Beauty from within is ‘in’

By: Marge C. Enriquez
Philippine Daily Inquirer

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The new beautifiers come in pills and sachets. Packed with vitamins and minerals, they give hope in reducing the signs of aging, weight gain or sun damage.

Dubbed as “beauty ingestibles,” “nutriceuticals” or “internal beauty,” these products claim that if you consume healthy elements, the body or skin should receive the benefits. If these nutrients are more utilizable, skin cells will assimilate them and thus enhance skin’s appearance.

Dermatologist Dr. Angela Cumagun, an associate professor of the University of Santo Tomas College of Medicine, pointed out that ingestibles are recommended if the individual does not get all the nutritional requirements from food.

“It’s not enough that we apply things on the skin, which is the largest organ in the body. What we eat, drink and take in are also important. Supplements tend to be underestimated. They can help to improve the skin, hair and nails.”

Antioxidants

Speaking at the launch of the Watsons Beauty Within corner at SM Makati, she said specific vitamins and minerals act as antioxidants that prevent the excessive buildup of free radicals, which harm the body by bringing premature diseases and aging.

“Antioxidants are the ‘good guys’ and free radicals are the ‘bad guys.’ You get the latter from UV light, stress, alcohol and smoking. They break down the elastin and collagen fibers that cause sagging, wrinkles, and even cancer. When antioxidants face off with these free radicals, they become inactive,” she said.

Cumagun cited A, C and E as the most highly regarded vitamins. Vitamin A plays a key role in vision and cell growth. It strengthens the skin and mucus membrane that creates a barrier to germs. Retinol, its most active form, helps regenerate the skin by stimulating cell production.

Vitamin C repairs bone and tissues. It has been proven to facilitate the building of collagen. Vitamin E prevents the breakdown of body tissues and protects the cells from the sun’s harmful rays.

Some trace minerals have also been identified for their beauty benefits, said Cumagun. Zinc is involved in the synthesis of protein, essential for hair and nails, for building up cells for the immune system, and for improving body metabolism. It is vital to weight loss, acne and wound healing, and also prevents hair loss.

Selenium regulates thyroid metabolism and liver function, neutralizes the effects of alcohol and fats and maintains good skin and hair. Coenzyme Q10 produces cell energy, protects the cells from oxidation damage (loss of electrons or elements in a cell resulting from interaction between oxygen and other substances) and increases the body’s use of oxygen. As an anti-aging ingredient, it boosts skin repair.

In Asia, glutathione is the most popular for its skin lightening benefits. It is known to boost energy and controls inflammation of the cells. Cumagun cited new discoveries, such as pyncnogenol. This antioxidant with anti-inflammatory properties is said to be not only beneficial to the heart, but may also prevent the formation of melanin that causes dark spots.

The amount of supplements depends on every individual’s nutritional requirements, she said.

New concept

“Beauty just can’t come from the outside. It has to start from within,” said Victoria Encarnacion, Watsons marketing director. Beauty Within, she said, is a new concept in select Watsons stores in SM Makati, Megamall, Mall of Asia and North Edsa.

“We’ve come up with a section of products that have been existing in the Watson’s drugstores. We set up a section of ingestibles to help people become beautiful from the inside.”

The products range from pills, slimming teas and sachets. Beauty Within recently launched Potion Ivi, a powdered drink containing collagen, and Vita Pack, which contains pills for whitening, slimming and antioxidation. Both products are exclusive to Watsons.

SM has been the launching pad of many successful brands, such as Mosbeau, now the No. 1 skin whitening ingestible in the market, said Encarnacion.

Lyle Morell, Watsons health business unit director, added: “There are many supplements in market place. All the advertisements and information may not be enough for you to determine which one is best for you. With Beauty Within, we are addressing the basic concerns of women from the 20s to the 40s—skin, whitening, slimming, anti-aging and detoxification. Aside from choosing the products for you, we can also provide advice. If you can’t see an expert like a dermatologist, or there’s too much from the media, the Beauty Within advisers are trained to provide information and explain the product content to help you decide.”

These advisers underwent training with a doctor of pharmacist so they can help customers select the product appropriate for one’s age and lifestyle, said Encarnacion.

Growing Old Before Becoming Rich

By BERNARDO VILLEGAS

October 28, 2010, 5:19pm

MANILA, Philippines – The poster child of the population control advocates is Thailand that has already a per capita income more than twice that of the Philippines. Without belittling the great accomplishments of our former non-identical twin, especially in the area of agribusiness, let me inform the Thai admirers that their idol will be the first country in the history of mankind to grow old before becoming rich. With a per capita of just about $4,000 per annum (compared to a rich country like Singapore that has $37,000 per capita income), 

Thailand is already aging faster than Singapore, whose leaders have been frantically trying to combat the ill effects of a demographic winter. Those over 65 years of age in Thailand comprise 8.7 % of the total population while it is only 8.3% in Singapore.

Rich countries like Japan, Italy, Spain, and the Scandinavian countries are having a hard time coping with their aging population. You can imagine what it will be like with a developing country like Thailand already burdened with too many retired people and not enough young people to support the aging and to constitute a dynamic consumer market. That is why, in the list of emerging markets crafted by the economists of Goldman Sachs, 

Thailand is excluded while Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines (VIP) are among the so-called Next Eleven (N-11) after the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). Although Thailand has a large population, the rapid aging of its people does not make it an attractive emerging market during the next 20 years.

This should make economists who have been systematically comparing Thailand and the Philippines to show the benefits of population control to reconsider their position. Their analysis lacks a theoretical framework. They make an oversimplistic inference. If the Philippine population, they say, had grown as slowly as Thailand over a 25-year period, the Philippine GDP would be four times greater than what it actually is. This is Arithmetic, not Economics. Let me explain.

Thailand's GDP grew much faster than that of the Philippines because of the very enlightened policies of its leaders — inspired by a king with a magnificent obsession for agriculture — of endowing its countryside with excellent infrastructures, e.g. farm-to-market roads, irrigation systems, post-harvest facilities, etc.

 As early as the 1980s, there was no small farm in the most remote areas of Thailand that was not within one kilometer from a good road. During that same period, we were still obsessed with inward-looking, import-substitution, 

ultra-nationalistic industrialization which dragged our economy down to become the "sick man of Asia in the mid-1980s. Thailand made its farmers rich by providing them with efficient infrastructures. Our farmers got poorer and poorer (70 percent of the poor in the Philippines are in the rural areas).

Richer farmers mean less dependence on a large family for farmwork. I find no statistical evidence from the population control advocates that would show that it was the birth-control program that was the primary reason for the deceleration of population growth in Thailand. I maintain that it was the enlightened economic policies that led to a steep fertility decline. 

Even with a lackluster economic performance and ineffective family planning programs, the Philippines saw its fertility rate drop from 6 babies per fertile woman in 1975 to 3.1 in 2008. Without an aggressive population control program, the Thais could have succeeded in bringing down its population growth through the usual forces of later marriages, urbanization of the population, and the education of women (Thailand has one of the highest literacy rates of females in Asia).

 With very aggressive population control, what Thailand achieved was to overshoot the decline way below replacement level. This is why, its population is aging prematurely. It is becoming old before getting rich, a very dangerous combination. And if China does not modify its one-child policy soon, it may be the second country after Thailand to grow old before it grows rich (see International Herald Tribune, October 16-17, p. 12).

When in Cebu City, please visit gregmelep.com for your real estate and retirement needs.

For comments, my e-mail address is bvillegas@uap.edu.ph.