Author Archives: Dr. Perricone

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A Hangover Rx

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Should you overindulge in alcohol, drinking fresh, pure water and taking the right blend of nutritional supplements can help repair the internal and external damage that greets you the following morning.

I recommend:

  • Drinking a 10-to 12-ounce glass of water upon rising.
  • 1,000 milligrams of Vitamin C.
  • 1,200 milligrams of N-Acetyl cysteine.
  • 1,000 milligrams of glutamine.
  • 500 milligrams of pantothenic acid.
  • 100 milligrams of alpha lipoic acid.
  • A B complex supplement.

More Hangover Helpers:

Despite the common myth, coffee will actually make you feel even worse as it can dehydrate the body further.

Green foods, such as young cereal grasses such as barley grass, spirulina help neutralize the effects of the aldehydes that may be responsible for the damaging effects of alcohol on the liver.

Curcumin, the substance that gives the spice turmeric its distinctive yellow color, stops the changes caused by excessive alcohol that can lead to liver damage. Mix ¼ teaspoon with a little water to protect against damage and provide superior antioxidant protection.

What are your recovery tips?

red wine

3 Tips for Healthier Drinking

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Along with hydrogenated oils, synthetic additives, sugars and starches, alcohol is one of the pro-aging foods I generally advise people to avoid.

I do not have any problem recommending a glass of red wine with a meal because it provides the very powerful anti-aging antioxidants called flavanols: blue-red-purple pigments that protect the body in many ways.

As Plato said, exaggerating a but perhaps, “Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was ever granted by the gods to man.” Recent studies show that drinking one glass of red wine every day may have certain health benefits, in part because of its high antioxidant content:

  • Protection against certain cancers
  • Protection against heart disease
  • A positive effect on cholesterol levels and blood pressure

If you like wine:

  • Drink with a meal, rather than before to blunt the inflammatory and liver stressing effects of alcohol.
  • Choose red over white wine. White wines do not have as many anti-aging antioxidants (flavanols).
  • Limit your wine servings to one per day.

What’s your favorite type of red wine?

 

healthy meals

The 3 Finger Rule

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When deciding your next meal, hold up 3 fingers and say to yourself: “I need a protein, a good source of carbohydrates, and a small amount of unsaturated fat.”

The 3 finger formula: A typical meal should consist of a piece of chicken, fish, grass-fed beef, fresh vegetables and fruits and a small source of monounsaturated fats, such as extra-virgin olive oil or a few nuts such as raw, unsalted almonds, walnuts or macadamia nuts.

The art of grazing: Eat 4 to 5 small, well-balanced meals a day to keep insulin levels stable and the value of eating small meals is that the body is never overloaded with sugars or other nutrients. Even if you’re eating healthy foods, you can have too much of a good thing at one time.

How do you plan your meals?

Wild Alaskan Salmon

The Skin Saving Antioxidant

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The carotenoid family of antioxidants offers special and targeted properties for cellular growth and repair. Carotenoids are fat-soluble pigments that give a red-orange-yellow color to fruits, vegetables, and even wild salmon. Because they are fat-soluble, carotenoids can enter both the cell plasma membrane and the mitochondria, where they protect these parts of the cell from oxidative stress, free-radical damage (including UV exposure) and pro-inflammatory chemicals. Carotenoids neutralize sunlight-induced free radicals, which damage the cell and are the primary force behind the “subclinical”, or invisible, inflammation that accelerates the internal aging process and manifests externally as wrinkles.

Apples and cinnamon 2

The ABC’s of Stabilizing Blood Sugar

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The following 3 foods are ideal in stabilizing blood sugar. Enjoy them several times per week as part of the anti inflammatory diet.

Apples: While apples do have significantly higher levels of sugar than berries, they’re actually incredibly effective at stabilizing blood sugar due to their high fiber content and a unique phytonutrient called phloretin which is only found in apples.

Beauty bonus: Apples contain the antioxidant Quercetin, which helps strengthen skin and clear blemishes on acne prone skin.

Beans and lentils: Legumes in general raise blood sugar very slowly- and even can help moderate the blood sugar response to the next meal you eat, whether it includes beans or not. Fiber-rich, beans and legumes also contian a substance called resistant starch (RS), which are fiber-like carbohydrates that increase the rate at which the body burns or oxidizes fat.

Beauty Bonus: Beans contain a variety of nutrients such as  fiber, magnesium and protein which help neutralize the damaging compounds that harm your skin and prevent skin damage and signs of aging.

Cinnamon: The USDA have found that cinnamon helps stabilize blood sugar. They phytonutrients responsible for cinnamon’s effect on blood sugar are the flavon-3-ol polyphenol class of antioxidants, which enhance the stabilizing effect of insulin on blood sugar and decrease insulin resistance.
Beauty Bonus: Cinnamon has powerful antimicrobial and antibacterial capabilities.
What are your favorite anti-inflammatory foods for controlling blood sugar?

Sonnengruss_4

4 Tips to Fight Cellulite

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While cellulite is not entirely ‘curable’, there are several dietary changes that can minimize and improve the appearance of cellulite.

    1. Make anti-inflammatory foods the basis of your daily diet. This will ensure low body fat, maintenance of muscle mass and radiant skin, and will help you avoid swings in blood sugar, which can cause the storage of fat and a breakdown of muscle tissue.
    2. Drink plenty of pure, non-carbonated spring water throughout the day (6 to 8 glasses) with a generous squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Lemon is rich in bioflavonoids and vitamin C (anti-inflammatory antioxidants), and acts as a natural diuretic to help the body shed excess water.
    3. Eat plenty of detoxifying fruit and vegetables. Lemons, asparagus, cranberries, fennel, celery, dandelion and ginger root are natural detoxifying agents, and many experts believe detoxifying the body helps eliminate the lumpy and bumpy appearance of cellulite. These fruits and vegetables also act as natural diuretics to help eliminate excess water build up.
    4. Eat a diet rich in lignans, which will help lower estrogen levels. Estrogen can contribute to cellulite as it activates the production of fat cells and encourages fluid retention. Foods rich in lignans include chia seeds and sesame seeds.

What are your tips for fighting cellulite?

Brush Marinade and Grill

5 Tips for Healthier Barbeque

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Few things can taste as delicious as good barbeque. But just as with heating oils, cooking proteins at high heats can change their nutritional makeup, creating carcinogenic chemicals called heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs). Consumption of AGE’s can accelerate some of the negative signs of aging, such as wrinkled, lined and sagging skin, as well as various systemic diseases.

However, we can still safely barbeque- just follow these 5 tips:

1.    Go Free- As in free-range, hormone-free and free of excess fats. Choose lean cuts of meat, ideally from grass fed cattle or lamb, fish and poultry; trim any excess fat from meat and remove skin.
2.    Marinate-  By marinating and/or basting most foods prior to or during cooking we can cut way back on the AGEs created.  Use vinegar, citrus juice, fresh herbs, spices, red wine and olive oil in your marinades because they have antioxidant properties.
3.    Clean Grill- Keep your grill clean; remove any build up of charred food
4.    Avoid Charring- Avoid charring food; remove any charred areas from food before eating
5.    It’s not all about char marks- Try poaching food on the grill.  Nothing is more delicious that salmon poached in an aluminum foil packet, whether in the oven or on the grill.

For some healthy grilling foods, click here.

Enjoy a safe and healthy 4th of July!

The Dieter’s Dilemma Part 2: Sabotage Secrets Revealed

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By Nicholas Perricone, MD

If you think that the fabulous figures of Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johansson, Bar Rafaeli, Adriana Lima or Megan Fox are unattainable, think again. I can’t promise you the cover of Sports Illustrated or the Victoria’s Secret catalog, but I can promise that many of your weight problems are not your fault!

Some scientists and researchers believe that many of the health problems of today are caused by our departure from the hunter-gatherer diet, which consisted of nuts, seeds, berries, wild greens, roots, fruits, fish, fowl and game. This is a fascinating theory and I agree with the premise that natural, unprocessed foods are always the best choices.

Go Green and Lean with Grass-Fed

One serious sabotage agent of our diets is the switch from grass-fed beef to grain-fed. Researchers have found that grass-fed beef contains two newly discovered “good” fats and more beta carotene, vitamin E and folic acid. These health benefits decline significantly with even three months of grain feeding, even if the grain is organic. Cattle that eat grass and live a “pastoral” life in the pasture—produce beef and milk that is rich in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). Corn-fed beef has no CLA at all. CLA is also a powerful aid in the prevention and treatment of obesity. With the motive of saving money (corn is really inexpensive) at the expense of health, we are now in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Grass-fed meat is rich in CLA, which decreases body fat, especially in the area of the abdomen. My favorite is from the Stannard Farm in the beautiful rolling hills of Benson, VT. Here the cows enjoy the pure Vermont air and water and spend their lives eating the rich, emerald-green grass that helps give Vermont its nickname of the Green Mountain State. For more information, visit Bob and his farm online at www.vermontnaturalbeef.com.

My next blog will reveal more foods that are guaranteed to sabotage even the healthiest diets. The good news is that once we know what foods cause rapid accumulation of body fat, we can scrupulously avoid them.

As an active researcher, I welcome your comments.

Cabernet Sauvignon will keep you young

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Red wine contains a powerful heart-healthy, anti-cancer, anti-aging antioxidant called resveratrol. It also appears that resveratrol helps protect the skin against the sun’s UV radiation. Cabernet Sauvignon grapes have the highest concentration of antioxidants. Just be sure to keep it to one glass, and have your wine with a meal to mitigate the inflammatory effects of alcohol.

As an active researcher, I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Women, Stress, and Acne

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Today’s blog is inspired by an interview request I received from the UK concerning the significant rise in adult women visiting their dermatologist for acne. It is absolutely true that our hard economic times, and the general ‘bad’ news coming from all sectors, internationally as well as domestically, is contributing to a major increase in acne flare ups.

Stress is a proven precipitator of acne. Yes, men also suffer from stress, but because of their hormonal differences, adult women are much more adversely affected. Recent statistics from the American Dermatology Association report that the median age for patients suffering from acne has been gradually increasing. Earlier it used to be 20.5 years, whereas now it is approximately 26.5 years or age. More than 17 million adults are diagnosed with acne in the US, of which 50 % are adult women and 25% are adult men.

It is a sad but true fact that acne often rears its ugly head at the most inopportune times possible. Acne has an uncanny knack for flaring up just in time for that big date, job interview, wedding day or other special event in our lives. This happens with alarming frequency – far too often in fact to chalk it up to “bad luck” or coincidence. There is a physiological reason for these untimely flare-ups and its name is stress.

Of all of the physical conditions we experience, stress is the most deadly. Many circumstances create stress in our daily lives. Arguing with family, friends or colleagues, not getting enough sleep, worrying, working too hard or even playing too hard can all create stress. Weekend warriors, who try to make up for a week of inactivity by spending hours engaged in strenuous physical sports, raise their stress levels to an unhealthy degree. Any activity that is practiced without moderation can lead to a stress response. This is extremely important to remember if you hope to gain control of your acne flare-ups.

For those of you familiar with my work in the anti-aging field, you know that elevated levels of the hormone, cortisol (also referred to as the ‘death’ hormone) are very destructive to the body. Elevated cortisol levels cause an increase in blood sugar. This in turn causes an instant response from our cells as they enter an extreme pro-inflammatory mode. Because acne is a systemic, inflammatory disease, any increase in inflammation will result in an increase in the length and severity of the outbreak.

Mars vs. Venus, Androgens and Acne
When our blood sugar and insulin levels rise, whether from a poor diet or from stress, we experience a serious increase in inflammatory chemicals at a cellular level. This causes inflammatory diseases such as acne to worsen dramatically. Cortisol and other adrenal steroids can act as androgens and stimulate the sebaceous (oil) glands resulting in a flare-up of acne. Although men are affected by stress and pro-inflammatory cortisol response, women suffer from both the pro-inflammatory cortisol-sugar-insulin connection, as well as the effect of the male-type hormones. Men are not affected from high levels of androgens in the same way that women are. Women are most susceptible to adrenal hormone stimulation because most of the women’s androgens are synthesized in the adrenal glands. The stimulation of the oil glands results in changes such as the clogging of the pores and increased secretion of pro-inflammatory fatty acids. These pro-inflammatory fatty acids release the chemical messengers known as cytokines, and so the inflammatory fire is fed. Men with high levels of androgen circulating do not suffer from the androgen affect like women.

The Top Ten

But the news is not all bad. We can learn how to lower cortisol levels and stop acne before it starts. Follow these simple rules and you will enjoy lowered stress levels, increased energy, elevated moods and sense of well-being and clear, radiant skin.

1. Follow the anti-inflammatory diet,
2. Make sure that you get enough sleep
3. Try to minimize stress in your life
4. Don’t drink coffee. Coffee contains many organic acids which affect our blood sugar and cortisol levels. It is not specifically because of the caffeine because you can drink a cup of decaffeinated coffee at 8 AM and your cortisol levels will still be measurable at 10 PM –the same effects as a cup of regular coffee.
5. Set aside time for meditation, prayer or a walk in Nature. It is a well- established fact that people who do this have significantly lower cortisol levels. Long term benefits include keeping our skin clear, maintaining a healthy immune system and preventing age-related diseases, such as diabetes, cancer or cardiovascular disease
6. Consider learning some simple Yoga exercises. Substitute green tea for coffee.
7. Make sure that there are plenty of essential fatty acids in your diet because essential fatty acids can decrease cortisol levels.
8. Take nutritional supplements including alpha lipoic acid, zinc, DMAE, pantothenic acid.
9. Add essential fatty acids such as borage and evening primrose oil which are rich in linoleic acid. Acne sufferers have a low concentration of linoleic acid in their sebum and the levels decrease as the acne increases.
10. Adopt a loving, non-judgmental pet

I have often wondered how so many of Hollywood’s most stunning faces manage to have such clear complexions, given the high level of stress in the entertainment industry. The answer may be that a great many of them are huge pet lovers. Think Oprah, Jessica Alba, Heidi Klum, Rachael Ray, Paula Abdul, Jessica Biel, Julia Roberts, Demi Moore, Elizabeth Taylor, just to name a few. Perhaps this is the ideal ‘prescription,’ for beautiful, luminous, acne-free skin.

As an active researcher, I welcome your comments and suggestions.


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