Fortunately, with a few skin care modifications, you can protect against the effects of winter weather and keep your skin as healthy as it can be.

1. Protect Your Skin’s Natural Oils

Winter air already contains less moisture than other seasons, so it’s important to protect your skin’s natural oils. Avoid hot showers and body soaps that contain detergents. Hot water can further dehydrate your skin, and body soaps that contain detergents can diminish protective skin oils.

2. Hydrate Properly

Hydration is important to the health of your skin year round, but it’s also essential that you moisturize the outer layer of your skin so that you can retain moisture underneath the skin’s outer layer.

People shouldn’t assume that drinking excess fluids will help dry skin, according to Dr. Alicia Zalka, associate clinical professor of dermatology at Yale. If your skin is already very dry, these extra liquids may just evaporate instead of retaining moisture within the skin.

To properly hydrate, remember to moderate your consumption of alcohol or caffeinated beverages. Alcoholic drinks as well as caffeinated beverages can affect your skin and body more during harsh, dry winter months.

3. Reassess Your Skin Care Regimen

Not all skin care products are designed to be used year round. Cleansers and exfoliators for example, should be milder in the winter than in the summer, while moisturizer should be a richer to protect your skin during winter weather. Also, don’t forget that daily sunblock application is just as important in the winter as it is in the summer.

As maker of popular breast implant products such as NATRELLE, McGhan and CUI, the company is in no way affiliated with PIP and seeks to reassure patients and surgeons that Allergan products are of the highest quality and safety.

Allergan breast implants have been on the market for almost 50 years. The products are available in over 60 countries and are subjected to rigorous national and international quality control standards and practices.

Among the many products manufactured by Allergan every year, silicone gel-filled breast implants are by far the most favored among both patients and surgeons. The gel-filled implants have been placed in more than 1 million women worldwide.

As a result of hundreds of thousands of clinical trials, peer-reviewed journals and published reports, silicone gel-filled breast implants have become one the most studied devices in the world. Allergan’s gel-filled implants specifically, have set themselves apart from various competitors due to their more cohesive silicone gel and their stronger outer shells.

A recent report published by the U.S. FDA has again confirmed the safety and effectiveness of silicone breast implants when used as intended, however, it is important for patients to recognize that breast implants are not made for lifelong use.

Patients at some point in their lives may require a removal and replacement. Breast implants should be monitored regularly by a plastic surgeon.

“The war led surgeons to attempt ground-breaking procedures, which paved the way for modern plastic surgery,” said Dr. Andrew Bamji, former curator of the Gillies archive.

Named after plastic surgery pioneer Sir Harold Gillies, the archives include medical documentation, paintings, plastic casts, instruments and more.

The artifacts tell a story about war injuries and the surgical techniques that were developed to treat them.

You can read more about Dr. Gillies’ work on Wikipedia:

“The Queen’s Hospital opened in June 1917 and with its convalescent units provided over 1,000 beds. There Gillies and his colleagues developed many techniques of plastic surgery; more than 11,000 operations were performed on over 5,000 men (mostly soldiers with facial injuries, usually from gunshot wounds).”

Photo: Sir Harold Gillies by Simon Harriyott, on Flickr

The breast implants are said to have a very high failure rate and a non-medical type of silicone gel. France is now encouraging women with these implants to have them removed.

PIP silicone gel-filled implants have never been approved for use in the United States. The only way an American patient would have these implants is if she had undergone breast surgery in another country.

ASPS Monitoring the Situation

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), working with the French Society of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery, is monitoring the recent developments on PIP silicone gel breast implants.

The ASPS issued a statement to its members practicing outside the United States:

“We believe that while the current focus of attention is in France, approximately 80 percent of PIP implants were exported to other countries including the United Kingdom, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Venezuela. There are also reports that implants under the brand name “M,” distributed by a Dutch company in Germany – and possibly elsewhere in Europe – may also be PIP implants that were rebranded as “M” implants.”

According to Reuters, Italy is working with cosmetic surgery clinics to compile a list of women who received the implants. Meanwhile, officials in Brazil and Britain are urging women to check in with their surgeons. The French government is recommending and offering to pay for explantation surgery – if the original surgery was for breast reconstruction.

Allergan Inc, American Breast Implant Maker Assures Quality of Their Implants

In response to the French situation, Allergan issued a lengthy press release to reassure surgeons and patients about the quality of their breast implants. Allergan’s products are marketed under the names Natrelle, McGhan and CUI. None of these implants are included in the French investigation.

“The health authorities are specifically concerned about breast implants made by the company called Poly Implant Prosthese (PIP),” states the Allergan Press Release. The release also describes the extensive checks that are in place to ensure quality of their implants. “Allergan maintains rigorous clinical development processes, extensive manufacturing and quality assurance testing, as well as an industry-leading post-marketing surveillance program, to ensure the highest quality and safety of its breast implants that patients and surgeons can rely on.”

AP Video: France Calls for Breast Implant Removal

This one-minute video from the Associated Press briefly explains the situation in France.

The axilla is the space beneath the shoulder through which vessels and nerves enter and leave the upper arm – the armpit, in layman’s terms.

Patients see this technique as appealing because the incision is in a remote location, away from the breast. That’s why some call it a scarless technique: because the scar, if it is visible, is not associated with the breast augmentation.

Breast Implant Choices

The incision is small, and space is limited when passing the implant from the armpit to the breast. Therefore, only a saline breast implant can be used with the transaxillary technique.

The outer shell of the implant is passed from the armpit to the breast pocket. Through a port, the implant is filled with saline (sterile salt water) while inside the breast pocket.

Challenges of the Transaxillary Method

A significant challenge with the transaxillary technique is difficulty seeing the breast pocket and muscle tissue. Without direct access to the breast (such as with the inframammary technique), it becomes more challenging to control breast implant placement.

Surgeons have addressed this challenge with endoscopy, an established technique in minimally invasive surgery. Using an endoscope, equipped with a tiny camera, your plastic surgeon can get a clear view of the breast pocket and pectoral muscle.

The majority of breast augmentation procedures still use the inframammary technique, which uses an incision in the crease below the breast. However, transaxillary breast augmentation is an accepted technique with rigorous studies evaluating its safety and effectiveness.

Ask Dr. Pfeifer if this technique is suitable for your breast augmentation.

Why would healthy and beauty be growing, while other industries remain flat in the country?

Inexpensive Ego Boosts Are Popular

It could be that people simply need a boost. When unemployment is nearly 23 percent, “inexpensive ego-boosts go a long way” reports PRI’s Marco Werman.

Salon manager Patricia Marquez explains, “a person needs to feel handsome to feel comfortable with themselves, she says. “If they don’t look good it doesn’t matter what they do; you have to feel comfortable in your own skin.”

One theory says that during an uncertain economy, women take refuge in beauty products, especially lipstick, according to Leonard Lauder, chairman of Estee Lauder.

In 2001, Lauder claimed that sales of lipstick go up whenever the economy goes down. During times of distress, women skip the clothes and shoes, finding satisfaction in simpler beauty enhancements like lipstick.

Analda Santano, who works at the busy Cinema Nails salon, agrees with Lauder’s theory. She explains that people want to be prepared when the economic crisis finally ends and jobs become available. “The well-groomed will be well positioned when opportunity knocks,” she said.

In America, A Similar (But More Expensive) Story

The Daily Beast reports this week on a similar trend back home. “We might be cutting back on basics, but we’re pouring money into our looks,” writes Rebecca Dana, who offers some peculiar statistics about the cosmetic surgery industry:

Between 2009 and 2010, Americans spent 3.8 percent less on food, 2 percent less on housing, 1.4 percent less on clothes, and 7 percent less on entertainment. At the same time, we spent 1.3 percent more on breast augmentation, 5.1 percent more on lipo, 8.1 percent more on eyelid surgery, and a whopping 24.4 percent more on butt lifts.

In a recession economy, looking good appears to be a high priority for Americans and Europeans alike. Perhaps it is important to remember the multitude of other ways you can reinvent yourself during uncertain times. You can get an “inexpensive ego boost” from a class, a book, or a new venture. Honing your skills as well as your looks will keep you competitive in the job market.

Her decision to undergo plastic surgery was simple: “I decided I wanted to look more like how I feel,” she explains to Matt Lauer.

On her TODAY appearance, she explains that she wasn’t overly concerned with her body image. She just wanted to look like herself.

“I just decided I wanted to buy myself some time,” she explains, admitting that she had plastic surgery on her chin, neck and beneath the eyes.

Fonda is a well known actress, political activist, fitness guru and feminist.

Along with Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan, she founded the Women’s Media Center in 2005, a non-profit organization dedicated to “making women visible and powerful in the media.”

With a new fitness video, she’s still enthusiastic about the role of exercise for optimum health, but this time she’s focused on helping baby boomers achieve their goals.

View the TODAY interview with Jane Fonda online.

When faced with the decision to undergo mastectomy, she had to gather information first. “We talked to as many experts as we could,” her husband Bill Rancic explains. “We got the best information available to us,” he said.

They considered the impact each option would have on her quality of life

“If she would have gone with the lumpectomy and radiation, then you have to go in every six months for the rest of your life getting mammograms” Bill says, and “knowing giuliana, she’s going to be worrying three weeks before the mammogram, waiting for the results worrying and you’re always looking over your shoulder. So i think in this particular case this was the best option for giuliana.”

Planning Reconstructive Surgery

Dr. Kathy Ann Joseph a professor of surgery at New York University also appeared on Today. She was asked: “What are the factors that a woman must weigh before she decides to foe with a double mastectomy?”

“Almost all my patients that have to undergo a mastectomy, I always refer them to a plastic surgeon for reconstruction,” Dr. Joseph answers.

She explains, “most women, if they’re healthy, they can undergo reconstruction. sometimes they can’t if they’re very ill or so forth, but almost all women can have reconstruction and we do like them to have it immediately. I think that’s so important for their psychological well-being.”

Giuliana said that when deciding on mastectomy, it helped to view photos of women who had undergone breast reconstruction.

During the ASPS meeting in in Denver this year, they were recognized and served as ambassadors for all Patients of Courage nominees. The 2011 honorees are Aaron Mankin, Dee Dee Ricks, Jamie Verdi and Dallas Wiens.

In nipple-sparing mastectomy, the nipple and surrounding tissues are preserved for use in breast reconstruction, which is generally performed immediately after mastectomy.

From 1989 to 2010, plastic surgeon Scott Spear, MD and colleagues at Georgetown report their hospital’s experience with nipple-sparing mastectomy. They performed 162 nipple-sparing mastectomies in 101 women.

Thirty percent of the operations were performed for treatment of diagnosed breast cancer, while the remaining 70 percent of nipple-sparing mastectomies were performed on women at high risk of breast cancer undergoing preventive mastectomy.

Potential Benefits of the Nipple Sparing Mastectomy

Nipple-sparing mastectomy could offer important benefits for patient satisfaction and body image, as well as fewer procedures and complications. Plastic surgeons have been slow to adopt the technique because of perceived safety risks, especially the concern that the preserved breast tissue might contain cancerous cells. To address these concerns, Dr. Spear and colleagues sought to provide objective data on the risks and outcomes of nipple-sparing mastectomy.

They say that a biopsy is the key to detecting cancer cells. Before breast reconstruction, the doctors analyzed a sample of the tissue from under the nipple. In ten percent of the biopsies of the patients undergoing preventive mastectomy, evidence of breast cancer cells was detected. In these cases, the nipple was not used in breast reconstruction.

In other patients, biopsies detected no evidence of cancer, and the tissues were used for breast reconstruction. At an average follow-up of more than three years, there were no recurrent cancers of the nipple-areola complex in women undergoing therapeutic mastectomy, and no primary cancers in women undergoing preventive mastectomy.

According to the authors, these findings support the previous findings that the long-term risk of cancer developing in the nipple and surrounding tissues after nipple-sparing mastectomy is “zero or near-zero.”

Video: Who’s a Good Candidate for Nipple Sparing Mastectomy?

Surgical oncologist Dr. Richard Gray explains the nipple-sparing mastectomy procedure and which patients may be candidates for this procedure.

Read more

• ASPS: Nipple Sparing Mastectomy Does Not Increase Risk of Breast Cancer Recurrence