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Chapter One

Dr. Perricone's Three-day Nutritional face-lift

Each morning I follow the same routine. Once I get to the office, I drink a large glass of water and don a crisply starched, white lab coat. I sit down at my desk and glance over my schedule for the day, study the latest results of my patients' lab tests, and read the preparatory notes for my first consultation.

And each day I am filled with the same eager anticipation -- the challenge of helping my patients turn their lives around. Even though I have been in active practice for more than a decade, the rewards of being a dermatologist never fade, because the results are so visible. Physicians who specialize in internal medicine or cardiology, for example, know that if their treatment recommendations are followed, lives can be prolonged and saved. But they can never experience the thrill of seeing a patient return with beautiful, healthy skin, after suffering -- sometimes for years from a disfiguring condition that destroyed the quality of his or her life. The Three-Day Nutritional Face-lift is a gift -- one that will allow you to experience the joy of transformation. If you follow the plan in this chapter, you will see visible results with your own eyes.

The promise of a visible difference in your looks in just three days may seem too good to be true. But if you eat the wrinkle-free way for even a short period of time, you will experience dramatic changes not only in how you look but also in how you feel. You should consider this a test drive. Before you commit to the full month-long program, try the simple three-day plan outlined in this chapter.

The Three-DayNutritional Face-lift focuses on food, the most powerful ally in the fight against wrinkles, sags, and loss of skin tone. Once you see and feel the results you will realize that there is a face-lift in your fridge. The three-day diet presented in this chapter reflects the fundamental concepts of my research on inflammation and aging. With science supporting my recommendations, I am confident that this three-day plan will work for you as it has for so many of my patients.

Jill, a forty-five-year-old former model who is now an executive at a financial management company, came to me for an antiaging consultation. As I entered the examination room and introduced myself, my first impression was that she looked thin and fragile. Even her beautiful smile could not hide how drawn her face was.

When I asked some general background questions about her overall health, she said that in addition to being worried about looking old before her time, her energy levels had hit rock bottom. Jill explained that she had become lethargic; she was always tired and frequently depressed. Although the depression was not severe, she felt the sparkle had gone out of her life. Jill also reported a major loss in her libido, placing a strain on her relationship with her husband. Concerned, Jill had recently made an appointment with her internal medicine physician, who gave her a clean bill of health after a comprehensive physical examination. She was now consulting me to see if a different approach could alleviate her symptoms. I asked Jill about her diet and was not surprised to find that she was severely limiting her caloric intake and was eating almost no protein. Jill admitted that during her years as a model she ate very little and became bulimic in her efforts to keep her weight down. Although she was no longer modeling, her bulimia persisted. At five feet nine inches tall, Jill currently weighed a scant 110 pounds. In fact, like Jill, many women are nutritionally deprived. As a result of their unique brain chemistry, women tend to eat far less protein than their bodies require. Women naturally have lower levels of a neurotransmitter called serotonin, and this important "feel good" chemical drops even lower during menstrual cycles. In order to raise levels of serotonin rapidly, women tend to eat carbohydrates, which boost blood sugar, resulting in a rise of serotonin levels. Though carbohydrates do rapidly raise serotonin levels, once the blood sugar goes up and an insulin response occurs, the serotonin levels crash again, as I will explain in detail in Chapter Three. In order to limit their daily caloric intake, women tend to exclude protein in favor of carbohydrates, many of which have high glycemic indexes, that is, the body can rapidly convert them into sugar -- such as pasta, potatoes, bagels, and so on. These carbohydrates are also directly responsible for loss of skin tone and increased body fat. Yet, with a proper diet composed of adequate protein, low glycemic carbohydrates, and the all-important essential fatty acids, serotonin levels can be elevated to much higher levels. Such a diet sustains these higher levels, keeping mood elevated and eliminating the continual craving for the unhealthy carbohydrates.

As I examined Jill, I found that her skin was very thin, almost translucent. She appeared to have very little sun damage, thanks to her scrupulous avoidance of sun exposure in hopes of preventing wrinkling. Nonetheless, as Jill was about to learn, sun exposure is just one cause of wrinkles, albeit a serious one. Her bone structure was excellent and she had the facial symmetry that is typical of a professional model. Yet overlying this perfect bone structure was skin that was very wrinkled, particularly around the mouth and the chin, where the skin had taken on a crinkled look caused, I knew, by inflammation. This crepeyness is indicative of long-term inadequate nutrition, a signature of marginal protein intake, and it cannot be corrected in just three days. However, I knew that the appearance of this crepeyness would improve after the Three-Day Nutritional Face-lift, and that the long-term program would greatly diminish the accumulated damage.

I felt that I could turn Jill around. If she would follow the antiinflammatory diet during the upcoming three-day weekend, I promised her she would be rejuvenated by Tuesday morning -- a person who both looked and felt renewed. I also gave Jill a topical amino acid formula that was placed in a transdermal delivery system. This formula had demonstrated great success in restoring libido.

Jill was skeptical that a simple change in the way she ate could make much difference in her appearance, or that a lotion could restore her libido...