celinamahek
Nov 11, 2008, 05:49 PM
Change Your Eye Color And Skin Tone By Popping A Pill (http://www.impactlab.com/2007/03/19/change-your-eye-color-and-skin-tone-by-popping-a-pill/)
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l283/beeblebrox666/colourpillsplit.jpg
Imagine going a gorgeous golden color without having to bake for hours in the sun or use a fake tan. To make your skin color change chemically, all you would need to do is pop a pill or apply a cream.
You may soon be able to alter your skin tone, and maybe even your eye color, as easily and as often as you dye your hair but with a lot less mess — while protecting your skin from sun damage and cancer.
Scientists are finally beginning to understand the mechanisms behind tanning. And rather than just making it possible to darken pigments it has become clear that it should be just as easy to lighten skin tone, too, an idea now being taken up by cosmetic companies.
So whether you are a redhead who fancies a deep, dark skin color and black hair, or if you are black-skinned or Asian and would rather be a fair-skinned blond with blue eyes, all you have to do is take a tablet or slap on a cream for a couple of weeks. Or at least until you fancy changing again.
Far from being motivated by keeping Beyoncé wannabes happy, these developments stem from anti-cancer research.
Given that one of the best defences against skin cancer is a natural tan built up over several weeks, scientists have sought to unravel the mechanisms that make this possible. They found it is far more complicated than they had thought.
It has long been known that skin, hair and eye color are mostly influenced by a dark pigment called melanin.
But previously it was thought that tanning was a response to the ultraviolet radiation in sunlight damaging DNA. This was thought to activate the melanin-producing centres within the cells, known as melanocytes, as a sort of natural defence.
Spray-on dyes aside, some existing fake tans act on this theory by using a synthetic version of a long-known hormone to try to boost melanin production.
However, this tends to work only for people who have no problem with melanin production, leaving the fair-skinned no better off — probably because their melanocytes cannot produce enough melanin.
Now, research by skin cancer expert Dr David Fisher and colleagues at Harvard Medical School, in Massachusetts, has shown that damage to DNA is not a necessary step in getting a tan.
Fisher thought a compound called forskolin — which comes from the root of an Asian plant — might activate the same tan-producing mechanism as the sun.
He made a lotion from the forskolin and applied it to specially bred mice that have red fur and skin normally incapable of tanning.
After several weeks of daily application, the mice were really tanned. It has long been known that skin, hair and eye color are mostly influenced by a dark pigment called melanin. The forskolin helped activate melanin at a much earlier stage and so was able to get even the under-productive melanocytes of the mice to generate sufficient melanin.
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l283/beeblebrox666/colourpillsplit.jpg
Imagine going a gorgeous golden color without having to bake for hours in the sun or use a fake tan. To make your skin color change chemically, all you would need to do is pop a pill or apply a cream.
You may soon be able to alter your skin tone, and maybe even your eye color, as easily and as often as you dye your hair but with a lot less mess — while protecting your skin from sun damage and cancer.
Scientists are finally beginning to understand the mechanisms behind tanning. And rather than just making it possible to darken pigments it has become clear that it should be just as easy to lighten skin tone, too, an idea now being taken up by cosmetic companies.
So whether you are a redhead who fancies a deep, dark skin color and black hair, or if you are black-skinned or Asian and would rather be a fair-skinned blond with blue eyes, all you have to do is take a tablet or slap on a cream for a couple of weeks. Or at least until you fancy changing again.
Far from being motivated by keeping Beyoncé wannabes happy, these developments stem from anti-cancer research.
Given that one of the best defences against skin cancer is a natural tan built up over several weeks, scientists have sought to unravel the mechanisms that make this possible. They found it is far more complicated than they had thought.
It has long been known that skin, hair and eye color are mostly influenced by a dark pigment called melanin.
But previously it was thought that tanning was a response to the ultraviolet radiation in sunlight damaging DNA. This was thought to activate the melanin-producing centres within the cells, known as melanocytes, as a sort of natural defence.
Spray-on dyes aside, some existing fake tans act on this theory by using a synthetic version of a long-known hormone to try to boost melanin production.
However, this tends to work only for people who have no problem with melanin production, leaving the fair-skinned no better off — probably because their melanocytes cannot produce enough melanin.
Now, research by skin cancer expert Dr David Fisher and colleagues at Harvard Medical School, in Massachusetts, has shown that damage to DNA is not a necessary step in getting a tan.
Fisher thought a compound called forskolin — which comes from the root of an Asian plant — might activate the same tan-producing mechanism as the sun.
He made a lotion from the forskolin and applied it to specially bred mice that have red fur and skin normally incapable of tanning.
After several weeks of daily application, the mice were really tanned. It has long been known that skin, hair and eye color are mostly influenced by a dark pigment called melanin. The forskolin helped activate melanin at a much earlier stage and so was able to get even the under-productive melanocytes of the mice to generate sufficient melanin.