"We cope with our anxieties and desires," she explains, "in symbolical ways. We all need a capacity for symbol formation, or symbolisation: hopefully, we will try to find someone like our mother to marry, rather than try actually to marry our mother. Artists exist on the borderline of severe psychotic anxieties: if they succeed in symbolising them, then they can produce great art - but if not, they can be in trouble."

Segal indicates a painting on the wall of a rather chaotic vase of flowers, all violent purples, magentas and reds. "Look closer," she says. "Can you see the face of a dog?" It's there, sort of; a gloomy bloodhound, all drooping jowls and sad, tortured eyes. "The work of a patient," she says. "Saved him from madness."

I must look dubious, because she comes back at me with Van Gogh, whose story you really can't argue with. She cites another case that, in many ways, first opened her to the possibilities of psychoanalysis: many years ago, on an evacuation train before the war, a girl had a schizophrenic fit, screaming what sounded like hysterical nonsense.

"She kept shouting, 'I shat my lover in the loo! I shat my lover in the loo!'" Segal says. "Later, after I read Klein, I realised that girl's words actually had a very obvious meaning; you could understand them. She was the one being evacuated, but in her mind she had reversed that situation: she was the one doing the evacuating. This, I understood, was the language of subconscious fantasy."

I'm still dubious. How can psychoanalysts ever really know they're right? "We can't," she says. "There's no quick cure or absolute certainty. And the truth rarely stays the truth; yesterday's truth is not today's. But there is a sense of accumulating evidence. You mustn't concentrate, or try to remember - but in the mass of patient communication, you have to select the right fact, with an open mind. And you have to be sure that fact is not just your idea, your own, overrated idea. It's not easy."

Segal has been president of the British Psychoanalytical Society, Freud Professor of Psychoanalysis at the University of London, and vice-president of the International Psychoanalytical Association. For a long time she steered clear of sociopolitical issues, until in 1983 she co-founded a pressure group called Psychoanalysts for the Prevention of Nuclear War. She is now outspoken about a range of issues, including 9/11 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. "We're always told not to treat society as if it were a patient on the couch," she says, "but group psychology can be understood because it is a group of humans."

The function of a group, she contends, is certainly to work together, but also to act as a kind of repository for our projections of all those bad things we cannot tolerate in ourselves. "Groups contain our psychotic anxieties and delusions," she says (and has argued, in a quite remarkable paper entitled September 11).

"Generally, we delegate what you might call the 'mad' functions - fighting, religion - to subgroups: the army, the church. But those subgroups must be under the control of the working part of the group. My point is that when mad things start happening, it's when subgroups get out of control, and particularly when they combine: God, money and the military is a particularly deadly recipe." The Iraq conflict, she argues, was about "the need for an enemy", and "a religious fanaticism linked to, and covering up, mass robbery".

Today, Segal believes, our collective sanity is threatened by "a delusional inner world of omnipotence, and absolute evil, and sainthood. Unfortunately, we also have to contend with mammon." And since we tend to submit to the tyranny of our own groups, "speaking our minds takes courage, because groups do not like outspoken dissenters." The battle now "is between insanity based on mutual projections, and sanity based on truth". And all we, as citizens, can do is "struggle to expose lies, and strive for the preservation of sane human values".

She is not convinced she will ever see that battle resolved ("This is my last interview," she says gaily. "You'd better do a good job.") But the important thing, she insists, adopting the vivid symbol she first found in Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic fable The Road, is to "keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden. I find this extraordinarily helpful: we live in a mad world, but for those of us who believe in some human values, it is terribly important that we just keep this little fire burning. It is about trusting your judgement, and the power of love. A little trust, and a little care".

· Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, a collection of writings by Hanna Segal, is published by Routledge (£21.99).

Source :Guardian

Vogue Diaries: The Age Issue 2008

Vogue Diaries went behind the scenes with August cover girl Kate Moss, tennis star Chris Evert, and actress Ziyi Zhang to talk about the making of the magazine's annual Age Issue. Vogue

Cosmobeaute 2008

South East Asia’s largest specialized trade show for cosmetics, beauty products, spa and wellness therapies and equipment will return to Kuala Lumpur again from 14 to 17 July 2008. The international characteristics and success of CosmoBeauté Asia was professionally developed over the years through market research and effective marketing efforts with the support of both public and private sectors from domestic and abroad.
The exhibition is open to Beauty Salon Owners, Professionals, Spa Owners, Professionals, Beauticians, Beauty Salon, Spa Investors, Dermatologist, Surgeons, Aesthetician and related trade professionals by invitation. Registration forms are available at the registration counters throughout opening hours. Visit Cosmobeaute Asia 2008 for more info and updates

14 – 17 July 2008
Tun Razak Hall 3 & 4
Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC)
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Visiting Hours : 10:00am – 6.00pm

What Colour is your Aura?

Bangsar Village II celebrated mind, body and spirit at their Village Fest on the 21st and 22nd June 2008. The objective of the fest was to provide information to the community on a wide variety of subjects concerning wellness, which was done via a series of talks, activities, food, exhibitions, displays and consultations.

I was particularly attracted to a booth that does aura photography, which is an Interactive Multimedia Biofeedback System based on the principles of Bio-feedback and Color Psychology. Heaven's Gift specializes in crystal light energetics and is run by a team of dedicated and well-trained facilitators, researchers, administrators and therapists who guide and teach interested individuals and groups on how to improve their health, life, consciousness and increase their awareness regarding the energetic conditions of their environment through the study of Crystal Light Energetics known as CLT.

Auras are a type of electromagnetic energy emitted by all living things (including plants). This energy surrounds our bodies. Some people are afraid to have their aura photographed in case it is a bad one. There is no such thing as a bad aura, only one which is out of balance. The whole point of having your aura photographed is so that you can be told where it is out of balance and be given advice as to how to restore it to full harmony.

The Aura Video Station is using Bio-feedback Sensors to measure, analyze and process the bio-feedback data of the energetic and activity levels of a person. This bio data is then correlated with specific emotional-energetic states and displayed accordingly on the screen.

This system will show your aura head shot and full body aura chakras on screen. It also displays your chakra activity graph, your energy level, and also gives you an overview of how your energies are distributed between Body, Mind and Spirit. It also shows your emotional reactions and true thoughts and inner feelings. Based on your body temperature, it also displays your overall mind/body condition and your physical relaxation or stress level.

The Meaning of Colors - Source: new age spirituality

Colors are one of the most beautiful and also one of the most under-appreciated aspects of the physical realm. We are surrounded by colors, but how often do we notice the numerous subtleties in the myriad shades.

Spiritually, color can impart both information - as in aura colors, and energy - as in healing. The aura is the spiritual energy field surrounding living beings which is "visible" to the psychically sensitive.

This short article presents the meanings generally associated with the most common colors. Use these meanings as a starting point in your own explorations. We are each unique individuals and colors may hold different meanings for us than for others, just as a piece of music inspires different feelings in different people.

Use colors to promote those qualities you wish to emphasize. Use them in your surroundings for qualities you wish to emphasize permanently. Wear clothes of appropriate colors to promote those qualities in a particular situation. You can also use colors simply by visualizing them, whether to promote their qualities or to exploit their healing energy for yourself or others.

Red

Red symbolizes energy, passion, strength, courage, physical activity, creativity, warmth, and security. It is also associated with aggression. In healing, use red to bring warmth and burn out disease. Red is a powerful color and should be used in moderation. In the aura red signifies materialism, materialistic ambition, a focus on sensual pleasures and a quick temper.

Orange

Orange symbolizes the individual's relationship to the external world, the needs and wants of the physical body and the ways in which these are satisfied, the world of work. In healing orange may increase immunity and sexual energy. In the aura orange signifies thoughtfulness and creativity.

Yellow

Yellow symbolizes intellect, creativity, happiness and the power of persuasion. It is also associated with cowardice. In healing use yellow to promote clarity of thought. In the aura yellow signifies intellectual development, for either material or spiritual ends.

Green

Green symbolizes money, luck, prosperity, vitality and fertility. It is also associated with envy. Green is the color of healing; it is beneficial in all healing situations. In the aura green signifies balance, peace and often indicates ability as a healer.

Blue

Blue is the color of spirituality, intuition, inspiration and inner peace. It is also associated with sadness and depression (the "blues"). In healing blue is used for cooling and calming, both physically and mentally. In the aura blue indicates serenity, contentment and spiritual development.

Indigo

Indigo is associated with psychic ability. In healing, use indigo for relaxation, reassurance and promoting psychism. In the aura indigo signifies a seeker, often of spiritual truth.

Purple

Purple is associated with power, both earthly and spiritual. In healing, purple is used for mental disorders and also for becoming one with Spirit. In the aura purple signifies higher spiritual development.

White

White is associated with truth, purity, cleansing, healing and protection. It is a good general healing color for the removal of pain and suffering. In the aura it signifies a high level of attainment, a higher level soul incarnate to help others.

Gold

Gold represents understanding and luck. Remember though that nothing comes from nothing, It is the most powerful healing color, but so powerful that many are not able to stand it initially and must be conditioned to it via other colors. In the aura it represents service to others.

Pink

Pink represents unconditional love, love requiring nothing in return. It is also the color of friendship and conviviality. In the aura it signifies balance between the spiritual and the material.

Brown

Brown is the color of the earth and represents practicality, material success, concentration and study. In the aura it indicates "down to earth-ness" and common sense.

Black

Black is the absence of color. It represents the unconscious and mystery. Its visualization can help promote deep meditation. Black also stands for evil (eg black magic). In the aura it signifies some kind of blockage or something being hidden.

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?

Friday, Jun. 06, 2008 By LAURA BLUE

Sleep is one of the richest topics in science today: why we need it, why it can be hard to get, and how that affects everything from our athletic performance to our income. Daniel Kripke, co-director of research at the Scripps Clinic Sleep Center in La Jolla, Calif., has looked at the most important question of all. In 2002, he compared death rates among more than 1 million American adults who, as part of a study on cancer prevention, reported their average nightly amount of sleep. To many, his results were surprising, but they've since been corroborated by similar studies in Europe and East Asia. Kripke explains.

Q: How much sleep is ideal?

A: Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hr. and 7.5 hr. a night, as they report, live the longest. And people who sleep 8 hr. or more, or less than 6.5 hr., they don't live quite as long. There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too short. The big surprise is that long sleep seems to start at 8 hr. Sleeping 8.5 hr. might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hr..

Morbidity [or sickness] is also "U-shaped" in the sense that both very short sleep and very long sleep are associated with many illnesses—with depression, with obesity—and therefore with heart disease—and so forth. But the [ideal amount of sleep] for different health measures isn't all in the same place. Most of the low points are at 7 or 8 hr., but there are some at 6 hr. and even at 9 hr. I think diabetes is lowest in 7-hr. sleepers [for example]. But these measures aren't as clear as the mortality data.

I think we can speculate [about why people who sleep from 6.5 to 7.5 hr. live longer], but we have to admit that we don't really understand the reasons. We don't really know yet what is cause and what is effect. So we don't know if a short sleeper can live longer by extending their sleep, and we don't know if a long sleeper can live longer by setting the alarm clock a bit earlier. We're hoping to organize tests of those questions.

One of the reasons I like to publicize these facts is that I think we can prevent a lot of insomnia and distress just by telling people that short sleep is O.K. We've all been told you ought to sleep 8 hr., but there was never any evidence. A very common problem we see at sleep clinics is people who spend too long in bed. They think they should sleep 8 or 9 hr., so they spend [that amount of time] in bed, with the result that they have trouble falling asleep and wake up a lot during the night. Oddly enough, a lot of the problem [of insomnia] is lying in bed awake, worrying about it. There have been many controlled studies in the U.S., Great Britain and other parts of Europe that show that an insomnia treatment that involves getting out of bed when you're not sleepy and restricting your time in bed actually helps people to sleep more. They get over their fear of the bed. They get over the worry, and become confident that when they go to bed, they will sleep. So spending less time in bed actually makes sleep better. It is in fact a more powerful and effective long-term treatment for insomnia than sleeping pills.

time.com article

I find this article from Time.com somewhat enlightening. Maybe it's because I'm considered as one of those people who dont sleep much. In fact, some of my friends think i dont sleep at all. This of course, is untrue. I just dont think I need a lot of sleep, and when I do, I would wake up feeling dizzy and lethargic. I suppose everyone's different though. I have friends who can't function at all if they dont get a good 6-8 hours.

There are alternative remedies other than sleeping pills to aid sleeping problems and one of them is taking adequate calcium and magnesium, as they produce calming effects on the brain. Calcium deficiency may cause restlessness and wakefulness to the body. It is important to note that calcium cannot be absorbed properly without adequate vitamin D already circulating in your system. Since vitamin D isn’t readily found in enough dietary sources, you should consider supplementing with additional vitamin D. The lack of calcium and magnesium can also cause leg cramps during the night.

Foods that promote sleep include leafy green vegetables rich in chlorophyll, whole grain breads and cereals and mushrooms. Fruits, especially berries, help with sleep problems. Even spices, including dill, sage, and basil. We have all heard that a glass of warm milk at bedtime is essential for better sleep. However, with so many issues regarding cow's milk containing too much hormones, antibiotics and other crap, adequate supplements and food that aids sleep is probably a better bet. The ingredient in milk tryptophan, which is converted into serotonin is the hormone that controls sleep. Alternatively, food such as honey, turkey, sardines and tuna are good, healthy bedtime snacks. Magnesium also helps induce sleep and is often a component of calcium supplements. Other sources of magnesium includes wheat bran, almonds, cashews, kelp and brewer's yeast.

The B vitamins, and in particular vitamins B6 and B12, are beneficial and often used in the treatment of insomnia. Look for a good Vitamin B complex and increase your consumption wheat germ, bananas, sunflower seeds and tuna.

*Always check with your doctor before taking any of the supplements, even the extra vitamins.

Sense Skin Care Line Wins 2 Best of State Awards

USANA Honored With Best of State Statue and Two Medals

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SALT LAKE CITY—June 2, 2008—USANA Health Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: USNA), was recognized Saturday at the Best of State Awards ceremony with medals for the best dietary supplements and best personal-care products in Utah. USANA also received the prestigious Best of State statue in its overall category of merchandising and consumer services.

The 2008 Best of State Awards marks the fifth year that USANA has won a Best of State medal for its science-based nutritional products and the second year it has won for its Sensé™ skin-care line. USANA was one of only 10 organizations or individuals to receive a Best of State statue. It was selected from the largest category, which included medal winners in everything from health products to home decor.

“We are grateful to be recognized once again as a leader within the nutritional supplement and skin-care industries. And, it was especially exciting this year to win the Best of State Statue for the broader merchandising and consumer services category,” said USANA President Dave Wentz. “Independent recognition like the Best of State Awards means a lot to our dedicated corporate staff as well as our thousands of independent distributors worldwide.”

The Best of State Awards were created in 2003 to recognize outstanding individuals, organizations and businesses in Utah. Best of State candidates are evaluated by a panel of 100 judges based on three criteria: achievement in the field of endeavor; innovation or creativity in approaches, techniques, methods or processes; and contribution to improving the quality of life in Utah.

About USANA
USANA Health Sciences develops and manufactures high-quality nutritional, personal-care and weight management products that are sold directly to Preferred Customers and Associates throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

I personally think USANA nutritional products and skin-care line are one of the best I have come across. There has been concerns with regards to skin-care products over the years containing harmful and potentially cancer-causing ingredients. Sense is a complete line of skin-care without added chemical preservatives such as parabens which is widely used in most cosmetics products. Using patented self-preserving technology that combines purifying botanicals in protective liquid crystals, each product stays fresh naturally. You only deserve pure, healthy ingredients for a smooth, radiant complexion.

For more information about USANA products, visit www.usana.com or contact me, shahnazbaharuden@yahoo.co.uk

Drink up!

No, no, no alco talk here.  I'm talking about WATER. Yes, the very essence of life. We know our body is composed of 70% water, even our muscles are 75% water and our blood a whopping 90%! How important is water to us? Well, let's put it this way, without enough water our body would starve and poison ourselves with our own waste. Scary thought.

Our body must get rid of as much waste as possible, in most cases the liver is already burdened with trying to filter and clean our blood. So when it has to take up part of the kidneys job the liver can't do all of its work efficiently. Let's have some mercy for our liver, shall we?

The next question is, how much water should we drink per day? Some say 8-10 cups, some say 2 litres at least. One way of knowing if you are drinking enough water is by looking at your urine. Clear or pale yellow means you are doing a good job at staying hydrated and intense yellow or gold most probably means you need to drink more.

What? You think drinking clear, purified water all day long is boring? Okay, a superb alternative is to dilute 20% of pure, fresh, unsweetened fruit juice in 80% of your water. Not only will your water taste great, you will have added benefits from the fruit/s, plus your body will be able to absorb the water better, thinking it's food you are consuming. There you go. Aim to drink at least 2 litres of this every day and you will notice glowing skin in no time!