oh please!...the science behind celebrity issue 3
A Planet Science EXCLUSIVE publication.
september issue contents:
jet lag
Screen Goddess McNaught thrilled shoppers in Bond Street yesterday by making a flying visit from her adopted home in New York where she lives with husband Brad Ford.
Here to publicise her new movie "Time Hike" she commented "I miss the shops in London and the great buzz you get here! I’m often over and I’m so lucky because I really don’t get affected by jet lag."
Zipping back and forth across the Atlantic involves crossing time zones. If you travel from London to New York for a spot of shopping you’ll have to put your watch back 5 hours to be in sync with local time. Unfortunately, your body clock does not adjust so easily and you end up with jet lag.
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Sleeping and eating are circadian rhythms; daily cycles that are controlled by our internal body clock. This clock is actually a collection of neurones found in the hypothalamus of the brain, at the point where the optic nerves from the eyes cross. And there is, of course, a very good reason for this location; the optic nerve signals the presence of light to the body clock.
Once alerted the hypothalamus signals the pineal gland to stop producing melatonin, a hormone that makes you feel sleepy. The hypothalamus also controls body temperature, urine production and other functions that alter with our circadian rhythms. So the external environment resets your body clock; it just takes a little longer than resetting a watch.
If your body was left to its own devices it would actually run on a 25 hour clock. This is why we want to go to bed that bit later each night and sleep in longer in the morning. It is a good excuse the next time you are late in the morning; "It’s my circadian clock!"
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gym work
Aussie hunk David Tasker eschews his former playboy lifestyle these days for the delights of pumping iron. "It’s not that I’m worried about getting older" he drawls in that distinctive Perth burr, "I just love the great feeling I get from a really long work out!"
As we age muscle fibres die and are replaced first by connective tissue and then by fat. But this process can be halted by regular exercise. Exactly how much exercise will vary from person to person.
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How long do you have to spend in the gym per day to defy the effect of ageing on the muscles?
As we age muscle fibres die and are replaced first by connective tissue and then by fat. But this process can be halted by regular exercise. Exactly how much exercise will vary from person to person, but to maintain muscle mass an average person would need to do weights three times a week with 15 repetitions for each muscle group using a weight that makes the last repetition difficult to do.
For example if you wanted to maintain the muscle mass in your biceps you would need to do a set of 15 biceps curls with both arms three times a week.
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telephoto
Aussie model Bobby Cerini who has claimed in the past that "I never even look in a mirror" was captured preening and posing in a store front in down town LA. Hey Bobby…wasn’t it you who brought out the book ‘How to look good without trying’?
Being a celebrity can be hard work: giving yourself totally to the public involves being beautiful and well behaved 24 hours a day. You can’t even let your hair down on holiday. The long lens of a paparazzi photographer may be lurking behind a bush, ready to plaster your indiscretions all over the Sunday tabloids.
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Cameras use lenses to focus the light from objects onto photographic film. Light coming from an object spreads out in all directions; collecting the light and bringing it together enables you to create a clean image. Lenses bend light passing through them. As light enters glass from the air it slows down and as it leaves it speeds up. Because a lens is curved rather than flat different rays of light spend more or less time travelling through the glass, and so slow down by differing amounts. The overall effect is to bend the path of the light.
If you want to take detailed photographs from a long way off, you will need a telephoto lens. These are very long because you must increase the distance between the lens and the film to magnify the image. A normal lens is about 50mm away from the film, but a telephoto lens could be a metre away, or even more! A 1000mm lens will magnify an image about 20 times; quite handy if you are hiding under a bush waiting for your celebrity prey to jog by at the other end of the park.
If you want the same effect with a shorter lens you have to fold up the light rays by using mirrors. Such monstrous lenses are very heavy; to avoid blurring you will need a tripod to keep the camera steady.
grainy pictures
Telephoto lenses work by magnifying a picture onto photographic film at the back of the camera. Most of the time you get a clear image - the exception to this is when you have to enlarge the image. In a digital photo the image is made up of pixels.
To increase the image size each pixel is made bigger, which results in a fuzzy picture. Traditional cameras have a similar problem in that the photographic film reacts to the light hitting it thereby creating a blob of colour, or grain, on the negative.
As the image gets bigger so does the blob making the picture grainy. The paparazzi have the best cameras the only way for them to get a better picture is to get closer.
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colonic irrigation
Interior designer Sarah Hemmings, from popular TV home make-over show Ruin Nation has got the contract for the top Colonic Irrigation Venue, The Squirtman Clinic, in fashionable Chelsea. "Honestly! I’m a convert! It’s an absolutely amazing feeling, and it’s given me so much inspiration for my designs for the place – I’m thinking browns – maybe dark green…."
Colonic irrigation, or hydrotherapy, flushes large quantities of liquid through a tube inserted in the rectum in an effort to dislodge its contents – contents that may have lurked there for a number of years.
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Some of our most popular stars are so slight it seems that there would be little to flush out of their system. But now and again they feel the need to remove that nasty build up of celery and grapes!
the process
Ever wondered where that marble you swallowed when you were six got to? There is a whole array of ‘flavoured’ liquids that they use for irrigation; common favourites include coffee, herbs and wheat grass. They fill the rectum with a few pints at a time to wash through the intestine. The fluid is left to flow back out along with some bowel contents.
why
Advocates of the procedure believe that colonic irrigation is like wiping the slate clean, claiming it detoxifies your body and cleanses your system. It is said that with regular irrigation you can expect to feel higher energy levels, clearer skin, and have fewer headaches in addition to other health benefits.
In truth the benefits are probably more psychological rather than physical. There is no solid evidence of significant health benefits from the procedure. In fact, there is the danger of infection from non-sterile equipment or septicaemia if the intestinal wall is accidentally cut.
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teeth whitening
Former baddest boy of the boy band Baadd Boys, Bundock takes a little time out between takes in the nearby recording studio to wow the pigeons with a toon or two. He’s admitted that married life has changed him for the better – it even looks like model/actress Melange has got him to brush his teeth!
If you weren’t born with naturally white gnashers, no amount of tooth-brushing will make them that way. If you can’t live without perfect white teeth (and so many celebs just can’t), then you’ll have to chew on this: your dentist can bleach your teeth by making you a custom fitted gum shield filled with beaching gel which you wear for a certain time each day or night. Hmmm, yum!
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Teeth come in many shades of white from a yellowy white to a greyish white and the colour we would all like our teeth to be - a bright sparkling white. There are now many procedures and products on the market to help us achieve a whiter than white smile.
why do teeth become stained?
Our diet and lifestyle effect the colour of our teeth - drinking tea, coffee or blackcurrant juice and smoking are some of the most common causes of extrinsic or surface stains on teeth.
Teeth can also be intrinsically stained due to discoloration of the tooth itself. Common causes of intrinsic stains are damage to the nerve within the tooth, abnormalities during development of the teeth, ageing and some prescription drugs such as the antibiotic tetracycline.
can we get rid of these stains?
You can choose from a huge array of whitening toothpastes in the shops. These toothpastes normally contain abrasives which help remove surface stains by scrubbing them off. In addition some toothpastes contain chemicals that are supposed to remove stains or help prevent stains from forming. There is no scientific evidence to suggest that these toothpastes do any more than remove surface stains and as these toothpastes are normally quite abrasive it is not recommended that use you them too often. You could end up wearing down the protective enamel layer of your teeth.
If you're really serious about whitening your teeth then you should do what all the celebrities do - turn to your dentist. The good news is that no matter how stained your teeth are, your dentist will be able to make them sparklingly white. Your dentist can bleach your teeth by making you a custom fitted gum shield filled with beaching gel which you wear for a certain time each day or night. The gel normally contains hydrogen peroxide or carbamide peroxide that bleaches the teeth removing both intrinsic and extrinsic stains. You can get similar over the counter bleaching kits, but the ones available in the EU contain such small amounts of active ingredients that they hardly have any effect.
If all that doesn't work you can follow Ronan Keating's example and get something a bit similar to false nails but for your teeth, veneers. However, they will set you back somewhere between £3000 and £5000.
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