24 Karat Gold Facial Treatment
With the granddaddy of all awards show a few weeks away, it seems that everyone is seeing gold. With Hollywood A-listers parading on the red carpet, starting with the Golden Globes and more recently the SAG Awards, we common-folk cannot help but be envious of their shimmering outfits and flawless make-up on glowing skin.
Well, we’re seeing gold here at Suddenly Slimmer Day Spa, too, with our decadent spa treatmenr, 24-Karat Gold Facial. Yes, you heard that right, we use products infused with tiny particles of gold so clients can take advantage of gold’s natural anti-bacterial and antioxidant qualities. Our skin experts actually use a gold leaf mask all over the face, which will help revitalize and…get this…actually give you a golden glow. We kid you not!
When all is said done, you will certainly feel like you belong on that red carpet!
AWARDS SEASON MAKES BEAUTY AFICIONADOS SEE GOLD
PHOENIX—According to some history books, Cleopatra slept with a gold mask to counteract aging and keep her skin flawless and radiant. Now you need not sleep overnight with a gold mask to achieve youthful skin. With modern technology and innovation in beauty treatments, you certainly can experience the luxury and benefits of gold.
Aside from its antioxidant and anti-microbial capabilities, gold is said to repair UV damage and even out skin tone, keeping skin clear and luminous. It is also believed that gold can keep the skin’s elasticity by increasing collagen production and moisture into the skin. The result is often a firmer-looking skin that is supple and radiant. Gold has also been known to reduce skin inflammation, which reduces age spots that appear as we grow older.
Advances in beauty science can now incorporate minute gold particles into creams and beauty treatments. The particles are so small that it can actually penetrate the skin and do its job of releasing antioxidants and stimulate the production of collagen. Also, some gold beauty products users claim that products with gold infused in them actually give them a “glow.”
OSCARS
“Gold is reflective and having very tiny particles of it penetrate the entire face can actually allow light to be reflected creating this healthy glow throughout the face,” explains Jeanie Marcelino, Suddenly Slimmer Day Spa’s director.
Suddenly Slimmer Day Spa in Phoenix offers a 24-Karat Gold Facial Treatment that does exactly that—pamper you with the most luxurious beauty products that contain gold particles. Marcelino explains that Suddenly Slimmer Day Spa’s 24-Karat Gold Facial Treatment is often sought after during the awards season.
“When clients see Hollywood’s A-listers walking the red carpet, looking healthy, radiant and flawless, they want to look that good, too,” said Marcelino. New and existing clients quickly want to achieve the kind of glow or radiance emanating from celebrities during awards ceremonies. This is when the beauty benefits of gold come into play through the spa’s 24-Karat Gold Facial Treatment.
“It is as luxurious as it sounds,” said Marcelino.
For more information about the beauty benefits of gold, please call or email Suddenly Slimmer Day Spa at 602-952-8446 or email info@suddenlyslimmer.com.
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Boost Metabolism and Prevent Middle-Age Weight Gain
You diet more than ever, but don’t weigh less. Exercise regularly, but still feel flabby. And your once perfectly fitting clothes now seem snug.
If you’re nodding your head in agreement, chances are you’re in the over-35 club. Like most members, you probably have a stay-slim formula (something like regular walks plus no ice cream at night) that no longer seems to be working.
If you never had problems losing or maintaining your weight in your 20s or even in your early 30s, you may not be ready for what happens next, Your metabolism slows by 5 percent each decade. Compared to age 25, you’ll burn about 100 fewer calories a day at 35 and 200 fewer at 45. Do nothing, and you could gain eight to 12 pounds a year.
With age, muscle mass diminishes and so does your metabolic rate (the number of calories your body burns throughout the day, whether you’re sleeping, sitting, or sprinting to catch a bus). Making matters worse, many women unwittingly sabotage their calorie-burning potential with crash diets, ineffective exercise strategies, and other metabolism-busting habits.
Don’t fret yet. Although there are no magic bullets, there’s plenty you can do to boost the number of calories your body burns every day and thus maintain or even lose weight. Here, the six biggest mistakes you can make — and the research-proven metabolism fixes.
Mistake: Relying on Just Your Scale
The basic ones, which only calculate pounds, can’t tell you what percentage of your body weight is lean, calorie-burning muscle and how much is puffy, sluggish fat. Even a woman whose weight is in the normal range can have a high percentage of body fat and a low percentage of muscle. And the less muscle you have, the fewer calories you’ll burn.
The metabolic difference between a pound of muscle and a pound of fat is dramatic: Muscle burns at least three times more calories. “A woman who weighs 130 pounds and has a healthy 25 percent body fat will burn about 200 more calories per day than a 130-pound woman with about 40 percent body fat — a typical level for women at midlife,” says David C. Nieman, Dr.P.H., director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. “If the woman with more body fat doesn’t start modifying her diet or increase her exercise, she could start putting on weight really fast.”
The Fix: Get an Expert to Weigh In
Visit Suddenly Slimmer Med Spa (or a fitness center affiliated with a hospital) and ask for a body-fat reading. To track your progress, get rechecked roughly every three months.
You can eyeball your fat level at home, too. If you’ve got a poochy tummy or can pinch an inch or more of fat at your waistline or upper arm, you’re probably carrying more body fat than you should.
Anything over 30 percent should be a wake-up call to make some real changes.
Mistake: Crash Dieting
When you slash too many calories, you send your body into starvation mode. A flat-out fast will drop the average woman’s metabolic rate by at least 25 percent. If you’re on a very-low-cal regimen, in the 400- to 800-calorie range, it falls by 15 to 20 percent. Eating fewer than 900 calories a day also prompts your body to burn desirable muscle tissue as well as fat, which slows your metabolic rate even more.
The Fix: Shed Pounds S-L-O-W-L-Y
If you stay within the 1,200- to 1,500-calorie range, you can still slim down — and you’ll lower your metabolic rate only by about 5 percent. What’s more, about 90 percent of the weight you lose will be fat.
Regardless of which type of diet plan you choose, be sure to include lots of lean protein, such as chicken, fish, or lean beef. “Protein contains leucine, an amino acid that seems to protect you from muscle loss during a diet,” says Stuart M. Phillips, Ph.D., associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Skim milk can help even more: Phillips and his team tracked 56 men who pumped iron five days a week for three months and found that those who downed two cups of fat-free milk soon after their workout built more muscle — and lost more flab — than those who drank soy milk or a flavored-carbohydrate drink. “We have evidence that the benefit is very similar for women,” Phillips notes. “They don’t put on as much muscle as men, but they lose more fat.”
Mistake: Only Doing Cardio
If you never challenge your muscles with strength-training moves, you’ll lose up to five pounds of muscle each decade, reports Wayne L. Westcott, Ph.D., fitness research director at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, MA. Cardiovascular exercise (like walking, biking, swimming, or sweating through an aerobics class) is great for your health, but it isn’t strenuous enough to build or even preserve much muscle mass. “Only strength training creates the microscopic tears that prompt muscles to rebuild themselves,” explains Phillips. “Lifting weights promotes a continual remodeling of muscle tissue. The process burns a lot of calories.”
The Fix: Pump Iron
When women at the South Shore YMCA strength trained for 20 minutes twice a week for 10 weeks, they added 2.6 pounds of calorie-hungry lean muscle and lost 4.6 pounds of body fat, which other research shows is likely to boost metabolic rate by 7 percent, notes Westcott.
You should aim for about 40 to 60 minutes of strength training a week. Use the weight room at your local gym, or exercise with dumbbells or resistance bands at home. If you’ve never pumped iron before, sign up for a few sessions with a personal trainer. That way, you’ll learn how to get the most out of each move — without risking injury. And once you’ve been at it for a while, you’ll need to increase the weight or resistance you’re using. “Often, women don’t push themselves hard enough because they’re afraid they’ll bulk up with heavier weights,” notes Fernstrom. “But that kind of muscle gain is unlikely because females don’t have enough testosterone in their bodies to make muscles like men do.”
Mistake: Sticking to the Same Exercises
If you always walk the same route, swim laps at one speed, or even have a single strength-training routine, your muscles adapt and become so efficient that they burn fewer calories while you work out, says Fernstrom. How to tell when it’s time for a change? If any of the following is true: You’re not sweating as much at the end of your routine; you don’t feel that tired after working out; or you’re gaining weight even though you aren’t eating more or exercising less.
The Fix: Switch It Up
Give your metabolic rate a big boost by adding a few short, fast-paced bursts of speed to your regular walking, biking, swimming, or other aerobic routine. Researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario found that women who did interval workouts on stationary bikes for two weeks burned 36 percent more fat when they completed a continuous ride afterward. The reason: “More muscle fibers got worked during those high-intensity intervals,” says Martin Gibala, Ph.D., an exercise physiologist at McMaster University. “When you push hard in short bursts, it reactivates nerve fibers, builds new capillaries, and forces your body to repair the muscle. All of that burns a tremendous amount of calories — long after you’ve completed your session.”
The best news: “You don’t have to be an elite athlete to get the benefits of intervals,” explains Gibala. “If you’re a walker, pick up the pace for 20 or 30 seconds, then slow down to your usual pace for a minute or two. Then do it again. Start small, with one, two, or three intervals in your walk. As you grow stronger, add more intervals, and make them longer and more intense.”
Mistake: Eating Lightly (or Not At All) Before Noon
“Women often have one of two problems with breakfast,” says Elisabetta Politi, R.D., nutrition director of the Duke Diet & Fitness Center in Durham, NC. “If they overindulge at night, they don’t have much appetite in the morning. Or they’re trying to cut calories early in the day, so they don’t eat enough in the A.M.” Breakfast skimpers and skippers, plus women whose diet resolve is strongest in the morning (“Just coffee and dry toast, please”), commit the same metabolic faux pas: eating too little to flip on their metabolism as well as vital “satisfaction switches” in the brain that register fullness in the stomach.
The Fix: Munch on More Food in the Morning
When researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso analyzed the food diaries of 867 women and men, they discovered a metabolic window of opportunity for appetite control: a hearty breakfast. Study volunteers who ate a bigger meal in the morning went on to eat 100 to 200 fewer calories later in the day. Research from Michigan State University that tracked 4,218 people showed that women who skipped breakfast were 30 percent more likely to be overweight. The best A.M. filler-uppers: oatmeal, eggs, peanut butter — or “anything with fiber and protein,” says Politi.
Mistake: Living a High-Stress, Low-Sleep Life
When things get extra-hectic, your levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, shoot up. And that can trigger cravings for high-fat, high-carb foods, report University of California, San Francisco, researchers. The worst part: Your body also sends that extra fat to your waistline. Millions of years ago, this metabolic trick might have helped cavewomen refuel after fending off marauding mastodons. But if you’ve got 21st-century chronic stress (Job! Kids! House! Marriage!), all that extra cortisol could land you in perpetual “pass the Twinkies” mode.
Sleep deprivation wreaks havoc on your waistline, too. When Harvard Medical School scientists followed 68,183 women for 16 years, they found that those averaging five hours of shut-eye per night were 32 percent more likely to gain 33 pounds than those who got seven hours a night. Those logging an average of six hours per night were 12 percent more likely. What gives? Sleep deprivation increases the appetite-stimulating hormone, ghrelin, and decreases the satisfaction hormone, leptin, say researchers from the University of Chicago. In a study they conducted, tired volunteers craved more candy, cookies, chips, and pasta.
The Fix: Sleep More, Stress Less
Aim for at least seven hours of slumber most nights. Women who snoozed for that long, or longer, had a lower risk of weight problems, the Harvard researchers found. And try meditation — it could keep you in your skinny jeans. A Canadian study of 90 meditators found that those who practiced in a group setting for 1 1/2 hours a week for seven weeks and fit in additional time at home had less stress and anxiety than non-meditators. Or tie on your sneakers and go for a walk in the park or the woods: In a British study, 71 percent of people who walked in the countryside felt less tense afterward. Other research on the health benefits of nature backs this up: A Dutch overview confirmed that just looking at greenery can improve well-being.
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Acupuncture for stop smoking
PHOENIX—If you find yourself vowing to quit smoking for the fifth year in a row, then it’s time to try an alternative to the usual smoking suppressants.
According to Luzivone Damaceno, Licensed Acupuncturist of Suddenly Slimmer Med Spa in Phoenix, more and more smokers are taking advantage of a long-time treatment that originated in China—acupuncture.
Damaceno says that acupuncture balances the nervous system which aids in controlling the cravings smokers get. By inserting disposable needles in special points on the ear, hand and wrist, acupuncture naturally tunes into the body’s relaxation response and reduces sensitivity to pain. While smokers will assert that smoking helps them to relax from their hectic life, acupuncture tells the body that it is already in a relaxed state, therefore, re-iterating that smoking is not needed to achieve it.
Further, acupuncture has been known to increase the production of endorphins, also known as chemical painkillers naturally produced by the body. Endorphins can help smokers feel content and take away the nicotine cravings they get.
Damaceno, who is a certified acupuncturist for 23 years, offers acupuncture treatments at Suddenly Slimmer Med Spa to help smokers quit. At Suddenly Slimmer Med Spa, a typical acupuncture treatment program consists of the three (3) sessions during the first week when the withdrawal symptoms are greatest. Damaceno suggests two (2) follow-up treatments during the second week. And finally, to insure long-term effectiveness, she recommends occasional follow-up visits for two to three months after the initial series. The price per session ranges from $125 to $155.
For more information on how acupuncture can help in your New Year’s resolution to quit smoking, please contact Jeanie Marcelino at 602-952-8446 EX: 2006 or e-mail her at info@suddenlyslimmer.com
Suddenly Slimmer Med Spa is proud to be in business since 1988 in Phoenix. The spa offers the latest Wellness, MedSpa, Weight Loss and Day Spa services in Phoenix Arizona, as well as holistic medicine treatments. Suddenly Slimmer Med Spa is committed to the quality of service it provides for each client and uses the best products and innovative beauty techniques in the industry.
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We love our smartphones; they can do no wrong in our eyes. But, as smart as they are, they could possible be dumb enough to give us wrinkles. According to Dannielli Marcelino, a Phoenix, AZ licensed medical esthetician and laser technician, many of us have adopted the “smartphone squint,” in which we struggle to view our phone screens for extended periods of time, resulting in premature fine lines. Of course, women in pursuit of perfection won’t have any of that; they’re turning to their trusted docs for a little “freshening.”
“The trend for ‘ Smartphones Botox’ is increasing, especially among women who are addicted to gazing at their BlackBerries or iPhones all day,” notes Dannielli Marcelino. “Peering at a small screen causes facial strain, around and between the brows, which may cause premature wrinkles on the face.”
While you won’t be able to pry our smartphones out of our hands anytime soon, Dannielli Marcelino does have some tips for fending off creeping crevices while playing “Angry Birds.”
Break Time – Just like how we’ve been told to step away from the computer screen a few times a day, putting down your phone has its benefits too. “It’s important to put down or at least glance up from your smartphone regularly so that your eyes can rest,” Dannielli Marcelino says. “Though squinting is necessary when using a smartphone [due to the small screen], taking time to relax your eyes can make a significant difference in reducing this new type of strain on your facial muscles.”
Low Lights – Contrary to what you might believe, a bright screen is not easier to see. “Too much light and contrast can cause you to narrow the eyes to take in the brightness,” he says. Instead, change your settings and dim your screen as low as you can go.
Text Plus – Yes, we all may chuckle at those “Jitterbug” phone commercials, but the truth is, larger text is easier to read. Enlarge your text size in your settings. “Also, the zoom function can be a fantastic thing; use it to focus in on images on your device so you can see much more clearly and avoid pulling the inner eye,” Dannielli Marcelino advises.
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