Tuesday, February 10, 2009

From the Health & Science Desk.

There's an interesting article called Twins and Aging: How Not To Look Old by John Cloud in this week's Time magazine. It discusses the oft-talked about topic of how to turn back, or at least hasten, the effects of father time on your face. It's based on a study just released from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland that compared the faces of 186 sets of identical twins (from the annual Twins Days Festival event in, of course, Twinburg, OH). Doctors who conducted the study compared the effects of aging on each set of twins, then looked at each twin's respective lifestyle, essentially their behavioral choices and the environments in which they lived. Each twin filled out extensive surveys covering questions ranging from sunscreen use to diet to marital status.

Out of all that data, what did they discover? The not-so-surprising...

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 didn't divorce. (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.)

That's all well and good, but here's the good stuff, and of course, the reason I wanted to post about it...

The bottom line is that if you care mostly about a young-looking face, don't smoke, don't go into 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.

Ice cream, your ticket to the fountain of youth.

That's what I'm talking about.

No comments: