Doctor NV Perricone MD Podcast 2 of 3 – 3 Day Diet, Anti Wrinkle & Wrinkle Cure Book, Facelift in the Fridge, Stress-Reduction and Anti-Aging, Look Ten Years Younger
Beauty Now
Teri Hausman
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Episode 10 - Doctor NV Perricone MD Podcast 2 of 3 – 3 Day Diet, Anti Wrinkle & Wrinkle Cure Book, Facelift in the Fridge, Stress-Reduction and Anti-Aging, Look Ten Years Younger

This second episode covers the effect of lifestyle changes including stress-reduction, adequate sleep and exercise as well as details of the "Facelift in the Fridge" 3-Day Diet. Dr. Perricone describes how to age-proof yourself with an anti-oxidant diet that counters inflammation. He explains why salmon, berries and other low-glycemic super-foods reduce the inflammation responsible for aging and how important it is to manage beauty from the inside out. He discusses in depth his Three-Tiered Anti-Inflammatory Program, which consists of the Anti-inflammatory diet, targeted anti-oxidant nutritional supplements and topical anti-oxidants. Key ingredients include Alpha Lipoic Acid, Vitamin C Ester, DMAE (Dimethyl Amino Ethanol), Coenzyme Q-10, Omega-3 and Astaxanthin.

Transcript

Transcript

Doctor NV Perricone MD Podcast 2 of 3 - 3 Day Diet, Anti Wrinkle & Wrinkle Cure Book, Facelift in the Fridge, Stress-Reduction and Anti-Aging, Look Ten Years Younger

Announcer: This program is brought to you by personallifemedia.com.

[Intro Music]

Teri Struck: I'm Teri Struck, host of Beauty Now. Today we are so lucky to have best-selling author Dr. Nicholas Perricone. Today he will explain step-by-step how we can age proof ourselves. On today's show we are going to cover cellular rejuvenation, skincare, sex, vitamins, weight management and more.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: The true way to natural beauty is optimum health.

Teri Struck: That starts from the inside.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: I think a lot of people don't exercise because they are intimidated. One of the important aspects of this whole program is that there have to be some lifestyle changes. With one inhaled cigarette you create a trillion free radicals in your body. A trillion. There is a low-grade form of inflammation that goes on in our bodies every day. We can't see it. We can't feel it. We have found that if you load the patient up with as much as 10,000 mg of vitamin C, you can increase the levels of vitamin C by about 80% in their skin.

Teri Struck: Hi, it's Teri Struck with Beauty Now. Welcome back. Last week we were talking to Dr. Nicholas Perricone about his many books. I want to welcome him back. Welcome Dr. Perricone.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Well, thank you. It is a pleasure to be back with you Teri.

Teri Struck: We left off on inflammation. Please catch our first show so you can catch up on all the important diet tips and books and things that he has.

So could you please finish telling our listeners about inflammation?

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Yes. Inflammation is such an important point and I will just take one minute to review so that we can catch up.

Teri Struck: Perfect.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: I have found through my research over the past 20 years that there is a low-grade form of inflammation that goes on in our bodies every day. We can't see it. We can't feel it. So it's not the kind of thing that we usually think of when we see inflammation, like a bright red sunburn or a swollen finger. It's actually invisible. But it goes on every day. What it does is tend to break down all of our body systems. It tends to make us accelerate the aging process. So we have to understand that inflammation is the bad guy.

What we were talking about last week was that if inflammation goes on in our bodies all the time, what causes it? Well, one of the chief causes of inflammation is bad food. But there are many other things too. Psychic stress increases inflammation as does not getting enough sleep and everyday things like sitting in front of the video display unit of our computer.

Teri Struck: But if you have stress, what do you advise to get rid of stress?

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Well, one of the important aspects of this whole program, once we understand the whole dietary aspect is that there have to be some lifestyle changes. The lifestyle changes are extremely important. But once again, lifestyle changes have to be moderate, just like the diet is moderate.

So let's talk about it. Probably one of the first things is getting adequate sleep. Many of us don't get enough sleep. And there are some people that truly do have a problem with insomnia and that requires a special approach. But what I want to talk about is the fact that sleep is important and why it is so important. I think what I would like to do is motivate our listeners to say, “You know what? I'm going to turn the TV off an hour earlier and start getting some sleep.” What sleep does is, through many, many unknown mechanisms, completely rejuvenate cells. But what happens when we don't sleep is that we are in a pro-inflammatory state.

So let me talk a little bit about that. I think we have all experienced, if we have had a few tough nights whether we are in college and pulling all nighters or we are out partying, the next day when we look in the mirror we look absolutely terrible. The skin looks dull. We have lost our radiance. We feel terrible. One of things I noticed when I was an intern in pediatrics at Yale when we were on call just about every other night, was that the next day - we had to work even though we were up all night - I would be craving salt and sugar all day.

I thought that was just my peculiarity or way of dealing with the stress. But the reality is that there have been physiologic changes. What happens is that you drive up the stress hormones like cortisol when you don't get enough sleep. Cortisol is a hormone that we need to because it is a part of the fight or flight mechanism. But high circulating cortisol levels on a regular basis are very bad for us. Number one, they make us insulin resistant so we put on body fat. Number two; cortisol can break down muscle tissue. It can decalcify our bones. And cortisol is extremely toxic to the brain cells. And cortisol thins and wrinkles our skin. So cortisol is a natural disaster. And when you don't get enough sleep you have elevated cortisol levels the whole next day.

Teri Struck: Do you think men have that problem more than women? I think women like to sleep more than men.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Yeah, I think you're right. Women do like to sleep more than men. I think it might be a macho thing. You know, ‘we don't need much sleep’.

Teri Struck: Right, exactly. [Laughs]

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: ‘We need to get this thing done’, and it's just not a good idea. So you need to get enough sleep. You want to keep those cortisol levels low. It's almost impossible to lose fat around the waist when your cortisol levels are high. So you want to maintain this. So you can lower inflammation by getting adequate sleep.

Another thing is, let's talk about exercise. Once again, I think a lot of people don't exercise because they're intimidated by the fact. What their concept is, is going to the gym for an hour or an hour and a half for a vigorous workout. That's not it at all. In fact, if you are exercising vigorously for more than 30 to 45 minutes a day, you are actually increasing levels of stress hormones in your body.

Teri Struck: I've heard that. I've heard that. That's important for our listeners to hear, because I know that and I think that such good news for so many people.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: It is. The thing is, 20 or 30 minutes of a cardiovascular type exercise is great. You can do that three or four times a week. I also believe in some weight resistance training because weight can resistance training can build muscle mass and increase bone density, which is an important part of looking and feeling good. But also, when you have more muscle mass, you have less chance of having Type 2 Diabetes because muscles use up sugar very quickly. It doesn't put a burden on the pancreas.

So, we have an endogenous defense system against inflammation and free radicals including antioxidants. We get the antioxidants by making some antioxidants and we also get them through our diet. But when you are out there and say you are exercising vigorously for an hour or an hour and a half, you use up all of those defense mechanisms. Now you're going almost naked in terms of protection in your body. So moderation is the key here.

As people get older, even taking a 15 or 20 minute walk three or four times a week makes a huge difference in our overall health.

Teri Struck: It does. And it helps depression.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: It doesn't have to be something so daunting that it intimidates us and we are not going to do anything. Now exercise is important too because what it does is maintain muscle mass and it maintains bone density. There are some excellent studies showing that cardiovascular exercise three to four times a week is probably the best possible way to prevent Alzheimer's of anything they have looked at thus far.

Of course, we know the effects of the cardiovascular system. There is a decreased risk of heart disease. It lowers blood pressure. And it makes you look fantastic. When you exercise moderately what you do is–

Teri Struck: It does.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: You increase circulation to the skin. We carry away the toxins. We renew nutrients into the cells and you look very radiant. So this is for the way you look and the way you feel.

And once again regular exercise is a great way of combating mental depression.

Teri Struck: Right.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: So these are all very important aspects of the anti-inflammatory program, what I call the anti-inflammatory lifestyle.

Then of course, stress reduction is very important. There are ways of reducing stress. We can have meditation. If you are religious there is prayer that certainly lowers stress. Yoga, Tai Chi, Chi-Kong - there is a number of ways of doing this, or even just some quiet time. There are loads of studies showing that five or 10 minutes of something like meditation dramatically lowers levels of the stress hormones like cortisol, it lowers blood pressure, it helps regulate the immune system and it also helps regulate our blood sugar. So those are important aspects.

Teri Struck: What types of exercise do you like?

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Well, I actually do two things. I do some jogging about three times a week and I actually do weight resistance training about three times a week. But once again, they are limited to about 30 to 45 minutes maximum. And it's great because it doesn't take up too much time from my day. But it maintains the muscle mass and keeps my weight down and basically keeps my mood very regulated and up. I think it's really important.

Teri Struck: Now for our listeners who are really inactive what would you recommend? How would they start?

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: If you are really inactive start with walking.

Teri Struck: OK.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: I have so many patients that have been there. They are overweight and they just start off with a five-minute walk. It goes up and then they are capable of doing 10 and then they are up to 30 minutes or 45 minutes. It's just amazing what it can do for them.

Then I also recommend some weight resistance. You don't have to have exotic things. Just start off with a couple of soup cans while you are watching TV. Raise them above your head and move those muscles around. But weight resistance is also very important for overall health.

Teri Struck: It makes a huge difference.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Now another aspect of the whole program is - I am a dermatologist and ultimately I just love to see people look younger. And to look young, you have to have great looking skin. Everything I am talking about here will really change the way your skin looks.

Last week we were talking about what I called ‘The Three-Day Nutritional Facelift’ or ‘Facelift in a Fridge’ that we did on Good Morning America, the Today Show and Oprah and all that. Now I want to talk a little bit more about that because it is such a fun thing to do.

Teri Struck: It was amazing. I saw it.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: I'll give you some specifics and what you can expect. First of all, it is going to be kind of a narrow diet for three days. I'm also going to ask you to not drink coffee but drink green tea. If you stop coffee cold you're going to get headaches but green tea has plenty of caffeine in it to replace the coffee.

For two meals out of the day I want you to have salmon and a big green salad and for dessert have some melon and some fresh berries. We talked a lot about salmon last week so I'm not going to go over it again, but salmon is incredible for rapidly reducing inflammation in the body and giving you adequate protein. Green salad with olive oil and lemon juice as a dressing once again lowers levels of inflammatory chemicals, gives you some essential fats. Finally, the fruit and berries have loads of antioxidants and are a good source of carbohydrates that are slowly absorbed.

Then the other meal has to be within the realm of low glycemic, so maybe have eggs, some oatmeal in the morning. Drink eight to 10 glasses of water a day. If you're hungry you can have a little snack.

Teri Struck: What advice do you have for willpower?

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: I'm sorry, say it again.

Teri Struck: Willpower for the first day - how do you advise your patients for willpower?

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Good question. I would advise that they just focus on the way they look. Now the first day may be tough. If you need a little snack from the same category of foods, you can do that. But by day two and day three you are going to start looking so different.

What you're going to see is the following. If there was any puffiness or dark circles around your eyes, they disappear. Contours in the face - your cheekbones look higher, your jaw line is crisper and your pores will tighten. Probably one of the biggest benefits is elevation of your mood. People will absolutely feel differently. They will feel energized and very happy on this program. When you walk in a room people are going to notice the radiance of your skin. Actually it looks like someone put a light bulb inside your head and turned it on because you just radiate this health.

So the fun thing about this whole program is - and by the way, the average weight loss in three days is 6 pounds because you're dropping the calories so you are losing some water weight and you are also losing some body fat.

Teri Struck: That’s a motivator.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: All you need is basically three days to prepare for any incredible special event. So think of the fun if you are going to a reunion or to a wedding or you are giving a presentation to work - anything major. If you want to look like absolute wow, you can accomplish it in three days. It is just so much fun because you just can't believe the difference in what you're going to look like.

It's funny, when I did the Oprah show –

Teri Struck: I couldn't believe the difference in that girl. That one girl that was on - I can't remember, it was a long time ago, but it was amazing the difference.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Yeah, there was one redhead; she was probably 50.

Teri Struck: Yes.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: There was another one. Her name was Hope – the blonde. They both looked so incredibly different.

Teri Struck: They did.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: The fun part of the show was that Oprah had other physicians - dermatologists and plastic surgeons - doing procedures. And I was going up against the procedures just by changing diet.

Teri Struck: It was amazing. My husband is a plastic surgeon and he was amazed. He started advising his patients to use the Perricone diet.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: It is fun. It is amazing. So here we have this incredible tool to look absolutely fabulous in the period of three to four days and it is not expensive to go about.

So I love talking about the Facelift in a Fridge because it is so effective. People should actually go to my website. We post the three-day diet.

Teri Struck: We are actually going to do a link to your website and give out that information.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: OK, great.

Teri Struck: We are going to take a quick break. I love this. I love talking to you. We are going to take a quick break and be back with Dr. Perricone.

[Music]

[Commercial]

[Music]

Teri Struck: Welcome back Dr. Perricone. We were just talking about his Three-Day Facelift foods you can eat. And I really want to do this now. I want to try it again. I love it. It makes such a difference in people.

Welcome back Dr. Perricone.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Thank you. Yeah, it's always fun to talk about the way we can change the way we look because the nice thing about practicing dermatology as opposed to internal medicine is that when we do something positive for the patient, the results are visible. The skin is a perfect reflection of what is going on inside your body. I have never seen beautiful, radiant skin on an unhealthy patient.

So, when we do the Three-Day Facelift in a Fridge, our skin looks absolutely fabulous. But probably even more important than that is the fact that all of the major organ systems are doing better because we have rapidly reduced that low-grade inflammation. So the heart is working more efficiently. The kidneys are clearing. Renal clearance is better. The brain is functioning. Remember our mood goes up, as does our ability to think more clearly. So all these things do happen. So we use the skin as a monitor.

If your skin is beautiful and radiant and flawless, then you are doing wonderful things on the inside. You are regulating your blood sugar and decreasing your risk of all those bad diseases that we see as we get older. So it is just an incredible thing and once again it's very gratifying to see the difference.

Getting back to that Oprah show that we did, the two women who just did the diet –

Teri Struck: They looked amazing.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Oprah just said, “Oh, come on. This can't possibly be.”

Teri Struck: Even I thought so. I didn't really think that it could make that big a difference. I thought, well maybe they would be rested or maybe they had injections. But they looked so different.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: The main point is that they looked healthy.

Teri Struck: They did. They looked really healthy. They looked much younger. All my friends were talking about it.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: It’s funny; I was giving a keynote speech at a medical conference. At the end of the speech there is always a time for Q&A - questions and answers. Usually when you are with a group of doctors and scientists you get variations of scientific questions. But the very first question from the audience was, “Dr. Perricone, what is your definition of beauty?”

I had never been asked that question before. And being at a scientific conference, I just gave a scientific lecture. You are in that mode of thought.

Teri Struck: Right.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: I just sat - I don't know how long I was standing probably looking in a daze - but I said, “My definition of beauty is health.”

When you're healthy, you're the most attractive person in the world. Health does make you attractive. It makes you attractive to other people. It makes you interact better. So the true definition of beauty is optimum health.

Teri Struck: I think that is really good advice. Actually, somebody asked me that the other day and I did think of your book and all that. And I said that it starts from the inside. Obviously I am really pro-doctors and injectables and anything we have to do but if you don't keep it up with your food and everything, you are absolutely right.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Yeah, it's beauty from the inside out. With that being said, obviously I have spent 20 years doing research to come out with a line of cosmeceuticals that are applied topically that truly work. But I believe that you have to have beauty from the inside out as well as the outside in.

Teri Struck: In your products you put all the vitamins that you recommend and everything like that.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Yes, since I believe that inflammation is at the absolute basis of aging, and therefore all the topicals and all the cosmeceuticals contain high levels of very powerful anti-inflammatories that rapidly penetrate the skin. So I will talk about getting foods that have adequate amounts of anti-inflammatories. But the cosmeceuticals will concentrate those.

Teri Struck: What’s your favorite?

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: For example, vitamin C ester is a fat-soluble form of vitamin C. Now vitamin C is a great antioxidant and anti-inflammatory. But the regular vitamin C, which is called ascorbic acid, is water-soluble. It is irritating. It is probably not the best for skin. But vitamin C ester, which is a fat-soluble form of vitamin C, rapidly penetrate the skin and gets high levels.

So people say, “Why would you have to apply it to the skin if you're already taking it internally?” Well interestingly, it's a good question but scientists looked at the ability to load the skin with antioxidants that are protective against inflammation. They found that if you load a patient up with as much as 10,000 mg of vitamin C, you can increase the levels of vitamin C by about 80% in their skin.

Teri Struck: Topically, right?

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: We are talking about orally.

Teri Struck: Oh, orally.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: If you consume 10,000 mg orally.

Teri Struck: Can people take 10,000? I thought you could only take 1000 a day.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Well we loaded these patients up over a period of days. We just really loaded them up. It's not a great thing to do but –

Teri Struck: Right.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: We found that we raised levels by about 80%. But about 30 minutes in the noonday sun used up all the vitamin C.

By taking vitamin C ester and putting it on the skin as we do in the cosmeceuticals, we increased the vitamin C levels by 60 times in the skin. And it would not be depleted by sun exposure.

Teri Struck: I love the vitamin C products. I use them. And it makes an amazing difference because I love the sun unfortunately.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Yes, it does make a difference. So we certainly want to follow the program of the diet. And I also recommend the use of nutritional supplements. Now that is somewhat controversial. I think there are a number of physicians practicing mainstream medicine that believe that nutritional supplements are not necessary. I think whenever there is a scattered article coming from some Journal that is negative toward supplements you will see it all over the mainstream media.

I think that's unfortunate because there is a recent article from the Journal of the American Medical Association that came out saying that antioxidants are bad for you, taken in supplement form. After examining the article closely and talking to my colleagues, the article was terribly done, totally flawed for exclusion of an awful lot of good evidence. They talked about vitamin E and some others.

It is interesting to note that there are 108 solid articles using huge numbers of patients over a long period of time looking at the positive effects of supplements that were published. Not one of those articles was ever reproduced in the mainstream media. But the one negative article was. So it is 108 to one just to give you some idea of the kind of bias that we are seeing.

Teri Struck: But isn't it true that if you take –

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: When taking supplements it is really possible to give you extra anti-inflammatory protection. They have to be taken correctly but they can do some wonderful things. One of the main points of the latest book ‘The Seven Secrets of Cellular Rejuvenation’ is that we can rejuvenate the mitochondria - that little organelle I talked about last week that keeps the cells young. We can do that through certain supplements like coenzyme Q10, acetyl-L-carnitine, alpha lipoic acid, and some others that we can talk about depending on the amount of time that we have.

So if we look at the overall program, inflammation is the bad guy and we want to decrease inflammation in the body. We have a three-tier program to do so. The first tier in the program is a) the anti-inflammatory diet, which is the most important. We talked about that quite a bit. The second year of the program is taking nutritional supplements that have anti-inflammatory activity. I think that is an important part. And then the third layer of the program is putting topicals, like the cosmeceuticals that have anti-inflammatory activities, directly on the skin. So you are covering three separate layers. And then the little offshoot of that of course is that we have to follow the anti-inflammatory lifestyle as well.

But it is a three-tier program, from the inside out, from the outside in, looking at right foods, right nutritional supplements and the right kind of topicals. If we follow this I think that everybody is going to be very much convinced that you are going to look and feel as different as people you have seen on Good Morning America and the Oprah Show.

But once again, the skin is just a reflection of your internal health. If you look that great on the outside, there is excellent evidence that all organ systems are going to be doing that well on the inside as well.

Teri Struck: It’s amazing, even if you look good and you start the diet, you will look even better.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: You do. You know, I have nothing against getting plastic surgery procedures and all that. Some of those procedures are great. They make you look fine.

Teri Struck: Most people want to stave them off as long as possible. Nobody wants to go under the knife unless they have to.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Right. But not only that, if you have a great procedure and you look great, what have you done to decrease your risk of breast cancer or heart disease? It just doesn't do it. So this program I think is essential because it is an overall program.

Teri Struck: It’s true. No matter what your position is, it's true. It's being healthy.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Yes. Exactly.

Teri Struck: So, tell me, what is your favorite food with antiaging benefits besides salmon?

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: That’s a tough one because I love food so much. I'd say that I am really crazy about berries. So blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries have amazing –

Teri Struck: You talked about goji berries and I've never seen one.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: OK, goji berries, when you usually see them are dried. They are found in the health food store. Goji berries are incredible because they contain huge amounts of vitamin C. Of course vitamin C is a tremendous antioxidant in anti-inflammatory. But goji dairies also contain some essential fats. They also can do some incredible things one of which is to help elevate hormones naturally in your body.

One of the keys to youth, of course is maintaining good levels of the healthy hormones. We all know that as we age we lose hormones and certainly hormone replacement therapy was a huge thing in this country for women as they became menopausal. But then statistics showed that many of the synthetic hormone supplements that were being given increased the risk of cancer. So that was dropped. Estrogen was kind of a real miracle because it thickens the skin, it prevents wrinkling of the skin, it elevates your mood, it maintains good bone density - there are a lot of things, as well as with testosterone.

So goji berry can actually assist us in making and elevating levels of testosterone. So I recommend goji berries because of the nutritional content and because it also can help maintain the normal levels of the hormone as we age.

Teri Struck: Is there a vitamin that has that in it that we could find?

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: No, but there are some other herbals out there.

Teri Struck: OK.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: That are important in terms of regulating hormones. And there is actually one herbal that actually comes out of Malaysia. It is actually the root of a tree. And I believe it is - it's been a while since I looked at this stuff.

Teri Struck: Is it Tongkat? How do you say that?

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Tongkat, right. Tongkat Ali. It is the root of the Tongkat Ali and there is an extract in there. 100 mg of the extract - and these are some very good and reputable studies that were done - can actually increase levels of testosterone in both men and women.

No women actually do have a small amount of testosterone made in their bodies every day. It is important because small amounts of testosterone that women synthesize in their bodies every day are important for a number of things - for their mental health and motivation and also for women's libido.

In men of course it is essential for the secondary sex characteristics, maintaining muscle mass, good bone density, good mental acuity. So we tend to see these levels drop in men. I think men lose about 10% of their testosterone for every decade after the age of 30. So if you see a 50-year-old man, he is running on 55 or 60% less testosterone than when he was below 30.

Teri Struck: So we need to make a cereal with this.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Well, the important thing is that Tongkat can help actually naturally elevate levels of testosterone in both men and women.

Teri Struck: But there are no supplements that we could find?

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Well, actually yeah there are supplements. You can go to the health food store. And also in the resource section of my book ‘The Seven Secrets’ I talk about websites to which you can go to find Tongkat extract.

Teri Struck: To find these things. OK, great.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Go to the health food store and look at that. There is another herbal; something called Makai, which is out of Peru. It's called a cruciferous vegetable and tends to regulate ovarian function. It's very good for women as they approach menopause. It doesn't elevate ovarian function. It regulates it, which is very, very important.

Teri Struck: What is your best advice for people in their 20s who don't think that they need a program?

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: Well, you know that is a good question. When you are in your 20s you think you are immortal so why would you worry about aging?

Teri Struck: That’s right.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: I think a lot of people, and I see a lot of people in my practice and a lot of people that I meet around the country as I do my public television tours, that are in their 20s. They are interested in it and in not aging. So the anti-inflammatory diet is key here. Follow the diet. Moderate exercise. Certainly don't smoke cigarettes. Limit alcohol intake. Try to keep stress levels down. You can certainly start even with some nutritional supplements at that age.

Teri Struck: I've seen a lot of younger people addicted to cigarettes. What is your best advice to help them quit?

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: You know, it is highly addicting and I think, first of all, there is nutritional help. I found this out actually when I was working with a friend of mine at Yale who was involved in the substance abuse program. What they were doing at Yale was giving people large amounts of vitamin C and B6 throughout the day. It tends to help cravings.

So I started giving the same recipe to my smoking patients. They really said it did help in terms of reducing their craving for cigarettes. Of course, vitamin C is very important if you are a smoker because it will help combat the negative effects.

Teri Struck: It helps with wrinkling, right?

Dr. Nicholas Perricone: You know, when you have one puff of one cigarette, one inhaled cigarette, you create a trillion free radicals in your body. A trillion.

Teri Struck: See, that's what's so scary. I want to help educate everybody to quit smoking. We have to take a break unfortunately. Oh, that's the end of our show.

[Music]

Teri Struck: We are going to have to welcome Dr. Perricone back next week. I love getting all this information from you. Thank you so much Dr. Perricone. We are going to take a break and we will be back next week. Thanks.

[Music]

Teri Struck: Thank you for listening today. This is Teri Struck, host of Beauty Now. Please visit our website at personallifemedia.com where you can get a transcript of the show and subscribe to get future episodes.

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