The White Smile Diet

An English study is something you can use daily, according to The British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry which has developed an eating regime known as The While Smile Diet. The routine promises to keep your pearly whites more pearly. The Academy claims eating more of the foods listed below can keep your “gnashes” (British slang for “teeth”) gleaming instead of gray.

Thus, just consume more of the following:

• More raw veggies. They help remove surface stains on your teeth. (Besides, no cooking is involved!)


• Strawberries also help whiten your gnashes.


• Avoid stain producing foods and drink, most notably:




• Coffee and tea


• Red wines


• Cola soft drinks


• Blueberries




• Drink from a straw and let liquids bypass your teeth.
  (Does that mean you can have coffee, tea, red wine and cola drinks after all? They wouldn’t say. But, hey, if you don’t feel silly in a restaurant drinking wine or coffee through a straw, go for it. As for the blueberries, I imagine they would be hard to fit through the straw. Just use your own best judgment on that one.)


• Use sugarless chewing gum. It stimulates saliva which cleans the surface of your teeth.


• Don’t smoke. If you didn’t already know, smoking stains your teeth and is hard on your gums and everything else in and around your body. Even your plants and pets will give up the ghost. Termites have been known to succumb to second hand smoke.

For more on what cosmetic dentistry is all about on this side of the big pond, check out this section.

Also, we here in the Colonies can offer something in dentistry you don’t find very often in Merrie Olde England. You can get a facelift via dentistry !

Tattoo Removal Docs Barely Keep Up!

Newer Tats are in Braille, on Eyes and Even Used on
Fingers to Create Instant Moustaches

Many plastic, cosmetic and dermatological surgeons offer tattoo removal for those times when people regret ever getting the body art in the first place. (READ: Grew up and got a job!)



Laser tattoo removal. It usually requires three to five or more
appointments to completely vaporize the tattoo ink.

If you’re in the market, read more about tattoo removal. (HINT: You’ll burn far more time and money taking it off than that mad, crazy moment back in the day when you first got it!)

Despite that booming trade in removal, more tats are being applied and in more creative areas of the body. No longer restricted to bulging biceps or on a lady’s trim ankle, tattoos are starting to appear on eyeballs and in Braille, too. Yet another trend is tattooing moustaches on fingers.

Hey, I know what you’re thinking. What’s that part about Braille tattoos? How does that work?

Well, say, you want “Mom” inked onto your bulging bicep. Or your best gal or guy’s name delicately inscribed onto your ankle.

It’s done with a series of raised dots, just like in regular Braille. Only no ink is used. The surgeon (if you can find one) just inserts implantable surgical steel, titanium or medical plastic under the skin.


“Mom” in Braille

And that naturally leads to another one of those “Why-did-nobody-ever-think-of-this-before!” moments.

If you have Braille tats on your hand like in the picture below, you can instantly learn the name of the person with whom you are shaking hands. Just don’t assume everybody is named “Mom.!”



Can’t you win some sort of prize for outside-the-box thinking like that?

And here’s another thought:
You gotta admit writing a “Mom” tattoo in dots, saying “This is mom’s name in a red heart with a wavy wreath and an arrow through it” in Braille is going to take up a lot of arm or ankle space. Not to mention all those hands feeling your biceps and ankles.

It probably would look something like this:



But, hey, more power to them. The sightless have enough challenges in life so if they want Braille tattoos, bring ‘em on!

Removal of Braille tattoos: top scientists have carefully analyzed the issues and ramifications involved and have announced they will think of something soon.

One of the hottest new trends in Tattoos is for men and women who want a moustache -- but only some of the time.

It works like this: just ask your favorite skin ink artist to tattoo your choice of moustaches onto your index finger.

Then, say, you want a disguise or you’re at the guest of honor at the annual Moustache Convention. Why, just hold your finger over your lip.
Presto! Instant soup strainer! How easy could things be?


Removal: Put your hand down.

Tattoos on your eyeball probably would not be your doctor’s favorite choice of body art for you. Besides, it gets unsettling with the needle in the eye and all so we’ll just skip that part.



One guy getting an eyeball Tat, concluded his description about creating a tattoo on his eyeball with the following words of wisdom:

“Now that this experiment has been started, please wait for us to either heal or go blind before trying it!”

Removal of eye tattoos? No known method. Start by crying a lot.

Speaking of dots: at least one tattoo aficionado and artist had inked, numbered dots on the length of her lower leg, below. If you connect all 16,581 dots from the lowest to the highest number, the outline of a giraffe appears. Reason? She’s absolutely nuts about giraffes and has been since childhood. Plus, artists do things entirely for reasons of their own.

Unfortunately, the dots are not raised so the artwork is not accessible to readers of Braille. But with legs like that…..whoops! Never mind! Gee, I almost let loose with some highly politically incorrect male chauvinist pig sexism there. But you get the general concept, I’m sure.


Removal? Basic tattoo removal.

Top Five Weird Things that Happen to Doctors

The lives of doctors aren’t all yachts, golf courses, winter vacations in Monaco, Bentleys and high end dressing rooms for their own T.V. shows.

They actually go to work to work every day and interact with other people. So the occasional weird, embarrassing or you-won’t-believe-what-happened-to-me-today moments occur in their lives, too.

Here are the top five weird things that have happened to doctors, sent in by the physicians themselves!

1. A man comes into the ER and yells, "My wife's going to have her baby in the cab!" I grabbed my stuff, rushed out to the cab, lifted the lady's dress, and began to take off her underwear. Suddenly I noticed that there were several cabs -and I was in the wrong one.
Submitted by Dr. Mark MacDonald



2. At the beginning of my shift I placed a stethoscope on an elderly and slightly deaf female patient's anterior chest wall. "Big breaths," I instructed. "Yes, they used to be," replied the patient.
Submitted by Dr. Richard Byrnes

3. During a patient's two week follow-up appointment with his cardiologist, he informed me, his doctor, that he was having trouble with one of his medications. "Which one?” I asked. "The patch. The nurse told me to put on a new one every six hours and now I'm running out of places to put it!" I had him quickly undress and discovered what I hoped I wouldn't see. Yes, the man had over fifty patches on his body! Now, the instructions include removal of the old patch before applying a new one.
Submitted by Dr. Rebecca St. Clair

4. While acquainting myself with a new elderly patient, I asked, "How long have you been bedridden?" After a look of complete confusion, she answered..."Why, not for about twenty years - when my husband was alive."
Submitted by Dr. Steven Swanson



5. As a new, young MD doing his residency in obstetrics, I was quite embarrassed when performing female pelvic exams. To cover my embarrassment I had unconsciously formed a habit of whistling softly. The middle-aged lady upon whom I was performing this exam suddenly burst out laughing and further embarrassing me. I looked up from my work and sheepishly said, "I'm sorry. Was I tickling you?"
She replied, "No doctor, but the song you were whistling was, 'I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Wiener'!"
Dr. wouldn't submit his name

Scalpel! Clamp! Crochet hook!

To develop a new technique, Peter Lawrence, M.D., chief of vascular surgery at University of California, Los Angeles, bought a size 7 crochet hook.

However, Dr. Lawrence wasn’t knitting; he saw a way to use a crochet hook as a new surgical tool to remove varicose veins.

The old surgical methods involve some pain, stitches and time off for recovery. Lasers and radio frequency, using heat and energy are also employed along with vein stripping, tying off the vein or injecting a solution that would make the varicose vein whither and die.



This crochet hook is for knitting,
not surgery.

Using the crochet hook method, Dr. Lawrence has done 268 cases in the last two years. He makes a very small incision, reaches in with the crochet hook (which has been adapted for surgery) and snags and pulls out the vein. The incision is so small, no stitches are needed and the resulting scar looks like a freckle. Read more.

Some English doctors are using the same method to pull large veins out of aging hands but Dr. Lawrence advises against it. Many other plastic surgeons routinely make older hands look younger.

“The day may come when you will very much need those veins in your hands to insert I.V. needles,” says the doctor.

Internet Plastic Surgery Giveaways

Ever hear of “owning a piece of the rock?” Well, the same concept is being applied to plastic surgery.

Back in 2004, Linda Peacegrove, a Swedish model, suffered a personal and professional loss when medical treatments following a thyroid gland surgery left her, well, let’s just say, severely bosom challenged.



So she put up a website, asking for donations toward a breast augmentation. We would love to tell you the name of the now-404 website but it currently redirects to an XXX-explicit Web site you would not want your ten-year-old to see. (Hey, you would not want your 40-year-old husband to see this site!) And the Web site is in Sweden. Enough said?

Anyhow, Linda tossed in the towel when she only received $808 from a tight-fisted public toward the $6000 needed for surgery.

Help a Girl Fill a Sweater!”

The next Internet donation request for plastic surgery came from the United States where a 23-year-old student -- who identifies herself only as “Michel” with a 34A bosom -- bemoaned her lot and asked computer users to “help a girl fill a sweater!” and pass the electronic hat for her breast enhancement fund.

Results? The milk of human kindness never flowed so abundantly!

In about a year, total strangers donated the required $4500. After the procedure, Michel posted tasteful (READ: with clothes) before-and-after pictures on her website as an all-purpose thank you. (We would also love to mention the name of her website but in the last two years, nasty, nasty X-rated ads have been added to this site, too!) However, we have posted pictures of Michel (below) that give you an idea of the, er, full impact that random acts of kindness can achieve.

Michel shows the results wrought by her adoring public:

The bottom picture shows Michel before she started asking for donations. She’s wearing the same top in both pictures.


before

after

You may think a 23-year-old having rejuvenation surgery is pretty unusual. However, somebody as young as Michel having plastic surgery is becoming more of a trend. For a closer look at people in their 20s having plastic surgery, take a look at our CosmeticSurgery.com article, Restylane & Juvederm: New Accessories for 20-Somethings.

(By the way, we did not crop her pictures. Michel may be bold about asking for help but she’s also shy about showing her whole face on the Internet.)

After that, Nicole, another student, then 26, noted Michel’s success and publicly decried her own bony haunches by putting up a now-defunct website. Her purpose? Nicole wanted $6,000 for a buttocks augmentation, declaring her rear end was as thin as a Jenny Craig instructor in Bangladesh during famine. But Nicole called it quits after the milk of human kindness could only squeeze out a paltry $155.

Breast Implants: No Charge!

The latest and largest Internet attempt to draw on the kindness of total strangers is MyFreeImplants.com.

Here’s how it works: Women over 18 post their clothed head-and-body shots along with a two or three line bio and plea for donations while identifying themselves by first name only.

Guys -- known on this site as “benefactors” -- chip in with whatever they can afford. But first, they must shell out for “message credits” priced at $1.20 each. To send the women emails, benefactors pay with the message credits. When the donations beyond message credits are sufficient, the woman has a breast enhancement surgery and then posts thank you notes, along with more-or-less clothed, before-and-after pictures. (They aren’t X-rated but they are also pretty far from PG13!)

Eight women are posted on the home page with the amounts they claim to have raised, from $145 to $5765.

And why would guys make donations to a total stranger? Even if it is a lovely stranger? Who becomes a very well-endowed stranger? Guys being guys, don’t they ask for something tangible in return for their money?

“There are a million different reasons why men donate,” says co-founder Jay Moore, an M.B.A. who helped put up the website as a hobby. “Some expect sexy pictures, others just want to chat, establish a friendship, talk about problems and some are just philanthropists.”
The site claims five million page views monthly.


Rita Rudner

But before contributing anything, it might be a good idea to mention one of comedienne Rita Rudner’s on-point observations about human nature. She said: “Some people think having large breasts makes a woman stupid. Actually, it’s quite the opposite: A woman with large breasts makes men stupid.”

Top Five Plastic Surgeries Your Insurance Will Cover (Maybe!!)

There are at least five. Here are the most commonly done.

1.Eyelid surgery

With more baby boomers -- the largest percentage of our population -- passing the half century mark every day, legions of upper and lower eyelids are starting to sag like fleets of Mac trucks crossing rope bridges.

What your insurance company doesn’t want you to know: if your upper eyelids are starting to fall over your eyeballs so that your vision is obscured, they should cover the procedure. Average cost of eyelid surgery in the United States: $3825.

Number of blepharoplasties done in 2006: 210,000 according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS).

Sagging eyelid

2.Breast reduction

Extremely large breasts cause back and other health woes and
will eventually cost your insurance company even more money if left
untreated.

The magic words that cause even the stingiest insurers to let their cash
flow like fountains: “I have back, neck and shoulder pain due to my
extremely large breasts.” But don’t try to bluff. You may have
to show a doctor’s report, proving the condition exists.

Some breasts are so large, the weight on the woman’s bra straps have
worn notches into her shoulder bones. Medically, the condition is known
as shoulder grooving.

The total cost of breast reduction surgery averages about $8500 in the United States. That usually covers the surgeons’ fees, facility costs, the anesthesiologist, post-op visits and medicines.

In 2006, plastic surgeons performed 104,455 breast reduction procedures, according to the ASPS.

3. Breast reconstruction

That is a four-to-six hour procedure that is usually done in one of
four ways to rebuild the female breast, or breasts, after a mastectomy.

The procedure can keep you off your feet for one to six
weeks, depending on the reconstruction method used.

As far as your medical coverage is concerned, there is simply no wiggle room for the insurance company. Current law requires them to cover the operation. Be sure and say you’ve read the Women's Health and Cancer Rights Act.

Fees vary widely depending on whether mastectomy is included.
Number performed in the United States in 2006? 56,176, according to the ASPS.

4. Hand Surgery

Plastic surgeons are highly skilled in operating on tiny bodily structures so many also perform hand surgery, usually to relieve carpal tunnel syndrome. But the surgeons may also rejoin amputated fingers or even move a toe to a hand so a person can work again.

Hand surgery rejoins nerves, muscles, tendons and bones to bring back normal function and feeling. The various types of hand surgery vary so much in costs, an average cost can’t be pinned down.

What does your insurance company need to know? Easy! You can’t work without your hands functioning properly. (That way, you can continue writing checks to your insurers!)

2006 saw 155,810 hand surgeries, according to experts.



A 57-year-old English woman shows the difference cosmetic hand surgery can make. The age revealing veins in her left hand have been removed by plastic surgery. Compare the treated hand to her other hand for a sense of before and after. We hope she likes it because a U.S. insurance company would not pay for it.

5. Facial tumor removal.

A plastic or dermatological surgeon may have to take off a dangerous facial growth -- like basal cell carcinoma -- and then transplant some donor skin over the wound.

Your insurance company needs to know the plastic or dermatological surgeon is preventing a much more, expensive condition, something that will cost them even more money in the long run.

Removing a facial growth by electrodessication and curettage runs from $250 to $500.
By excision with a scalpel, about $1200.
By Mohs surgery from $2000 to 2500.
If you have a Mohs surgery in an operating room as an outpatient, plan on about $4000.

The American Academy of Dermatology says about one million cases of facial skin cancer crop up yearly. Overall, 3.9 million tumor removals were done in 2006, says the ASPS.

HINT: Most insurance companies routinely reject the first request for coverage on almost any procedure. It’s because most people then forget about it all together.

Those in the know send a second request which is often approved, especially if you show the procedure is not to make you look better but for serious medical reasons.

Changing Your Appearance -- Japanese Style

After your plastic surgery, you expect to look younger, more rested, more refreshed and just better.

But would you want to look like, oh, say, a vending machine?

That’s doable in Japan. A top designer of women’s clothes has created a fold up camouflage sheet for wear under skirts. When you are alone at night on a dark street and feel threatened, you just pull out the camo sheet, turn your back to a wall and hold the sheet up over your head.

Presto! You’re a vending machine! Well, you look like one, anyhow. The creep goes sauntering on by, thinking you’ve vanished into thin air. The deluxe version (pictured below) has four sides for a more complete camouflaging experience.

Let’s just hope street creeps are not thirsty and try to stick coins in your eye!



The vending machine closest to the camera is a woman waiting for danger to pass. Maybe next time she should pull her toes in under cover, too! Oh, and by the way, never, never rock these machines -- even the camouflage models are top heavy and can topple over, causing injury! (DISCLAIMER: Trembling might give you away. Most vending machines stand as still as a statue.)

Club of the Month: Italy’s Ugly Club

Sounds like a plastic surgeon’s dream, doesn’t it? An entire club of people whose looks could use more than the average amount of professional nipping and tucking.



Actually, the club was started by Telesforo Iacobelli, a man with a small nose. He is considered less attractive because Italians really dig a big schnozzle.

So, every year, the Ugly Club in Piobbico, Italy, holds the Festival of the Ugly and picks a new president. Want to guess who wins? You got it, ‘ol Telesforo himself. It’s because he has spent his entire adult life fighting for the recognition of the ugly in a world that prizes physical beauty.

But here’s the secret the Ugly Club does not want you to know: the club was originally started 40 years ago for the town’s single women who felt they could not find mates because they, the women, were not lovely enough.
That might have something to do with the choosing of the club’s motto: “Ugliness is a virtue, beauty is a slave.”


Actually, the only absolute, mud-fence ugly thing about the club is the clubhouse door, pictured, below.



The sign above the door reads, “Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Here Enter!”

Whoops, that’s Dante. Wrong Italian! The sign really says, “National Association of the Ugly.”

Nip Tuck Nation? No, PhotoShop Nation!

Elf Ears = Better Hearing?

Hungarian plastic surgeon, Dr. Lajos Nagy, (now allegedly working in NYC) says on his website he surgically creates elf-like ears for people like these two supposed patients, below.

Plastic Surgery Before Birth?

Next, we read in the plastic surgery news that the latest trend in rejuvenation surgery is prenatal plastic surgery.

Surgeons are now allegedly repairing body parts before birth as evidenced by this sonogram of an unfortunate fetus with a long, unattractive nose in the picture, below.

But miracle of miracles, look at the nice nose job in the after picture. And performed while the patient is still in the womb!



What these two items really have in common is not plastic surgery but PhotoShop. All the above before and after plastic surgery pictures are “100 percent PhotoShopped,” according to Beverly Hills Plastic Surgeon Jason Diamond, M.D., F.A.C.S., a Dr. 90210 plastic surgery star in Beverly Hills.

The amazing thing is how many blogs first fell for Dr. Nagy’s hoax. Swallowing it hook, line and sinker were Plasticized; skepticalcommunity.com; boingboing.net; trendhunter.net; speeple.com; geekologie.com and metafilter.com, among others.

But eagle-eyed blog Meisters seeing right through the stunts -- in addition to your humble scribe at CosmeticSurgery.com blog -- include blogskinny.com and health.propeller.com.

Say, I’ve got a nice bridge in Brooklyn for sale and it’s real cheap, too! Any takers?

Top Ten Things Your Plastic Surgeon Won’t Tell You

1. You’re going to get old anyhow.
Cosmetic plastic surgery does not stop the aging process. Read more.

2. Sure, I’m board certified -- in geriatric medicine.
Many board certifications don’t mean anything for plastic surgery patients. Ask what the surgeon is certified in. More.

3. You need a shrink, not a plastic surgeon.
Some patients are never satisfied and can’t get enough rejuvenation surgery.

4. You can get this procedure for 15 to 30 percent less out of town.
Overhead -- rents, salaries and the cost of operating a business -- are higher in large urban areas. But if you drive out of town you can get the same quality for less.

5. Future effects of surgery? Who Knows?
If you have a breast augmentation, you will have at least one more operation some time in your life to replace the implant. Medical science does not know the future implications of all procedures.

6. Sure, I’ll do your forehead lift. But my specialty is breasts.
Ask your surgeon how many times weekly he or she does the procedure you want. Odds of a good outcome increase if the surgeon performs that operation two to three times a week.

7. It’s the anesthesia you really need to worry about.
If you are put under a general, ask if the anesthesiologist is board certified in anesthesiology. If you will be put to sleep, ask who is going to monitor you. Sometimes, a nurse anesthetist is O.K.

8. My office is not really the best place for surgery.
Some procedures should be done in a certified surgical center or a hospital. Ask if the surgery center is AAAHC or JCAHO certified. Read more.

9. Me? I went to dental school.
Some states allow dentists to perform plastic surgery.

10. You could have four more procedures overseas at
the same price.
Going oversees for plastic surgery can be much, much cheaper but is fraught with risk. Dr. 90210’s Dr. Kotler adds the seven smart questions to ask before having cosmetic surgery overseas.

Plastic Surgery Greeting Cards

Remember our former blog, wherein we talked about the new plastic surgery CosmeTees shirts? Those spiffy, rhinestone-studded Tees announcing your surgical rejuvenation?

Well, supposing your best gal pal undergoes some plastic surgery and starts wearing one of those shirts? You gotta admit she’s crying for attention. So what DO you do?

How about sending her a plastic surgery greeting card?

The cards hit breast augmentation pretty hard, but, hey, why not? So many women are having breast enhancement, it has become the nation’s top surgical rejuvenation.

Anyhow, greeting cards like the ones just below are for your friend’s breast enlargement:





For fat transfer patients:

*I though we could sit around and chew the fat!

For rhinoplasty patients:

*Your Nose Looks Great!

For sclerotherapy patients:

• You’re so Vein!”

For Botox patients:

• A card with a drawing of two women spraying each other with starch

And an all-purpose card for any procedure that has made a real difference, concentrating on the magic words healed patients love to hear from others:


(Greeting cards, courtesy of Lee Sequeira and GoodTobeYou.com)

NEXT TIME: How offshore plastic surgery can make your passport invalid and the Top Five Clubs for Plastic Surgery Patients……who want to take chances.

Study: Men Go for Good Looks in Women

So that’s it! I always wondered why guys spent so much time pacing and fretting over girls and women. Now it’s been studied and classified as a scientific fact. So declares The National Academy of Sciences who sponsored a study of 26 men and 20 women, aged 26 to 40, to find out just what all the fuss has been about.

The conclusion was actually limited to: men like good looks in the woman they choose for a mate. It might even explain why plastic surgery remains so popular. (What did the women like? Another surprise! Guys with lots of money. Sorry guys, cosmetic surgery is no help if you’re broke.)

It’s like organizing 30 professors with 10 centuries of higher education and a combined I.Q. of 96,000 to find out things things like, oh, are the oceans wet, is the sky blue (Los Angeles not included, of course,) do dogs bark or cat meow.

Actually, unusual scientific studies are nothing new. Unless I miss my guess, many university professors don’t have enough papers to grade and dream up these intellectual studies to fill time.

Study: English Layabouts

The Sunday Telegraph in London took a poll of 1,000 men for Opinion Health and found that 41 percent do no regular physical exercise whatever and eat “appallingly.” (READ: exist on potato chips and beer.) When asked what they intend to do to counter the ill effects of two decades of slothful living, 23 percent said they would just have rejuvenation procedures and never mind the cost of plastic surgery.

Unfortunately, it really doesn’t work that way. The chairman of the National (U.K.) Obesity Forum reminded everybody that improving your health is “bloody hard work.”

Remember, plastic surgeons are trained to look for people who want plastic surgery for the wrong reasons. Their guideline is the SIMON Profile (Single, Immature, Male, Obsessive and Narcissistic.) Read more about how some patients are screened out as candidates for surgery.