Every week we like to bring you a roundup of some of the beauty, health and wellness issues, articles or trends that we found on the web. As of late, we’ve come across a couple of interesting articles on animal testing for cosmetics, skin cancer and alcohol, the benefits of love, and the new concept of teledermatology.
Is your beauty worth the lives of 11.5 million innocent animals?
Jessica Ramos writes a great summary piece on the latest study addressing the United States’ Safe Cosmetics and Personal Care Products Act of 2013. This article was published on January 24th in the peer-reviewed journal, ALTEX, and stated that passage of the SCPCPA will result in a minimum of one million animals being used in new required testing and will cost companies between $1.7-$9 billion to perform these tests, a dramatic increase over current testing costs and numbers of animals used. Read on to learn more.
Drinking in the sun may raise risk of skin cancer
Thinking of that end-of-season sun escape you’ve got planned? Well perhaps you should think twice about that afternoon on-the-beach bevie. Science corespondent, Sarah Knapton, reports on a new study that claims that in the presence of UV radiation, drinking alcohol can alter our body’s ability to produce a normal immune response.
Five scientific studies that show love really is a wonder drug
From boosting our immune systems to calming our heart rate these five studies show that love is — scientifically speaking — good for us.
Diagnosing skin disorders with selfies
It’s called teledermatology and it’s becoming increasingly popular due to the ubiquity of smartphones, says Danielle Krol, M.D.. It involves snapping a photo of that questionable mole and sending it to a doctor for a quick evaluation. He or she will then inform you whether it’s harmless or requires further examination. If you think this might be a questionable way to diagnose skin lesions, think again. In cases where the in-person dermatologist recommended a biopsy of a suspicious lesion, the teledermatologists had agreed with this opinion an average of 95 percent of the time.