newsfront The Kardashians

newsfront The Kardashians are influencing the cosmetic surgery industry Tinseltown / Shutterstock.com While some people couldn’t care less about keeping up with the Kardashians, some are going to extreme lengths to look like them. The Kardashians are influencing lives right down to the plastic surgeries people are choosing to get. A UK cosmetic group has seen a 73 percent yearon-year rise in enquiries for achieving Kardashian-like features. This has been credited to the Kardashians’ openness about surgery. Both Kourtney and Kris have admitted to breast implants, and Kim has also said that she has had facial injections. While both Kim and Khloè strongly deny rumours of buttock implants, enquiries for such enhancement procedures have seen a 54 percent increase. With Kylie the new poster girl for lip fillers, the family has been attributed to doing more for the popularity of cosmetic surgery than anyone before. Victoria Beckham hints release of new beauty line Forty-one-year-old fashion-force Victoria Beckham revealed that a beauty line is on her list ‘to go into at some point’. This will be the first time she will be launching her own beauty creations as part of her award-winning brand. In an interview, Victoria talked about how her brand has evolved over the years, saying, ‘I think we have grown in confidence... I never want to be one of those brands where people know what they’re going to see. I always want an element of surprise. One thing I never want to do is copy what anybody else is doing. I have a signature, and it’s very important to me to stay true to that.’ With her makeup always on point, we are more than a little bit excited to see what the line will include, and whether it will be based on Posh’s own luminous beauty looks. Everett Collection / Shutterstock.com 18 www.cosbeauty.com.au

newsfront lens imPlanT Brings hoPe for 1.3m PeoPle Over 1.3 million Australians suff er from presbyopia, the age-related deterioration of the eye, which prevents reading small print and seeing detail up close. This natural part of ageing, which necessitates reading glasses, can now be reversed with a small disk that’s put into the eye. Called the Kamra inlay, this opaque 3.8mmwide disc is placed into one eye, correcting presbyopia, and removing the need for reading glasses. Dr Chandra Bala, eye surgeon with PersonalEYES, Australia’s largest network of eye care clinics, says: ‘This inlay works by only allowing focused light to reach the retina. With focused light rays, you receive a wide range of improved vision for all distances, near and in between.’ The small-aperture technology off ers an alternative to implantable lenses that use a multi-focal approach. Thousands of tiny perforations around the surface of the inlay help your cornea stay healthy after implantation. The inlay will not be suitable for everyone, however, an eye examination will determine each patient’s treatment options. The Kamra inlay can be used in conjunction with laser eye surgery, depending on the needs of the patient. This enables a correction to be made to distance vision if this is needed while the Kamra inlay will correct your near vision. DO BLONDES HAVE MORE… HAIR? Blondes may or may not have more fun, but they defi nitely have more hair. Hair colour helps determine how dense the hair on your head is, and blondes (only natural ones, of course), top the list. Just two percent of the world’s population is naturally blonde. The average human head has 100,000 hair follicles, each of which is capable of producing 20 individual hairs during a person’s lifetime. Blondes average 146,000 follicles. People with black hair tend to have about 110,000 follicles, while those with brown hair are right on target with 100,000 follicles. Redheads have the least dense hair, averaging about 86,000 follicles. Hair colour is based on how much melanin, or pigmentation, is in the hair. Two types of melanin create hair colour: eumelanin and phaeomelanin. The more eumelanin a person has, the darker their hair will be. Phaeomelanin works in a similar way, except instead of causing hair to be blacker, it causes hair to be more red. Low levels of both eumelanin and phaeomelanin characterise blonde hair. Blonde hair can range from practically white (platinum blonde) to a dark golden blonde. Strawberry blonde, the mixture of blonde and red hair, is the rarest type of blonde hair. firefighTer undergoes World’s mosT eXTensiVe face TransPlanT A marathon 26-hour surgery took place at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, to successfully complete the world’s most extensive face transplant. Volunteer fi refi ghter Patrick Hardison was left with disfi guring burns across his entire face, head, neck and upper torso after entering a burning house in the line of duty back in 2001. Hardison had lost his ears, lips, eyelids, eyebrows, most of his nose and all of his hair. Fourteen years later, he has undergone a surgery that sets new standards in facial transplantation Led by chair of plastic surgery, Dr Eduardo D Rodriguez, the surgery involved a team of more than 100 people, including physicians, nurses, technical and support staff . Hardison received the donor’s eyelids and the muscles that control blinking – a procedure that had not been previously performed on a seeing patient. Hardison was in danger of losing his sight and had been unable to perform independent daily tasks, such as driving. Hardison says he is “deeply grateful” to the donor and his family, ‘Even though I did not know who they would be, I prayed for them every day, knowing the diffi cult decision they would have to make in order to help me. I hope they see in me the goodness of their decision.’ The donor was David P Rodebaugh, a 26-year-old Ohioborn Brooklyn artist and cycling enthusiast who died from injuries sustained in an accident. He was a registered organ donor. His family decided to donate his face as well as his heart, liver, and kidneys to other recipients, and to research. www.cosbeauty.com.au 19