Wendy Ouriel
There are many reasons why our skin ages, but the cause is always the same. Whether it’s weight gain, smoking, sun exposure, plastic surgery, poor diet, or anything else, the cause of skin aging is the accumulation of damage over time. But the reason a 20-year-old can smoke, get sunburnt, and drink and still look 20 is because the body is efficient at repairing damage while an older body is not. And that means an older body contains more accumulation of damage over time than a young one, and the result is an older appearance with wrinkled, thin and loose skin.
But what exactly is it about a youthful body that makes it more resistant to damage to maintain a youthful appearance? And what is it that we slowly lose over time that results in the gradual aging of our skin?
I believe I got a hint of what this might be while driving home with my friends from Del Mar Racetrack. Normally the conversation is reserved for complaints about how a bet was a lock and why one horse should have won and it was robbery that someone else got to the finish line first, but this afternoon was different. One of my friends who has a penchant for cheating systems served us with the period of his life when he was experimenting with supplement cocktails for bodybuilding purposes. He then mentioned, somewhat as an aside, how he once used human growth hormone (HGH) and how it improved his muscle tone and also made it look like he had a face lift.
At this point I really care, how could an injection of hormones intended for bodybuilding give a result that looks like a facelift? I then learned that he bought the injections (black market) for some of his model friends who were using them for anti-aging purposes.
I knew that HGH is a type of hormone that promotes cell reproduction, growth and repair, but this was the first I’d heard that it had potential for significant anti-aging effects. HGH injections are available from a doctor and are usually used in juvenile patients with diseases that affect their growth or in adults with diseases that affect the body’s ability to repair itself. HGH’s ability to repair adult tissue is a clue to its anti-aging potential.
And it makes sense: a hormone that promotes cell birth and renewal and cleans up cellular damage would keep the body young. And it makes even more sense that, because the body produces less and less HGH with age, a drop in this hormone would be concomitant with an aged appearance.
Now, HGH injections are only available with a doctor’s prescription. But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t find them on (or the black) market right away. The problem with this is that while hormones can do good, they can also do bad. Hormones like HGH promote cell proliferation, which means it can also promote uncontrolled cell proliferation, also known as cancer.
I couldn’t get over the fact that if I got a disease like cancer, it was because of my bad life decisions. This is why I quit smoking and eat meat. So the thought that I could get cancer on a vanity like raising my body’s HGH levels to make myself look a little nicer was enough to make me reject the option of getting the HGH injections.
I created OUMERE because I am an advocate of doing your body what it naturally does. Instead of putting hyaluronic acid in my skin care, I made skin care that boosts your body’s ability to produce hyaluronic acid. Instead of putting collagen in my skin care, I created a system to get your body to produce its own collagen. The obvious thing to do with HGH was to see what, if anything, I could do naturally to boost my body’s HGH that would be done in a controlled way by the body without worrying about the harmful effects of synthetic hormone injections.
I believe I found it with fasting.
Fasting is nothing new, but scientific studies of its health effects are relatively recent. There is a healthy body of research spanning nearly 100 years on the subject of intermittent to long-term fasting and its positive effects on the human body. One such positive effect of fasting is the significant increase in HGH.
One study found that after 3 days of fasting, HGH increased by 300% and after 5 days it peaked at 1250%. Another study found that after a 5 day fast HGH increased by up to 267%. Other studies have found that fasting can cause HGH levels to double or triple within 2 to 3 days of fasting.
Intermittent fasting, which is fasting for only a 16-hour window, although it has its own health benefits, did not show a significant increase in HGH.
Fasting has long been known to promote longevity. In addition to an increase in HGH, fasting subjects experience a decrease in blood glucose, IGF (insulin growth factor), and weight loss. All of these promote health and longevity.
Let’s go back to the old normal
I believe that people today are sicker than in the past. Although infant mortality has decreased, children and adults are not living healthy lives and this is causing disease. The average woman in America today weighs exactly what the average man weighed in the 1950s and that’s bad. High weight from overeating and poor diet combined with a sedentary lifestyle is the reason why our population is unhealthy. And the glorification of obesity that I now see in ads to pander to overweight people about their appearance rather than promoting health isn’t exactly helping.
A fast may not be right (or medically safe) for everyone, but there’s something to be said for what it can do for our bodies. The human body does not want to be heavy and sedentary. When you treat your body terribly by eating a diet of canned meats, processed sugar, and sitting all day, it’s going to break down because you’re breaking the evolutionary warranty your body had. It is no coincidence that healthy people look youthful and sick people do not. The moral of the story is that your body is a huge machine. And when you keep it running properly and give it regularly scheduled maintenance and rest, it will do what it does best, naturally. And you’ll look and feel better because of it.
bibliographical references
Kerndt PR, Naughton JL, Driscoll CE, Loxterkamp DA. Fasting: history, pathophysiology and complications. West J Med. 1982 Nov. 137(5):379-99. PMID: 6758355; PMCID: PMC1274154.
Hartman ML, Veldhuis JD, Johnson ML, Lee MM, Alberti KG, Samojlik E, Thorner MO. Growth hormone (GH) secretion frequency and amplitude mediate enhanced GH secretion during a 2-day fast in normal men. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1992 Apr. 74(4):757-65. doi: 10.1210/jcem.74.4.1548337. PMID: 1548337.
Ho KY, Veldhuis JD, Johnson ML, Furlanetto R, Evans WS, Alberti KG, Thorner MO. Fasting enhances the secretion of growth hormone and enhances the complex rhythms of growth hormone secretion in humans. J Clin Invest. 1988 Apr. 81(4):968-75. doi: 10.1172/JCI113450. PMID: 3127426; PMCID: PMC329619.
