Perricone Prescription: A Physician's 28-Day Program for Total Body and Face Rejuvenation

by Nicholas Perricone M.D.

Overview

Now in a stunning trade paperback edition that includes a new bonus chapter, the instant #1 New York Times bestseller The Perricone Prescription is the dramatically effective, total body anti–aging program that includes an easy–to–follow exercise, diet, and skin–care regimen for people of all ages.

We generally believe that lines and wrinkles are an unavoidable part of the aging process. According to Dr. Nicholas V. Perricone, they are actually due to "inflammation" caused by poor nutrition, pollution, sunlight, irritating skin care treatments, and stress. In fact, this type of inflammation is more than just a beauty problem. The production of free radicals that damage the cells and organs in the body also increases the likelihood of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and arthritis.

The good news is, the Perricone Prescription Program can prevent and even reverse these problems. The program will not only produce visible improvement in the skin, it will improve your body's overall health and appearance. Dr. Perricone has developed his own skin care products and recommends other products he believes will help to improve skin tone. By following the Perricone Program of diet, topical creams, vitamins, and exercise, you can dramatically reduce lines and wrinkles and achieve a younger look within three days. You will look and feel better than you ever thought possible. Good health and beautiful skin–an unbeatable combination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060934354
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/30/2004
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 7.42(h) x 0.92(d)

About the Author

Nicholas Perricone, MD, FACN, is a board certified clinical and research dermatologist. A brilliant scholar, Dr. Perricone completed medical school in just 2 1/2 years, graduating at the head of his class. He completed his internship in Pediatrics at Yale Medical School and his Dermatology Residency at Ford Medical Center. Dr. Perricone is regarded as the father of the Inflammation Theory of Aging. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Wrinkle Cure (Rodale Reach May 2000). Warner Books published the trade paper edition in May of 2001. It reached # 1 on both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times bestseller lists March 24, 2002 and remained there for four weeks. Close to one million copies are in print. His PBS-TV special of the same name is one of the top fundraisers for Public Television.

Dr. Perricone is certified by the American Board of Dermatology, is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Dermatology and the Society of Investigative Dermatology. He is the recipient of the 2002 Eli Whitney Award, awarded annually to an outstanding individual for significant contribution to science.

Prior recipients include National Medal of Science recipient, Igor Sikorsky, (founder of Sikorsky aircraft) inventor of the first practical helicopter, which established the bedrock upon which today's helicopter industry rests, and Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome — the lightest, strongest, and most cost-effective structure ever devised.

Dr. Perricone holds dozens of US and international patents for the treatment of skin and systemic disease, and for the use of topical anti-inflammatories for reversing and preventing damage to skin caused by age, the sun, the environment, hormonal changes, etc. He is the author of numerous scientific articles documenting the results of his research and is a contributing editor to the peer-reviewed medical journal Skin and Aging and is a member of the editorial board of Archives of Gerontology & Geriatrics. He is Chairman of the International Symposium on Aging Skin, an annual meeting in which researchers come together from around the world to share their latest scientific breakthroughs in the prevention of aging and aging skin.

Vogue magazine has named Dr. Perricone one of the top four dermatologists in the United States.

His latest book The Perricone Prescription, A Physician's 28-Day Program for Total Body and Face Rejuvenation, is being published by HarperCollins to coincide with the premier of his second television special for PBS-TV, the leading national educational television network, in September of 2002.

Read an Excerpt

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...

The Perricone Prescription. Copyright © by Nicholas Perricone. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Introduction	1
1	Dr. Perricone's Three-Day Nutritional Face-lift	7
2	The Inflammation-Aging Connection	17
3	The Wrinkle-Free Diet	30
4	Anti-inflammatory Supplements for Smooth and Radiant Skin	74
5	Topical Anti-inflammatories for Reversing and Preventing Signs of Aging	110
6	Go for the Glow: The Antiaging Power of Exercise	141
7	Dr. Perricone's 28-Day Wrinkle-Free Program	172
8	The Ageless Future: Developing Technologies	205
	Appendices
A	Recipes for the Perricone Program	219
B	Resources	235
C	Glossary	240
	References	244
	Index	267

Editorial Reviews

Readers know Dr. Nicholas Perricone as the author of the bestseller The Wrinkle Cure, but colleagues think of him as one of the nation's most revered dermatologists and the recipient of the 2002 Eli Whitney Award for scientific achievement. In The Perricone Prescription, this trailblazing researcher presents a realistic 28-day regimen for rejuvenating the skin all over your body.

bn.com

Perricone (The Wrinkle Cure), a professor of dermatology at Yale Medical School, believes that relatively simple changes in eating can effect dramatic changes in physical appearance and well-being. He has created a month-long program broken up into daily menus as well as a more restrictive three-day regimen designed to produce immediate results. Perricone's guiding principle, which he explains in some depth, is to reduce inflammation at the cellular level, which, he believes, causes the skin to age and is also linked to degenerative disease. Perricone suggests that protein and some fat is essential for everyone. He is particularly keen on the benefits of fish. Certain foods high in carbohydrates cereals, breads, bananas are taboo in this plan because of their high glycemic index; they cause a spike in blood sugar and prompt the body's insulin response, which stores rather than burns fat and causes inflammation. Perricone also recommends an exercise regimen, and nearly a third of the book is devoted to a discussion of antioxidants, vitamin supplements and creams. Some may question his nutritional theories, and others may find the diet difficult to stick to, with its almost total restriction of starchy foods. Still, Perricone is a proponent of Barry Sears's The Zone, and readers who have followed that book and Perricone's own bestselling earlier volume will probably appreciate this one. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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