There is a legendary spring called the Fountain of Youth that is suppose to restore the youth of anyone who drinks from it. This fountain has been mentioned in tales across the world for thousands of years. According to a recent study by Jeremy Warner and his team, plastic surgery seems to make people look about 8.9 years younger than their actual age. Their data came from 60 patients between the ages of 45 and 72 who had all undergone certain facial plastic surgeries. Then they asked 40 medical students to guess the age of those patients in pictures before and after surgery. The more surgeries done on patients (eyelid work, face, neck and forehead lifts), the younger people perceived them.
What happened to aging gracefully or is there such a thing? Gerontologists say that a part of accepting one’s age is to conquer fear. Attitude matters a lot. Society, however, does not make it easy to accept one’s aging, especially for women. Susan Whitbourne, PhD, says, “For some reason, our society is very obsessed with pointing out negative aspects of againg. Don’t get bogged down in all the hype about aging. There’s nothing you can do; the clock is going to tick away.”
We know we can’t stop time, but that doesn’t stop many of us from trying, which is why we have a huge market for anti-aging beauty products and plastic surgery. Holly Tully, who has been involved in the natural products industry for many years, gave the perfect example on how we are still searching for that Fountain of Youth. She mentions a product that was made to lower cholesterol, but the product also unexpectedly decreased the amount of gray hair. The company could sell their product from two different angles: health or vanity. Not surprisingly, they chose the gray-hair approach. Despite being critical of our youth obsessed society, she admits that now that she has gray hair, she wants to track down the product. “I can’t remember what I ate for dinner last week, yet I can remember a beauty product from well over a decade ago. How’s that for case in point?”
References:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/241970.php