The Today Show
FOREVER YOUNG
"A Guide to Life After 50, Defensive Aging"
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This morning on our continuing series FOREVER YOUNG:
"A Guide to Life After 50, Defensive Aging." A study
on identical twins recently published in the Annals
of Plastic Surgery showed that lifestyle choices
and environment can play a role in the rate at which
we age, and even slow the aging process. Leading
New York City plastic surgeon Dr. Darrick E.
Antell is the author of the study. Doctor, good
to see you.
DR. DARRICK ANTELL (Plastic Surgeon): Thank
you.
MATT LAUER: Let's talk about the premise
her, and it sounds pretty obvious. If we're talking
about identical twins, then we're talking about
people with identical genes, and therefore....
DR. ANTELL: Therefore they should age exactly
the same because they're genetically alike. But
I believe that people have highly overrated the
influence of genes on the aging process. And a really
important part of this study is that it proves that
lifestyle choices very much affect the rate at which
you age.
MATT LAUER: So this is really the nature
vs. nurture debate, and you're saying the way we
nurture ourselves in terms of our lifestyle has
the greatest impact?
DR. ANTELL: Exactly.
MATT LAUER: Where did you find your twins
for the study?
DR. ANTELL: We went to Twinsburg. Twinsburg,
Ohio, has a large festival every year where thousands
of twins come, and we took hundreds of photographs
at that festival.
MATT LAUER: So now, what are the factors
you looked at in terms of lifestyle that would impact
the way we age? And I think you're talking more
about the physical signs of aging, as opposed to
how we feel?
DR. ANTELL: Yes, the physical signs. And
the most important factors appear to be sun exposure,
smoking, stress, and other contributing factors
would be healthy lifestyle choices like exercise,
eating well, medical problems, stuff like that.
MATT LAUER: Well, let's take a look at some
of the pictures we have on the set. We want to tell
people at home, these are not before and after pictures.
DR. ANTELL: Correct.
MATT LAUER: And this one talks about the
effects of the sun. Tell me what we have here.
DR. ANTELL: The twin on the left led a very
carefree lifestyle. She was out in the sun all the
time, lived in Southeast Asia, and then California.
If you look at her skin, it's just coarser, there
are many more wrinkles, they are deeper. There are
wrinkles around the eye, there's discoloration of
her skin. And Matt, there are even sunspots on her
nose. There's loose skin around her neck. Compared
to her sister, who looks much better. Now they're
exactly the same age, and she has some wrinkles,
but they're just not as deep, and the skin is better
quality.
MATT LAUER: In terms of their lifestyle,
though, was everything else the same?
DR. ANTELL: Everything else was pretty much
the same, although....
MATT LAUER: Stress and smoking things like
that?
DR. ANTELL: There are a couple of minor
things, but we felt that sun exposure was really
the main contributing factor here.
MATT LAUER: All right, let's back up a second
here, because our next set of identical twins show
us the effect of smoking and tell us what we have
here.
DR. ANTELL: Exactly. This set, they both
lived in the same midwestern area, so we did not
feel that smoking was the contributing factor. Rather,
the twin on the left....
MATT LAUER: Not sun, you mean.
DR. ANTELL: Correct, not sun. The twin on
the left smoked for 30 years, whereas the twin on
the right never smoked. So if you look at the lines
on the forehead over here, and the vertical line
here, lines around the eye and the loose skin along
the neck is much different than on her twin sister,
where it's much smoother.
MATT LAUER: And would that hold true, because
from what I've read, smoking affects the elasticity
in the skin.
DR. ANTELL: Well, actually, the smoking
shrinks all the capillaries, the little blood vessels
that feed the skin, so it's not getting proper nourishment.
The same thing happens with stress.
MATT LAUER: All right, let's take a look
at stress right here. Again, not a before and after
picture, we have identical twins here. Tell me what
we should look for.
DR. ANTELL: Now we've heard of people that,
quote, "went gray overnight" with a stressful event,
because it clamps down all the blood vessels. And
some other subtle changes that you see are the lines
in the forehead, lines between the eyebrows, lines
on the cheek, and an overall change in the quality
of aging, compared to her sister, her twin sister.
MATT LAUER: Now are you talking about an
overall stress, the lifestyle, or someone who may
have had a stressful event?
DR. ANTELL: They both had children, they
both lived in the same midwestern environment, but
the twin on the left had gone through a difficult
divorce, and then we thought that was a contributing
stressful factor in her life.
MATT LAUER: You also went out and then you
conducted face-lifts on twins. What did you find
there?
DR. ANTELL: Well, interestingly, we've
at this point done more facelifts than anyone else
in the World on identical twins. We did different
face-lifts on them. We're studying the face-lift
operations, so that we could bring them back into
balance, but so that we could also examine the different
techniques of face-lift surgery. Now this is a before
and after....
MATT LAUER: This is the same person here.
DR. ANTELL: Correct. It's the same person,
and if you look at the before, you see the loose
skin that she has along the neck....
MATT LAUER: Back up a little further. There
we go.
DR. ANTELL: ...and along the jaw line, she
has a jowl formed over her. And in the post-operative
picture, you see how....
MATT LAUER: Right.
DR. ANTELL: ...how much cleaner it is over
here, how the jaw line is clean and the neck is
much cleaner.
MATT LAUER: Based on your studies with these
identical twins, you've come up with ways that we
can be defensive in our lifestyle in terms of aging.
And so, what are the obvious answers to that?
DR. ANTELL: Well, it's all the things that
mom always told you. You should avoid direct sunlight,
you should avoid smoking. You should eat a good
diet, get regular exercise, and if necessary, later
on in life consider plastic surgery to re-balance
things.
MATT LAUER: I would imagine when you showed
these identical twins the difference in their faces,
based on their level of exposure to the sun and
smoking and stress, the one who didn't look as good
probably came to you real quickly.
DR. ANTELL: Well, they were - they were
never really as aware of it, because they only see
each other one at a time because they're twins.
It's only us that sees them as twins.
MATT LAUER: Right, that sees them side by
side.
DR. ANTELL: So when we showed them the pictures,
it was very revealing.
MATT LAUER: Dr. Darrick Antell, thanks very
much. We appreciate it.
DR. ANTELL: Thank you.
Other related articles on twins
and plastic surgery:
Phone: (212) 988-4040
