I Don't Give a Damn 'bout my Bad Reputation

But I do want you to see the winner of the drawing--- You have to watch to find out who won!




Write and send me your addy, winner, so I can send you the free goods!
-MM

Catch it early!

Good piece I thought, and very informative on how skin cancer and melanoma spreads.
I plan on doing the drawing for the free stuff this week (or weekend)! Sorry, it's just that life is crazy now that school is back in session. For that reason, I'm still taking entries and will put your name in right up until the last moment.
Hope all is well with all of you!

-MM

Your Epidermis Is Showing

Can we all just take a moment to be grateful that melanoma awareness is up, research is happening and things like this are taking place:

Article: Hippy Approach to Medicine - Could it be the Cure?








And also, that this t-shirt is being made and sold some where? I mean, someone probably has this shirt on right now.




Don't forget: you have until the 17th to comment and be entered into the drawing for the free stuff!

Links

Hi internet family,
Just a reminder to let me know if you'd like to be in the drawing for the free stuff (--see the post from yesterday if you're confused).

In other news, tonight as I was trying to update my "Melanoma/Cancer Links," and I accidentally deleted them all. Yes, I think you're right, there must have been acid in the spaghetti. Why else would I accidentally delete ALL of my links? Needless to say I have made an effort to repost them. I have no idea if I forgot any, but I'm hoping that you will have some idea. So, if you notice, would you drop me a line? Don't take it personally if I left your blog off, it's 4 a.m. and I really do love you dearly. You mean the world to me. It's just that my memory is failing me.

I guess I don't have to say that I was a little more upset about Sean than I thought. Yes, Bobby, I am fine. It's just that this disease takes so many bright, vibrant people. Good, strong, wonderful, deserving people. It's really heart breaking.

Please take a moment to offer your condolences to the Shields family here. I'm sure they will appreciate it. Rest in peace, Sean.

-MM

Free Stuff, part Deux

I know this isn't your usual "hot summer read," but I recently received a book from Dr. Daniel Yarosh, CEO of AGI Dermatics. If you don't know what AGI Dermatics is, well, let me tell you. It is a "bio-pharmaceutical company that develops and markets topical prescription and over-the-counter drugs, as well as prestige skincare ingredients and products." What does that mean to you? It means that there is a skincare lab out there that "1) recognizes that DNA damage suppresses skin immunity, and 2) demonstrates that DNA repair can preserve and restore healthy young skin." Which, in a nut shell, means that there is a chance we can undo the stupid things we did to our skin earlier in life.
For more info on this good science, you can listen to a live interview with him from April 2 on wsRadio.com's Show "The Health and Beauty Revolution" here: > part 1 > part 2 and read an article in Allure Magazine where they name Remergent® DNA Repair Formula Best of Beauty (September 25, 2007) here: > article or watch the > Today Show video of Allure's review.

I've been using the Remergent for about a week now, and though it's too early to really say much, I will say it's got 30 SPF, so I put it on every morning before I leave the house, and if nothing else, it's helped with moisturizing and minimizing those fine lines around my eyes that I've noticed popped during and after Interferon treatments. As vain as I am, that's saying a lot. I mean, I'm putting on sunscreen everyday anyway, why not give my skin a chance at healing some of that damage? I plan on taking some "after" photos in a few weeks and comparing to this recent one where you can see these fine lines really starting to show up around my eyes. Wouldn't it be great if this stuff actually worked?

Kat Von B, our lovely make-up and skin care consultant (as well as melanoma survivor), swears by this stuff, and she really enjoyed reading this book. She said that Dr. Yarosh writes about technical skin issues, such as melanoma, but puts the verbage in terms that's easy to understand. Says Kat, "I thought I knew a lot about skin and skin cancer, but I learned so much more from this book. It's going to be one of my 'go-to' books when I have questions about my skin. His lab is on the cutting edge of research with regards to skin cancer, and I believe he genuinely cares about finding ways to combat it. Case in point, he just recently lost a very dear friend to melanoma and works closely with the American Cancer Society. Of all the books I've read that explain how the skin as an organ works, this is the best one I've read. If you've never heard of him, just know that he is widely recognized as a pioneer in the science of DNA repair. He and his laboratory are responsible for inventing the ingredients for brands like Estee Lauder, L'Oreal, and Shiseido. He is working on a drug which may even be able to repair DNA and prevent some skin cancers!"

The really super great news is Dr. Daniel Yarosh gave Miss Melly a copy of his book "The New Science of Perfect Skin" as well as one Remergent High Intensity DNA Repair +SPF 30 (3.4 oz in a pump bottle which retails for $95.00!!!) to give away here on the site. Yay! That means YOU get the chance to try it out, too, for absolutely nothing AND get the books to boot. Is life good or what? Comment here, kids, to be entered into the raffle! I heart free stuff and I know you do, too.

So to get you hooked on the info in the books and to get you interested in the product, Kat scored an exclusive interview with big Doc Y and passed along the dibs for you to read up on right here. Kat always has melanoma survivors' backs, and she's the absolute best about researching how to raise awareness and promote prevention, especially in young people. So it's good to read what an authority's take on that is. This interview has also got some good information about DNA repair, and I really like what he has to say about innovations in labeling sunscreen, too. Enjoy! And don't forget to comment if you'd like in on the drawing.
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Kat: In your book, you state that the next wave of sunscreens will have a new rating that will appear next to the SPF rating on the product label, called the immune protection factor (IPF). Do you see this as a better indicator of protection against DNA damage?

Dr. Daniel Yarosh: The IPF is a measure of an effect of the sun on skin. Just as the SPF measures sunburn potential, the IPF measures immune suppression potential. It seems to be a more sensitive measure of protection than just a sunburn.

K: Your company is currently working on FDA approval for a drug called Dimericine. Can you tell me how this drug will reverse DNA damage and who will see most benefit from this drug? I see this drug potentially being used to counteract or act as a melanoma prevention drug for those high risk patients, such as people who had melanoma and went through chemotherapy, immunotherapy, or biotherapy, etc. What do you think?

Dr. Y: The best approach is prevention, and Dimericine offers the promise of preventing the DNA damage that leads to melanoma. It would certainly be appropriately used by the high risk people who have already had a skin cancer.

K: You recommend protective clothing and sunscreen use for all ages. You also suggested washing clothes with Rit SunGuard (Tinosorb) to add SPF protection to clothes. I like that you emphasize prevention. How do we get younger people to stop using tanning beds?

Dr. Y: Tough question! Remember, it took an entire generation to change the image of smoking from something cool to something dirty. First, we have to stop glamorizing a tan and show images of beauty, such as Nicole Kidman, that don’t involve a tan. Second, we have to recognize that people will tan, and provide safe alternatives, like bronzers. Third, we have to make the connection between tanning and aging – getting ugly. Young women respond more to the fear of losing beauty than the fear of cancer.

K: Which antioxidants do you consider the most powerful for DNA repair and can we find them in our sunscreens?

Dr. Y: First, antioxidants don’t repair DNA. The best they can do is stop the free radicals before they damage DNA. Once the damage is done, antioxidants are out of the ballgame. But the best antioxidants are the natural ones like vitamin C, vitamin E and ergothioneine. They should also be used in combination, since no one antioxidant can go it alone.

K: Thank you so much! I really appreciate your efforts and everything you do in the name of research and science. You have been a great source of encouragement to me.

Dr. Y: My pleasure. Thanks for your support.

Interview by Katherine Bates

My Hot Mess

So, if you remember back in March, we moved into our new warehouse. Well, we've done so much work on the warehouse (although some still needs to be done), but I AM (Yay!) finally finished with my room.

So first, let's go back and look at the before pictures. Remember this one?
My soon-to-be room is that section to the right
next to the edge of the pic.





Here's a close-up of it. Whoever lived here last evidently used it as some sort of painting booth, as you can see here...




...which is why this wall is covered in black spray paint. These aren't even really walls, they were just sheets of plastic. Weird, huh?



And then this is a couple of days after we moved in. What a disaster. Bobby and I were going crazy trying to find stuff. It's hysterical to look at now, but I assure you at the time it wasn't. It was the end of school and we were both swamped at work, and blah blah blah. Anyway, the tubby girl on the couch is me. Bobby says I have lost weight since then. Let's hope so. :) This pic is good though because you can see that we actually had the walls sheetrocked and ready to paint.






We don't have closets in our place, so we have to improvise a bit and fashion our own (nothing we haven't done before), and that's up in this pic. That was a big improvement at the time. The top rack is about 10 feet up, so I have to use one of those department store hookie things to get the clothes down, or a tall step stool. But I've gotten it down to an art form.



Then got some of the paint up in the place (which meant taking the closet down, hehe). That pink room is mine, now officially with 4 walls. Notice there's no door, which we fix later (and by we, I mean Bobby).

The place was coming along, despite what you're thinking. Looking back, it's like we need to be on some Oprah clutter intervention or something.

That was when the real work started, believe it or not, at least on my part. I really needed to create my own spot where I could go and reboot, re-energize, recenter, etc. So I decided I wanted all my favorite thoughts around me.

And here are the pics I took today. This is the door to my room. I know, funky, right? The Boob put up a sliding barn door up for me, which I
heart so much. Also, just for clarity, we'll call that wall you see peeking from behind the door the west wall.



This is the south wall, directly to the left when you're standing at the door. It's Bobby's favorite part of my room, and I have to admit I love it, too. The couch is where I hang out when I can't sleep (which, let's face it, is all the time) and just above the couch are pics of all my peeps, my family, and some other favorites. The pics on the wall are some of my favorite musicians as well as some artwork I've done that I really like.

The quote at the top says, "If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change." That's by the big B, btw.

The wall you see at the right of the pic is the west wall.




This west wall is my favorite part of my room, personally.

At the top is a quote from Jill Bolte Taylor (thnx to Candi for turning me on to that.) That big beautiful mirror is something Bobby made for me a couple of Christmases ago.















This is one of my very favorite quotes ever, the one painted to the left of the mirror, blown up so you can see it. (Sorry it's blurry.)














More of the west wall...







... including where it meets the north wall where my vanity is. That pink blob above the mirror reads, "Rethink Everything."


This north wall obviously is the one that serves as the closet.






The poster above the clothes. I wrote this quote on it, by Dr. Seuss. It says, "Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."




Awesome quote, huh?













And finally, the east wall, where my bookshelf and desk are, along with my vision boards where I can see them every day.
Along with the door.

Thanks for checking out my room! This week I've got another free give-away coming up. Yay, free stuff! Check back often.


-MM

Too Faced Review by Carver

In case you haven't seen, Carver has reported on her blog about the the free make-up she received from the raffle here on Ms. Melanoma. Check it out, there's good pics at the haul!

And not to worry, I've got another superfly give-away coming up again by way of my good friend Katherine who is getting us the hook-up. Remember, to get entered into the raffle, all you have to do is comment and mention that you'd like your name entered. It's that easy!

Bobby and I are on a quasi-vacay, but I have to tell you about my latest realization. Crazy!

-MM