A 12 week study with women has found that green tea catechins are able to improve skin characteristics including elasticity, roughness, scaling, density, and water content.  Additionally, less UV radiation damage was seen in the group that supplemented with green tea catechins.

It is well known that various types of antioxidant compounds tend to accumulate in your skin and help protect it from the UV radiation of the sun.  The carotene Lycopene from tomatoes is one example, as are the tocotrienols of vitamin E. Previous studies have indicated that green tea helps protect the skin, and this new study provides clear evidence of that fact in humans.

The study also showed that green tea boosted oxygen flow to the skin, which peaked at 30 minutes after ingestion. Any time circulation to skin is improved then skin health will be improved – which was certainly the case in this study.

The dose of green tea used in this study was 1,402 mgs of total catechins. Catechins are the active polyphenol in green tea and are standardized in dietary supplement capsules. A capsule containing all high quality green tea, will have around 400 mgs of active catechins. Therefore, you would need 3 – 4 capsules per day to reach the dose tested in this study.

Kids as young as 4 think thin is beautiful, suggesting that media associations of thinness with beauty sink in early.

The findings, published in March in the journal Body Image, aren’t the first to show that kids develop opinions on body weight early. One study, published in 2010 in the journal Sex Roles, found that kids between the ages of 3 and 5 favor thinness. Young kids also consume lots of media: A 2010 study published in the Journal of Pediatrics found that 70 percent of preschoolers watch more TV and play more video and computer games than recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

In the new study, Australian researchers asked 160 children and young adults to rank the attractiveness of female bodies. The participants were shown six images of the same black-clad woman of normal body weight according to Body Mass Index (BMI), a weight-height ratio used to indicate a person’s fatness. In five of the images, the image had been altered the make the woman look thinner or fatter (her face was blotted out with a dark square).

Even the youngest 4-year-olds in the study ranked the “most beautiful” body as significantly thinner than the normal-weight original. On average, participants thought the prettiest body was the one that shaved about 5 percent off the width of the original. Meanwhile, the body ranked “most normal” was the original normal-BMI image.

Given findings that media exposure is linked to body-image issues in adults, one might expect kids to become progressively more enamored with thinness as they grow up and watch more TV and movies, wrote study author Felicity Brown, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Queensland. Instead, young kids were as likely as adults to prefer thinner women. Children may have already gotten the media message about thinness before they even enter school, Brown wrote.

The findings raise concerns for children’s own body images, given that 62 percent of adults in Australia end up overweight or obese according to a 2007-2008 national health survey. There are also implications for discrimination against the overweight, Brown wrote, especially considering earlier research finding that kids as young as 7 see obese people as “contagious” and best avoided. The psychological toll of a fat stigma can worsen an overweight person’s health even further, past research shows.

And while losing weight may have a health benefit for those who are overweight or obese, a fixation on thinness also comes with a price tag — distorted body image has been linked with anorexa nervosa and other eating disorders, which are on the rise in kids.

You won’t find lead or arsenic on the ingredients list of your favourite lip gloss or eyeliner, but a Toronto-based environmental group has tested dozens of cosmetics products commonly used by Canadian women and found virtually all of them were contaminated with heavy metals.

Environmental Defence released a study Monday that shows Canadian consumers can’t assume their cosmetics products are safe, even if they read lists of ingredients carefully.

“Canadians deserve to know what is in their cosmetics,” said Rick Smith, executive director of Environmental Defence. “Given the choice, we think most consumers would not put arsenic or lead on their lips and faces.”

Researchers asked six women from various parts of Canada to name five products they use daily. The researchers then purchased these products in Toronto, along with five other commonly used products, and sent them to an accredited laboratory to have them tested for the presence of arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, beryllium, selenium, thallium and nickel.

All these heavy metals, except for nickel, are banned from being intentionally added to cosmetics in Canada because of negative health effects. But contaminants can show up in makeup for various reasons: they may have been present in raw ingredients, they can be by-products of the manufacturing process, or they can be formed by the breakdown of ingredients. In the case of heavy metals, they may be present in rocks, soil and water used in the manufacturing of pigments, for example.

Items tested included foundations, concealers, powders, blushes and bronzers, mascaras, eyeliners, eyeshadows, lipsticks and glosses. Some products had multiple parts – eyeshadows that include three different shades, for example – so 49 different items were tested in all.

The four metals of most concern for this testing were arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury, because Health Canada is considering limiting their presence as impurities in cosmetics and has designated them as “toxic” because of serious health concerns.

None of the products tested contained mercury, but lead was detected in 96 per cent of the products, arsenic in 20 per cent and cadmium in 51 per cent. Nickel was found in all the products tested, beryllium in 90 per cent, thallium in 61 per cent and selenium in 14 per cent.

“The concern is not just that heavy metals are in our makeup, but exposure to these toxins through the products we apply to our skin, in the air we breathe and in our water and food supply can all add up and accumulate in your body,” Smith said.

Heavy metals can build up in the body over time, the study notes, and are linked to a variety of health problems, “including cancer, reproductive and developmental disorders, neurological problems, memory loss, mood swings, nerve, joint and muscle disorders, cardiovascular, skeletal, blood, immune system, kidney and renal problems, headaches, vomiting, nausea and diarrhea, lung damage, contact dermatitis, brittle hair and hair loss. Many are suspected hormone disrupters and respiratory toxins, and for some like lead, there is no known safe blood level.”

The highest levels of arsenic (70 parts per million), cadmium (3 ppm), and lead (110 ppm) were all found in lip glosses, which are easily ingested because they are worn on the lips.

The highest lead concentration found (in Benefit Benetint Pocket Pal clear lip gloss) is more than 10 times the limit set out in Health Canada’s draft guidelines for contaminants (10 ppm). Even this limit is nearly 10 times higher than what the US FDA has proved to be technically avoidable, at 1.07 ppm.

Canadians spend an estimated $5.3 billion per year on cosmetics, according to Health Canada, and the average Canadian woman uses 12 products, containing a total of 168 unique ingredients, every day.

The researchers hope their report will prompt the federal government to strengthen its regulations on cosmetics, so that manufacturers are required to disclose all intentional ingredients (including fragrance ingredients, which are currently considered proprietary) and unintentional ingredients such as impurities on labels.

In the meantime, the report recommends that consumers:

• Choose safer products. To find out which to avoid and which are safest, visit www.environmentaldefence.ca or www.safecosmetics.org.
• Use less. Consider eliminating some products from your daily routine, or wear makeup less often.
• Press the federal government to give Health Canada the authority and resources required to ensure cosmetics sold in Canada are safe, by visiting www.justbeautiful.ca.
• Demand cosmetics companies fully disclose ingredients, and support those companies that do.

Brazilian Blowout and other hair straightening and smoothing products can release formaldehyde, even when labeled “formaldehyde-free,” according to a hazard alert recently issued by a federal agency for salon workers and owners.

Salon air monitoring tests, conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in response to worker complaints, found high levels of the strong-smelling gas that in some cases exceeded health standards.

OSHA also found that hair salon owners often didn’t know that the product contained or could expose the workers to formaldehyde because it was either labeled “formaldehyde-free” or formaldehyde wasn’t listed on the product or in the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS).

Formaldehyde, which is considered a health hazard, can irritate the eyes and nose and cause allergic reactions in the skin, eyes and lungs. It’s also linked to nose and lung cancer.

Several other countries, including Canada, have already pulled Brazilian Blowout off the market. Some state agencies, meanwhile, including Oregon’s OSHA and Connecticut’s Department of Public Health, have issued warnings.

Last week, the California Attorney General filed an injunction against Brazilian Blowout, seeking to require health warnings on the products, which is the first enforcement action the state has taken under the California Safe Cosmetics Act.

The injunction notes that levels of formaldehyde emitted by the smoothing solution exceed Proposition 65 safe exposure limits “by up to a factor of more than eight for salon workers.”

“It’s clear that we need a better safety system, where products are assessed for safety before they cause harm,” said Stacy Malkan, co-founder of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and author of “Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry.”

The hazard alert provides information about OSHA’s investigations, the health hazards of formaldehyde and how to protect people who are working with hair smoothing and straightening products.

To eliminate potential worker exposure, OSHA recommends that salon owners use products that do not contain formaldehyde, methylene glycol, formalin, methylene oxide, paraform, formic aldehyde, methanal, oxomethane, oxymethylene or Chemical Abstract Service Number 50-00-0.