The Beauty Molecule – by Dr. Nicholas Perricone

We’re a health science publication, not a beauty magazine, but what’s actually going on here is skin rejuvenation, and in any case, skin health does tend to affect mental health, especially if it’s not good—thus giving a second reason to consider it of importance.

With that in mind, we’ll not keep “the beauty molecule” a secret: he’s talking about acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter.

What does a neurotransmitter have to do with beauty, you wonder? In the largest part, it’s because (via a chain of events which, for brevity, we’ll not detail) it reduces inflammation.

There are other factors too; it also triggers endothelial vasodilation which can result in the skin being better-nourished and better-maintained; the hair also benefits by the same process.

Thus, while the title makes it sound like we will need to buy a mysterious newly-developed skincare product, it turns out that he recommends eating almonds and other choline-rich foods.

On the flipside, he recommends acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, such as ginkgo biloba and huperzine A, which will (as the name suggests) inhibit acetylcholinesterase, which is an enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine.

However, that is only part of the book, and much of the rest covers other nutraceuticals (neuroceuticals being a word coined by the author, but it doesn’t seem to add much, and he also includes things that are not specific to neural function, such as polyphenols of various kinds and even carotenoids).

The style is a little more technical than most books we review here, but it’s nothing that should pose a barrier to comprehension if you:

1. have sufficient scientific literacy that you can read at least the abstracts of scientific papers and understand what they mean, and/or…
2. read the book from cover to cover such that many specific things are explained as we go (you learn what DMAE and EGCG and AMPK etc are, and you know that IRS2 is not about taxes), and…
3. for other more general things you have a digital device to hand to look up, if necessary, the difference between modulate/moderate/mitigate/mediate and so forth.

Bottom line: if you’d like to improve your skin health, systemic health, and your knowledge of physiology, this book can deliver those things!

Click here to check out The Beauty Molecule, and get yourself a healthy dose of it!