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American Morning

'You Are What You Eat' Now Applies to Skin

Aired August 07, 2002 - 09:47   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: They say "you are what you eat." You've heard that one before, but now it applies to your skin. Dermatologist Dr. Nicholas Perricone says diet is a key ingredient to helping you age gracefully. In his new book, it's called "The Perricone Prescription," he lays out an anti-wrinkle regimen designed to rejuvenate the face and body.

And Dr. Perricone, looking and lovely, is with us here this morning.

Doctor, good morning. Thanks for being with us.

DR. NICHOLAS PERRICONE, AUTHOR, "THE PERRICONE PRESCRIPTION": We want to get to results, because I think people hear this and think maybe this will work for me. Let's go to people we have pictures of before and after and you can describe what they've done and the difference that you see. If we can put those up. Do we this those pictures? Ready to go.

There we go. Is this a before?

PERRICONE: Yes, this is before. She was on a three-day ant inflammatory diet, and this is three days later.

KAGAN: Only three days later?

PERRICONE: Three days later, right?

KAGAN: And the difference that you see besides better-combed hair.

PERRICONE: Increased radiance, decreased depth of the nasal (UNINTELLIGIBLE) folds, that goes from the fold of the nose to the corner of mouth, and you can see that the jaw line a little bit crisper, and of course pores appear tighter, but it's sometimes hard to see...

KAGAN: And that's after three days of eating the kind of diet in your book.

PERRICONE: Three days, right.

KAGAN: And these pictured haven't been touched up. You gave us these pictures. PERRICONE: No, they haven't.

KAGAN: Here's the before.

PERRICONE: And this is -- this is after. This is three days, once again. She has increased radiance to her skin, so her skin looks brighter. She has decreased fine lines beneath the eyes. Her jaw line looks crisper, and also nasal (UNINTELLIGIBLE) folds have diminished somewhat.

KAGAN: And one more. This is from the side.

PERRICONE: This is a side view.

Now this is -- she was on a 28-day program, which by the book she followed. And she had considerable results in terms of firming.

KAGAN: And so are these woman wearing the same amount of makeup in each picture and the lighting hasn't been changed?

PERRICONE: We do our best to make sure that conditions are the same.

KAGAN: You talk about a lot has to do with diet and what you eat. Number one change you say to make, go from coffee to tea. Why tea?

PERRICONE: Coffee raises something call cortisol, and that raises your insulin levels. That means that you hang on to body fat, and it has inflammation. Inflammation is at the basis of most disease processes, whether it's heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, it's all inflammation. So if we can alter inflammation in our body, we can become healthier. Now if you just substitute coffee for tea do nothing else different, in six weeks,you will notice a seven to eight pound weight loss.

KAGAN: Weight loss, and then everything is going to look better, not just your skin.

Others idea up there, we're drinking more water, eat your protein before your carbs, and eat protein at every meal. That's something a lot of women don't do.

KAGAN: Women don't eat enough protein. You should have a lot of fish. Fish is a natural anti-inflammatory. Inflammation is what causes our skin to wrinkle and increases our risk of disease.

And in your diet in this book, you talk about good foods and bad food. Some of the good foods, they look like things that you've heard of them and salmon -- do we have a list of good foods? Bad foods.

OK, we have the salmon, the green salad, chicken, cauliflower. I mean, those look like things that are good for you.

PERRICONE: They're high in antioxidants, which act as natural anti-inflammatories. Now the bad actor, of course, is sugar. Stay is pro-inflammatory. You want to Away from sugar because it increases your risk of all these diseases and wrinkles skin.

KAGAN: I enjoy sugar, doctor. I enjoy it. That's going to be hard one.

But bad ones, OK, sugar would be an obvious one with candy bars up there, but you also have bananas, cooked carrots, corn. This is stuff that's good for you, doctor.

PERRICONE: They can also rapidly raise your blood sugar, because you want to eat your food first, and then have a small portion after you have your protein, so it won't raise your blood sugar as rapidly.

KAGAN: You also say, you are so convinced on this diet. There is a three-day version and a 28-day version. You say in your book that diet is more important than sunscreen.

PERRICONE: Well, diet is critical. Now...

KAGAN: To make a statement like that, that sounds downright irresponsible to me, especially from a dermatologist. How can you say that what you eat is more important than sunscreen?

PERRICONE: Sunscreen, of course, I don't say you can give up sunscreen. What you eat is so important, because what you eat determines your risk of disease, not just wrinkles, but heart disease and cancer, all the others. And if you to look really good, beauty comes from the inside out, not the outside in. So I'm not saying sit out in the sun. But if you think you're going to put sunscreen on and then eat garbage, you're not going to do that.

KAGAN: It kind of all goes together, like the fuel you put inside the car.

PERRICONE: Exactly.

KAGAN: Got that. Now in addition to that, you also have something that you say is better than Botox. Botox has gotten a lot of attention. You also think it's dangerous.

PERRICONE: Well, Botox paralyzes the muscle, and a paralyzed muscle will become weak, and I think eventually will sag. I think the alternative is to strengthen the muscles. And DMA, which comes from salmon...

KAGAN: We're going to show this. We've been putting our own lovely (UNINTELLIGIBLE). We put that on about, what, 40 minutes ago I think.

PERRICONE: Yes, about 35-40 minutes ago. And the idea is that it actually causes increased tone. If you increase tone, the muscle shortens. So there's two way to get rid of those wrinkles -- you either paralyze them or increase the tone. I would rather increase the tone. It's more physiologic.

KAGAN: How do you do it with that stuff? DMAE? PERRICONE: Right, just put the cream on topically in the morning, and then put your makeup right over it, and it will cause lift. And the long-term studies, which I think you're going to show photos of are pretty impressive.

KAGAN: Where do people buy this? You can get this is places like Sephora (ph), and Sax (ph) and Nordstrom, and even on the Internet.

Is this yours?

PERRICONE: This is mine.

KAGAN: How much does something like this cost?

PERRICONE: About a month's supply would cost about $85.

KAGAN: $85. We have those photos of -- these are people who have used this.

PERRICONE: Right. This is a woman who was on it four weeks. Look at the difference in the face. It's actually a little bit thinner. This woman was on it for four weeks. You see diminishment. Her eyes looks lighter. This woman was on for 52 weeks. She looks like her younger sister, just a whole impression of that.

KAGAN: And we have our own live model in here. About 40 minutes, we said we'd put it on Graciella (ph). Do you feel the difference?

PERRICONE: Yes.

KAGAN: I got to say, you're looking as lovely to me on your right side as your left side. You have to look right at the camera, straight ahead.

Now explain which side you put it on.

PERRICONE: Now she's tilted. Look right at the camera.

KAGAN: That camera.

There you go. There you go. Doctor, you have to help me explain the difference on her left side.

PERRICONE: Look at the contour here, and the jaw line is a little crisper. See that tighter. Look right at -- her eyebrow is higher on this side, which we can easily say they do that, and then her eyes are wide open. Look underneath the eye, if you can get a little tighter on that. Puffiness has gone down. This is actually cumulative. The longer you use it, the more time you use it, the better the effects, like that 52-week picture.

KAGAN: All right, but as you said, this was stuff you could just do at home by improving your diet. I got to tell you, if you were really good, you'd come up with a diet that would make Bill Hemmer look older. That's our problem around here. He's really 97, but only looks 12. We're trying to work with that.

Dr. Nicholas Perricone, thank you so much. Good luck with the book and the product.

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