Re-engineering Your Body (page 5 of 5)

Polishing the Outer You

Once upon a time, people got old. Their skin wrinkled, their hair turned gray, they gained a few pounds, and gravity took its toll. They looked, well, old. We don't accept that anymore. And, thanks to new weight-loss treatments and a wealth of recent advances in cosmetic and plastic surgery, we may not have to.

Weight-loss wonders. We're more overweight than ever, but new weight-loss techniques are raising hopes for the severely obese. Gastric bypass surgery and laparoscopic banding work well to combat obesity, and gastric pacemakers look promising, says Louis Aronne, MD, director of the comprehensive weight-control program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and president of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity. And soon there may be a fat-fighting drug that really works. In a clinical trial of more than 1,500 obese and overweight people, daily doses of rimonabant (Acomplia), made by the French company Sanofi-Aventis, helped people lose 10 to 15 percent of their body weight and reduce their waistlines by 1.6 inches more than placebo pills did.

Cosmetic enhancement. Last year, Nancy Curren, 61, of San Diego, California, was a "retired schoolteacher looking for my next passion in life." She decided to do something about the wrinkles around her eyes, roughened skin and brown spots caused by years of sun exposure. "We all age. No matter what we're feeling inside, the world starts to judge you," she says. So she underwent a laser-ablation procedure called Fraxel to remove signs of aging. Fraxel patients are treated five or six times with a grid of pinpoint laser beams that zaps tiny spots on the skin. That triggers the skin's inner layer, the dermis, to produce the collagen that makes skin look full and smooth, says Cameron Rokhsar, MD, a cosmetic surgeon, now at the New York Aesthetic Center, who treated Curren. The treatment tightened her skin, improved its texture, removed the photodamage and made wrinkles less visible. The results were "tremendous," she says.

New technologies, all introduced in the past few years, are changing the face of plastic and cosmetic surgery, allowing surgeons to nip, tuck, smooth and plump with finer control and less downtime than ever before. Cosmetic and plastic surgeons now use easy-to-inject fillers like Restylane to plump lips, barbed sutures to allow outpatient face-lifts, Botox to relax wrinkles, Thermage to lift and tighten skin, and ultrasound devices to melt small bulges of fat. "All of these things are less invasive ways of facial rejuvenation," says V. Leroy Young, MD, chairman of the Task Force for Emerging Trends of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

What's Next

The best gene therapies, replacement body parts, medical technology, and all the fat sucking, skin polishing and wrinkle removing in the world all just treat symptoms. The cells and tissues that make up our body still age, decay and die. "We know of no intervention that will slow, stop or reverse the aging process in humans," says Leonard Hayflick, PhD, professor of anatomy at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, who's the éminence grise of aging studies. Also, lifesaving technologies and treatments don't come cheap, and sometimes terrible side effects emerge. "We will face some very difficult choices," says Thomas Murray, PhD, president of the Hastings Center in Garrison, New York, a think tank that explores ethical issues in biotechnology and health care. Fair enough. But perhaps it's OK, for now, to step back and marvel at just how far we've come.

Despite the continuing debate over stem cells, doctors have actually been giving them to patients for more than two decades. They enable bone-marrow transplants to replenish blood and immune cells in patients with leukemia, lymphoma and rare blood diseases.

Stem cells are useful because they're youthful -- vigorous, immature, with the potential to mature into blood, nerve, heart and other tissues. In the past decade, scientists have discovered stem cells that transform into a variety of other tissues. Clinical trials using a variety of adult stem cells are underway to treat injured knee tissue, a variety of cancers and, soon, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease). But they grow rapidly, and no one is sure they won't turn into cancer cells after a decade or more in the body. So for now, they're being used only in the sickest patients.

The most versatile -- and controversial -- stem cells come from days-old human embryos in the freezers of in vitro fertilization clinics. These cells can mature into any of the body's 200 or so cell types.

From Reader's Digest - August 2005

 

• • Breakthroughs
• • Your Medical Care

• Medical Breakthroughs 2005
• New drugs and technology that could change your life.
• 
• Stay Healthy With Antioxidants
• Protect your body by eating fruits and veggies.
• 
• Battlefield Advances
• Remarkable innovations in treating injured soldiers will ultimately benefit us all.
• 
• Look 10 Years Younger -- Without Surgery
• Minimally-invasive procedures to turn back the clock.
• 
• Fighting Fat: New Frontiers in Weight Loss
• 5 groundbreaking weight-loss weapons, plus 22 tips that will work for you.
• 

“ Once a day, sit in a quiet, dim room, close your eyes, and focus on one word. This helps reduce stress and decreases your susceptibility to colds. ”

• See All Tips