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Got Wrinkles? Go Fish
Dared by Perricone, the Author Aims to Eat Away Age Lines
By Stefanie Weiss
December 17, 2002, The Washington Post
Can you tell which photo was taken before the
Three-Day Nutritional Facelift and which after? Neither could we. (Courtesy
of Stephanie Weiss)
Nicholas Perricone, author of "The Wrinkle Cure," taunted me
from the television screen. Wrinkles are optional, he said. Eat
more fish and reverse the signs of aging, he claimed. Just three days to
younger-looking skin!
Three days? I confess that I can be as vain as the next person sidling
up to middle age, but I like to think I'm still reasonably sane. Weight
Watchers, yes. More walking, yes. Expensive moisturizers in tiny jars,
well, yes.
But salmon-based schemes to look younger in three days? Get real, I
murmured to the TV as Perricone made his pitch on public television, which
is better known for its gravitas than its gravity-fighting prescriptions.
I wasn't born yesterday.
That being the problem, I couldn't help but stop at the bestseller
table a few days later to take a quick look at the dashing dermatologist's
new book, "The Perricone Prescription: A Physician's 28-Day Program
for Total Body and Face Rejuvenation" (HarperCollins, $27.50).
By chance, I flipped to Page 12: "Without exception," I read,
"every patient who has tried the Three-Day Nutritional Face-lift has
had good results, and has returned convinced that my Wrinkle-Free Program
works. And you will, too."
Every patient? Without exception? I have little
tolerance for taunts like that one. You just can't make claims
like that, I thought, as I headed to the cash register, bought the book
and stopped at the grocery store to buy some salmon.
Vulnerable to incredible marketing? Yes. But I prefer to think that
Perricone dared me, and I accepted the challenge.
Smells Fishy
Dawn, Day One, Salmon Camp. I dragged my husband out to the back yard
to take half a dozen no make-up, no-nonsense "before" photos.
Then I was off to the kitchen to fix a hearty breakfast of grilled salmon,
unadulterated oatmeal, cantaloupe, blueberries, water, more water and
green tea. Facing fish first thing in the morning wasn't easy. I yearned
for cold cereal with skim milk.
Lunch was salmon, romaine lettuce with olive oil and lemon juice, more
cantaloupe and berries. Dinner was a replay of lunch, with the addition of
broccoli. Afternoon and evening snacks: sliced turkey, half a green apple
and four (not five) almonds.
I took full advantage of the few allowable substitutions. I ate an
egg-white (one yolk, no cheese) omelet for breakfast on Day Two, ate tuna
once, subbed half a pear for the apple, spinach for broccoli, strawberries
for blueberries and hazelnuts for almonds.
Each day, I complied with Perricone's proscriptions. I ate all my
protein first (and, just to be sure, I didn't let it touch my other food).
I drank at least eight glasses of spring water. I avoided all soda and
coffee and grains.
For three days, no red meat, bread, cheese, alcohol or desserts crossed
my lips. No pig-portions of anything, even lettuce. No junk food. I was
clearly consuming fewer calories than I usually do, and while I wasn't
hungry, I wasn't exactly happy, either. Between meals, I stared at my
pores in the mirror, wary of the power of suggestion, waiting for
Perricone's promise of renewed energy and radiant skin. At mealtimes, I
stared at my plate. I was bored.
Salmon's great, but seven times in three days? I missed carrots and
tomatoes and cheese and pasta and chocolate. I missed Diet Coke. And I
missed my saner self, the one that was more mature and less vain and had
better things to do.
The Theory
In an attempt to recapture my intellect, I started to ask around. Does
what we eat and drink really affect how our skin ages?
In a general sense, say mainstream dermatologists, it's common sense.
"Eating healthy is good for your overall health and will affect your
appearance in a general way," said Patricia Farris, a dermatology
professor at Tulane University.
It's when you get to the specifics that dermatologists have a zit to
pick with Perricone.
"There's no good scientific evidence that any one specific food is
either helpful or harmful" when it comes to erasing or preventing
wrinkles, my dermatologist, Roberta Palestine of Bethesda, told me.
"Studies haven't been done at this point in time to prove or
disprove Perricone's theories," Farris echoed. "I'm not telling
you yea or nay. It's important to say we don't know."
Others in the medical community get a bit more riled. Cornell
University dermatology professor Neil Sadick told me he "didn't see
anything of major significance" in the before-and-after pictures
Perricone put in his book to demonstrate results. "There has been
nothing dietary that has been shown to help the skin," he said.
James Carraway, chairman of plastic surgery at Eastern Virginia Medical
School in Norfolk, takes issue with that. He supports the dietary
hypothesis. "There's lots of inferential proof that seals it without
question," he said. If you want to look younger, you've got to follow
a lean-protein diet that includes whole-grain carbohydrates and healthy
fats, said Carraway, a convert to the Zone diet created by Barry Sears.
"I have a full-time nutritionist in my office. That shows you what my
commitment level is."
Apparently, "inferential proof" wasn't good enough for Yale
Medical School, which had employed Perricone as an assistant clinical
professor of dermatology. Yale didn't renew Perricone's contract when it
expired in June. "They were very critical of my books, appearances
and anti-inflammation theories," Perricone said in a recent phone
conversation. "Fine with me."
Perricone, now an adjunct professor at Michigan State University's
College of Human Medicine and a major donor to the school -- in September
he pledged $5 million to establish the Perricone Division of Dermatology
there -- is clearly peeved by all the criticism. "The dermatologists
who are making these off-the-cuff comments are not reading the scientific
literature," he said. "We know that what you eat can affect your
cardiovascular risk, your risk of cancer and other diseases. Why wouldn't
it affect your skin?"
A good question, it seemed to me. Worth exploring more than skin deep.
Here are the basic facts: As we age, skin gets thinner, drier, less
elastic and less firm. Time, gravity and genetics -- things we can't
control -- affect how our skin ages. Sun exposure and smoking -- things we
can control -- cause wrinkling and other skin damage.
Here's where it gets complicated. Most doctors now agree that aging
skin cells produce excess amounts of free radicals, defined in an article
by the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) as "unstable oxygen
molecules which, under ideal circumstances, are removed by naturally
occurring antioxidants within the skin's cells."
Some free radicals are beneficial, like the ones that white blood cells
release to fight disease. But there's general agreement that
overproduction of free radicals can lead to cancer and heart disease --
and also to wrinkles.
"In aging skin cells," the AAD article continues,
"naturally occurring antioxidants are in short supply. The free
radicals generated are left unchecked and cause damage to cell membranes,
proteins and DNA. These free radicals eventually break down collagen and
release chemical mediators that cause inflammation in the skin. It is a
combination of these cellular and molecular events that leads to skin
aging and the formation of wrinkles."
Eat Your Wrinkles Away
Most medical professionals say they don't have a complete understanding
of how to combat the onslaught of free radicals to fight disease or
wrinkles.
Perricone says he does. His prescription: Eat more foods rich in
antioxidants, like salmon, olive oil, fruit and vegetables, cut the carbs
and sugar and take the nutritional supplements he sells for $120 a month.
(He says this is his break-even price for the pills.)
Perricone believes that the digestion of certain foods -- sugars and
some carbohydrates -- creates more free radicals and more inflammation on
a cellular level. "Inflammation is at the basis of most disease
processes and aging," he said. "I've been saying that for 15
years, and the literature [to substantiate it] can fill a room right
now." (A study in the New England Journal of Medicine recently
reported that chronic inflammation may play a causal role in strokes and
heart attacks.)
To fight inflammation, Perricone advises people to watch their diets.
His book includes a list of pro-inflammatory (bad) foods and
anti-inflammatory (good) ones. The list of evil foods includes the usual
suspects -- alcohol, beef, cake, cookies, breads, potatoes, pasta, rice,
pizza, chocolate and butter -- plus some you wouldn't guess, like bananas,
yams, carrots, beets, grapes, oranges, peas and watermelon.
The virtuous foods include lean proteins -- fish, chicken, tofu, turkey
-- most fruit and vegetables, some low-fat dairy products, and the
"good fats," olive oil and nuts.
Does the Perricone diet make sense to nutritionists? I asked Jeffrey
Blumberg, nutrition professor and chief of the Antioxidant Research Lab at
Tufts University. "I don't know of any studies that substantiate what
he's saying," Blumberg told me. "Most of the biomedical science
has been focused on major health problems, including things like skin
cancer. The federal government isn't spending millions and millions of
dollars to support academic research to study how we can slow down skin
wrinkling."
Still, Blumberg admits, there's an element of truth in what Perricone
is saying. "There's no doubt that antioxidants play a role in
promoting the healthy functioning of the skin and help to fight free
radicals that can cause wrinkling," Blumberg said. "We know that
if you have lower intakes of antioxidants and lower levels in your skin,
you are at higher risk for skin cancers. We know that antioxidants are
important, but we just can't tell you exactly which ones in which doses.
"The certainty and unequivocal nature" of Perricone's precise
prescription go way beyond scientific knowledge, Blumberg said. There's no
professional consensus, he said, that a high-protein diet makes sense.
"Are potatoes an inflammatory food?" he asked. "Not to my
knowledge. I don't know anyone else in the nutrition community who refers
to them that way."
Before and After
Dawn, Day Four. My husband snapped the "after" photos, and I
poured a welcome -- no, thrilling -- bowl of MultiGrain Cheerios.
My own analysis, after hours of nasal gazing, is that the three-day
diet actually made a little bit of a difference in my face. Science or no,
I lost three pounds, which must make a difference from the neck up. And it
seemed to me that my pores were smaller, my eyelids less heavy and my chin
line less blurry.
Since I'm not the best judge of how I look (how could I ever have
thought that dress looked good on me?), I asked 26 of my closest friends
to go through the before and after pics, which I had cleverly color-coded.
The ones of me in the blue bathrobe were taken before the diet; the ones
in the green bathrobe, after.
I was careful not to prejudice the jury. I told my friends that I had
done a three-day diet designed to erase wrinkles and wanted them to judge
the results. I handed each friend a pack of 10 pictures, five of me in
blue, five in green. I varied the one on top, and instructed them to
separate the photos by bathrobe color and pick the ones that showed a
younger-looking me.
Their verdict: By more than a 2-to-1 margin (18-8), my friends said I
looked younger in the blue bathrobe, before the diet.
I don't quite know what to make of that. Perhaps I was happier, or the
lighting was better, or I just look better in blue. Did the diet work? I
guess the answer is yes and no, which is kind of how I feel about
Perricone in general.
Yes, he overstates the case for "a facelift in your fridge."
Yes, he's making a mint selling books, vitamins and creams to baby
boomers, primarily women, who feel that somehow they should be able to
beat this aging thing if only they try harder. And, yes, he's
sanctimonious and slick.
But his diet, wrinkle cure or no, seems a generally healthy way to
approach weight loss. Does promoting it as a way to fight the signs of
aging make him very different from the dermatologists who promote Botox
injections and laser treatments as fonts of youth. . . or the companies
that sell make-up and hair dye and teeth whiteners?
"I'm using vanity to get people to do the right thing,"
Perricone told me. "Because we're talking about the way you look,
it's working." If we do nothing and Americans continue to get fatter
and lazier and older, Perricone warned, " our health care system is
going to collapse. If we act now to change the way we approach medicine,
through a healthy diet, nutritional supplements and lifestyle changes, we
can turn this ship around.
"We can prevent so much chronic disease," he said, "but
we've got to move quickly."
Ah. So it's really "The Perricone Prescription: A Physician's
28-Day Program to Prevent Chronic Disease and Save the American Health
Care System."
He's right. No one would buy that.
Stefanie Weiss works at the University of
Maryland's Academy of Leadership.
Copyright
© 2002 Global Action on Aging
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