Breast enlargement through breast enhancement surgery provides benefits beyond a more attractive, better proportioned figure. Confidence and self-esteem can get a significant boost, and clothing options increase.

Generally, when a breast augmentation is performed, implants are inserted in the breasts. There are two different types of breast implants that are offered. Silicone is the most popular type of breast implants; however, saline implants are also an option. The reason that silicone breast implants have gained so much popularity in recent years is because it is a known fact that they feel more like regular breasts than the saline breast implants do.

If you are embarrassed by your small breasts, you most definitely are not alone in your discomfort. Thousands of women are self-conscious about their boyish figures when exposed on the beach, and jealous when they see low necklines and enticing decolletage in others. Also, many women who once had firm, full breasts are saddened to find them sagging further and further after each pregnancy.

Makes an Unflattering Area Flattering Again

Whether the culprit is genes that gave you smaller breasts or pregnancy and breastfeeding, the ever-looming mixture of time and gravity, most of us want our breasts to look perky and somewhat large (by large, I mean at least a full B cup, not necessarily a DD). Our breasts don’t have to look their age, and women who have different sized breasts can feel comfortable with a balanced chest. This latter issue is one that not only makes us feel awkward about

Basically, we like it when our breasts look good. It makes us feel confident and better about ourselves. If you are no longer satisfied with the way your breasts look, then implant surgery may be your best option. Unlike the rest of our body, out breast size, shape, and firmness is one part of our body that we can’t improve though diet and exercise. Most of the time surgery is the only way to make our breasts fuller and have rounder, more appealing contour.

What are some of the most common benefits of breast augmentation?

Breast augmentation is usually quite successful at making the breasts larger and fuller. The results may not look exactly like “natural” larger breasts; with breast implants, breasts tend to be a bit more round and less saggy than natural breasts of the same size. Most women find these differences to be an improvement.

Enhance your body image. Some women feel as though their body is not proportioned due to the size of their breasts. Having breast implants helps them to feel well-proportioned.

Gives women self-esteem. Some women feel like they are judged by the size of their breasts and do not have self-confidence as a result. If a woman was self-conscious about her breast size, having breast implants gives her renewed self-confidence.

Breast Implant Size

The size of the breast implants used depends upon several factors, including the proportions of the patient, the breast implant shape, desired amount of cleavage and protrusion of the breast implant itself when viewed from the side. Most patients have found after surgery that breast implants tend not to appear as large as natural breasts, so the size of the breast implant may seem smaller than what you intended. On the other hand, ordering breast implants in a size that is too large could lead to serious complications after the breast implant surgery. A competent surgeon will not push the limits of your body by using an oversized breast implant, so you should talk various sizes over with your surgeon to determine the breast implant size that is right for your needs.

How long does breast augmentation surgery take?

Breast augmentation surgery usually takes about one to three hours to complete. The length of the procedure varies according to the technique used, the placement of the implants, the patient’s anatomy, and type of anesthesia used.

Side effects

Breast augmentations are a common procedure but still can cause serious side effects. These side effects can range from minor to serious, including death caused by infection. Other more common side effects include temporary discomfort, soreness, swelling, bruising, and skin wrinkling. The breast can become very sensitive following surgery. Both methods of implantation can produce these side effects. Silicone breast implants have become known for causing the worst and most harmful side effects. According to researchers and doctors, the possible side effects of silicone breast implants include associations to breast and lung cancer and autoimmune diseases.

Alien

Author Bio

Read out Acne home remedies. Also check out for pregnancy nutrition and beauty tips

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They generally run to go by the color, design or attractiveness of the moustache or fall beast to the advertising gimmicks by the manufacturers. Most of the so called ?advanced technologies? that are used to create a meliorate moustache are nothing but advertising gimmicks to draw the public. The basic functionality of the moustache is to effectively decent all areas of the tooth.

Another popular misconception among people is that their powered tooth applier is much meliorate than an ordinary toothbrush. Although a powered tooth applier makes the process much simpler, there is no substantial evidence to suggest that they are significantly meliorate at cleanup your set than your plain toothbrush.

What kind of Tooth Brush should I use?

Now, moving on what you should look for in a moustache while buying. Again, I would like to emphasize not to fall beast to manufacturers claims and advertising gimmicks.

? Choose a soft bristled applier over the hard bristled one as the hard ones run to cause gingival recession. Softer bristles mean more flexibility, no damage to gums and meliorate cleanup beneath the gingival margin.

? The nous of the applier must be fairly diminutive which module allow it to decent arduous areas of the teeth.

? The handle should ideally allow comfortable gripping by the user.

? The design or shape of the neck or handle of the applier is not momentous to effective hairdressing (as often claimed by manufacturers). You should opt what suits you.

? Powered tooth brushes do not hold some moment

When should I change my tooth brush?

Now, moving on to when you must change your brush. It?s commonly seen people using their aforementioned older applier till the bristles dress and that ease does not get them to change their brush.

According to ADA (American Dental Association) a moustache should be replaced every 3 months or when the bristles exhibit signs of wear, whichever occurs first.

If you notice your moustache act likewise soon such as low a month, this is indicative of overzealous hairdressing and should be avoided as it causes damage to gums, bacteremia and painful ulceration of the gingiva.

Similarly, a moustache which does not exhibit some sign of dress and tear even after 5-6 months indicates that the hairdressing is excessively gentle and you should try addressing this issue.

You can try the new toothbrushes which are color coded by a colour which reminds you of changing your applier by fading. Another essential characteristic which most people are commonly alien to is the need to change their moustache after cold, flu, painful throat or representative infection as the bruising microorganisms can accumulate on the applier leading to re-infection.

Smile Care is provide Dental Care, Dental Treatment, Dental Implants, RCT and Dental treatment.
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Decision Time: Genetic, Robotic and Nano-Opportunities:

There is an abundance of technological threats and/or opportunities that mankind has before him. Whether or not there is an ethical basis upon which we might effectively utilize these technologies is something that worries many serious students of our species. The head of the Club of Rome says we do not even have terminologies for common concepts or words that cross ethnic and cultural borders. (1) Hobbes and other Platonic hierarchy types throughout history would argue that there is no good reason to think mankind can be responsible enough to get over ?beating his chest? in headlong pursuit of his ego driven or Machiavellian ?appeals to base human urges?. (Il Principe)

We can wirehead the masses and make them all quite happy but we seem more interested in giving them pharmacological lobotomies according to Breggins and Cohen. We could do what the movie The Day The Earth Stood Still showed alien species had done with the robots to enforce peace. We could ensure free access to gene therapy and extend the life of all people till they can live to be as old as nine hundred years without parts replacement. According to some researchers this goal will be achieved by the year 2070 but it would necessitate changes in reproductive rights unless we are to make a concerted effort to start colonizing space soon. The decisions carry many downsides as well as upsides but the discussions don?t seem to be happening and we continue to train people for harmful or soon to be outmoded jobs. This article cannot

Bill Joy the Killjoy:

The March/April 2000 issue of Wired Magazine article by the noted expert in technology who developed Java and was a founder of Sun Microsystems made more than a little impact in the editorial coverage for a few weeks in my local newspaper. He warned us about genetic engineering that could end life on earth without pointing out that the Israelis are trying to target their enemies with a genetic ethnic bomb. Perhaps he was not aware they are working on that but he was a part of the SALT talks. The most important thing he brought to the attention of readers was the prediction that by 2035 humanity will be redundant in the performance of most jobs.

He quoted experts in many fields of endeavor and I agreed with him that the dumping of human memory into sentient robots will not include the soul as people like Gary Hillis think. His sometimes debating partner Ray Kurzweil goes further (2) and speaks of even more rapid acceleration of technology. Not long after Joy?s article hit the stands we had NEC labs in Princeton, N. J. tell us they measured 300X light speed in a cesium chamber. Then came the US Army letting out faster than light information transfer contracts through Mr. Everitt in Durham, N. C. by November of that year. (3) The European attempt to reach Mars includes Ion Propulsion which can accelerate infinitely past the speed of light. Quantum Teleporting was a cover story in Scientific American around the same time and yet the uninformed so-called ?experts? often deny many possibilities that relate thereto. I personally believe that a combination of Virtual Reality technology, Holography and nanotechnology will allow a form of time travel for complex systems despite what Hawking said. Hawking said they know time travel exists in small particles.

There are many exciting potentials just around the corner in many diverse fields that Joy and Kurzweil are not even expert in. Neurotechnology and implants or prosthetics heads the list of my personal concerns. When I was an active participant on a Neuroscience forum recently I discovered these people have no moral idea of the implications of their work. Transhumanism (4) and Bostrom?s association that is relatively new already is fraught with fraud charges by other directors. Many of these people actually think it would serve the universe best if robots replace humans entirely. I can?t argue the logic against that perspective when I look at power-mongering and mud-slinging in the bureaucracies called democratic in media owned by Synarchists. But I implore people to wake up before it is too late. We must participate and insist the technologies and the future use of them are done for the Greater Good of all life on earth.

I agree with George Bush:

I found myself agreeing with George the Second of America when he pulled out of the Kyoto Accord. This raised the eyebrows of more than a few people I know. I believe he saw that salting the skies with chemicals which would lessen the apparent pollution would not kill more people in the short term and saving the billions of dollars required to implement Kyoto would not take into consideration the use of nanobots which soon will be able to clean up the pollution and maybe even make money harvesting the minerals in the process.

I also agree with George in the matter of spending more on space exploration but I am extremely concerned about SDI and HAARP as well as the Frequency Fence and the kind of weapons Dennis Kucinich tried to have removed from space. These weapons called non-lethal include mind control potentials that I cannot address in full in this article. In fact any reader of this article will have to do a lot of research to become aware of what is really going on. The issue includes viewing future technology and I demonstrate this has been done by more people than Leonardo, Nostradamus and Father Ernetti in my many books on these subjects. Dean Radin (5) and Stanford Research Institute as well as the Defense Intelligence Agency (6) are worth looking into. He works in Las Vegas. I lived there for many years near to S-4 and Area 51. The government says it does not even exist but I met many people who work there and other places like Tonopah.

George and the other Skull and Bones people that run for President of the United States would have us believe it is a mere boys club and there are books which supposedly expose them and other nefarious groups which are actually well-managed ?Spin?. There are groups like The Pilgrims, Russell Foundation or Beacon Hill Mob (and lots of other names or alphabet soup agencies) who actually put front men like the Bushes in power.

Prescott Bush was named in court proceedings in reference to trading with the enemy and the funding of Hitler and he brought us Richard Nixon. His paladin status with the Rockefeller agents of the Rothschild or Merovingian complex is a nest of CIA or OSS involvement with the founding of The Bilderbergs and many other worthwhile research excursions. The Hegelian Dialectic or ?playing both ends against the middle? is not new but it is important. Eisenhower?s address on the military-industrial complex is a must read. (7)

The BEES or Benjaminite Rothschilds have been orchestrating supposedly New World Order throughout history. I demonstrate they include the De Medicis and Stuarts or Bruttii in more ways that their sponsorship of the translation of the Corpus Hermeticum into a book named after their family called De Brix. (8) The FED and IMF are outreaches of these Synarchists who get a piece of the action through arbitrage and other dastardly games. David Guyatt is a former financial wizard worth reading. (9) John Ralston Saul, who is the husband of the Governor-General of Canada and a former head of a Paris-based investment firm, says the end of the Bretton Woods Agreement was the single most important event of the 20th Century. George Orwell?s slogans like ?War is Peace? and ?Love is Hate? are eerily reminiscent of the current War on Terra which former CIA Director Woolsey calls WWIV. (10)

Are you concerned? Will you take my challenge and check out the following links? There is a potential to make everyone on earth as rich as Midas or Croessus and we can throw off the Malthusian One Pie ideology (11) but it requires some study and effort.

NOTES:

1) http://ecumene.org/hassan0203.htm

2) http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=2

3) http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg68779.html

4) http://www.nickbostrom.com/ http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/index/

5) http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/hambone/people1.html#radin

6) http://www.meta-religion.com/Secret_societies/Conspiracies/Secret_weapons
/there_followed_an_extensive_hiat.htm

7) http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html

http://www.asherbooks.com/index.phtml?page=/main_stock.phtml/
subject/91/1/Alchemy_&_Occult.html

9) http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/subverting_the_media.htm

10) http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=546

11) www.world-mysteries.com/gw_rbaird.htm many free articles including a confession by John Kenneth Galbreath

Robert Baird

Author Bio

Author of Diverse Druids
Guest ‘expert’ at World-Mysteries.com
Columnist for The ES Press Magazine

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There are many people in Beverly Hills that are looking to polish their appearance who inquire about liposuction. If you are considering a more flattering physique, in or out of clothing, liposuction is an option to help you achieve your goals. Liposuction is the most common plastic surgery procedure. In Beverly Hills, liposuction is one of the most sought after procedures by both men and women. Liposuction is performed on many women of different ages, race, size and shape. This is a procedure where unwanted fat deposits are sucked out of various areas of a person’s body. This results in a slimmer, trimmer appearance that can make you feel better about yourself. When people think of where to go to for plastic surgery, Beverly Hills usually comes to mind. And why not? Here, you will find the most gifted and famous plastic surgeons in the world. So, with so many plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills to choose from, how do you pick the right one to perform your liposuction?

Beverly Hills liposuction is often used to slim and shape the hips, thighs, flatten the tummy, eliminate a double chin or even shape the calves and ankles. Breast enlargement has become a widely sought after cosmetic procedure among women. This is a procedure where implants are placed within a woman’s breast to enhance its shape and size.

Liposuction is best for more localized areas of fat. Patients with smaller areas of fat make great candidates for liposuction. Good candidates for liposuction also include someone with good skin quality. If liposuction is pe

Read out for Plastic surgery Check out beauty and skin disorders

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BOTTOM LINE: A superior attempt to recreate what was so good about the original “Alien” and “Predator” films, but it’s so mean and nasty to the point of ruin, making the film completely distasteful and unenjoyable.

THE GOOD: One of the main problems with the first AVP film was that it didn’t fit well with the the standalone ‘Alien’ and ‘Predator’ films. Many of the rules established in the respective universes of each franchise were broken when inconvenient to the plot, the characters were just crap, the sub-plot pertaining to the Predators creating ancient civilisations on Earth with pyramids etc was contrived, but worst of all, there was only one five minute sequence in the entire film that lived up to the title; a sequence which actually brought you a giddy joy when you finally saw these two titanic monsters battling it out. For this sequel, we have new directors, and they have brought with them an evident enthusiasm for the original franchises. AVPR is much closer in tone and style to the first two Alien films and the first Predator film. They’ve cleverly recreated environments on Earth which eerily match the jungle environment from the first Predator film and the tunnel/mechanical designs of the first two Alien films to the point where in the first half of the film you actually believe they finally got it right. The tone isn’t silly like the first AVP film and the characters are dealt with just well enough for you not to laugh

Todd Murphy is a film analyst and staff writer/reviewer for the film and DVD review web site, http://www.allaboutmovies.net

Todd also contributes reviews and articles for the Digicosm Film Blog: http://www.filmannex.com/Digicosm

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It was inheritance of pain. I should

have known. Incontinent, she was scared

to hug me: the child, after the rape. Shepherding

the lacerations: petrified, a body of lad

floating in a sewage tank; a short circuit in

an incubator, row of infants, life snuffed out in flames;

of being. I want to know ontology, need a

spinal surgery; somebody wants to abort a fetus,

because of mistaken identity, an alien egg

was implanted; racing time, bitter and corrosive,

it happned for the first time; karma, you say.

I don’t agree, you need camel’s milk to clear

your thoughts, like clenched fist against the

darkness; the little child, lad, infants, mortality after

a wrong calculation; the test tubes and petri-dishes,

need despoiling while the soul screams in a

cage; I am ready to jump out of the window,

stories down on the legends, unburdened!

Satish Verma

—————

THIS DAY

It was inheritance of pain. I should

have known. Incontinent, she was scared

to hug me: the child, after the rape. Shepherding

the lacerations: petrified, a body of lad

floating in a sewage tank; a short circuit in

an incubator, row of infants, life snuffed out in flames;

of being. I want to know ontology, need a

spinal surgery; somebody wants to abort a fetus,

because of mistaken identity, an alien egg

was implanted; rac

it happned for the first time; karma, you say.

I don’t agree, you need camel’s milk to clear

your thoughts, like clenched fist against the

darkness; the little child, lad, infants, mortality after

a wrong calculation; the test tubes and petri-dishes,

need despoiling while the soul screams in a

cage; I am ready to jump out of the window,

stories down on the legends, unburdened!

Satish Verma

————–

THIS DAY

It was inheritance of pain. I should

have known. Incontinent, she was scared

to hug me: the child, after the rape. Shepherding

the lacerations: petrified, a body of lad

floating in a sewage tank; a short circuit in

an incubator, row of infants, life snuffed out in flames;

of being. I want to know ontology, need a

spinal surgery; somebody wants to abort a fetus,

because of mistaken identity, an alien egg

was implanted; racing time, bitter and corrosive,

it happned for the first time; karma, you say.

I don’t agree, you need camel’s milk to clear

your thoughts, like clenched fist against the

darkness; the little child, lad, infants, mortality after

a wrong calculation; the test tubes and petri-dishes,

need despoiling while the soul screams in a

cage; I am ready to jump out of the window,

stories down on the legends, unburdened!

Satish Verma

Satish Verma is ferociously original. You feel resentment, outrage and violence, cannot pin it down but wonderfully spin your brain. Satish has the greatest sensibility which sweetly exploits the delicacies of human conflicts. You are taken aback. This is magic, profoundly soulful. In a lone, long journey Satish Verma is still discovering himself. Beaten, betrayed, felled, he comes back with fierce velocity. His childhood was traumatized by India’s partition. Terror, violence and death were witnessed which built the morals of poet. Becoming defiantly recluse Satish Verma pursued his value based life on the path of truth. Teaching Botany for 35 years he was writing poetry, privately and solemnly and published twelve collections. Worked silently with social causes. His scions, doctors and engineers are living in USA. He chose to live back in his beloved country and resides in Ajmer (INDIA) with his spouse Kanta running the Charitable Holistic Institute of SEWA MANDIR FOUNDATION.
He can also be reached at kantasatish@gmail.com.
5-A ii, Mayoor Colony, Alwar Gate, Ajmer – 305007 INDIA
Mobile +91 9829071468

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Science fiction films have mesmerized the audience world over with its surreal adventures and special effects. These kinds of fiction movies attract young people the most. But films like Star Wars and Superman has a universal appeal. Science fiction films take its audience to a dream world where everything is out of this world and larger than life.

In this article we will be discussing the top five science films of all time. Science fiction films generally have a mass appeal and are especially popular within the young audiences.

To talk about the best five science fiction films we need to start with the series of Star Wars directed by none other than George Lucas. No science fiction list is complete without a Star Wars film. Their impact of the history of cinema is incalculable. Star Wars features some of the most iconic characters of the world cinema. All the Star Wars movies became hugely successful and was liked by everyone world over. And the Jedi are the special attraction of the films. The fighting techniques are unique and stylish as well.

The second film is Blade Runner, which was made in the year 1982. The director of this film is Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford portrays the main character. The story revolves around Harrison Ford who plays a policeman, Rick Deckard, and his hunt for four cloned humanoids, known as Replicants, in a Dystopian version of Los Angeles. Replicants have been deemed illegal and Deckard is a blade runner, a specialist in exterminating them. It also discusses consciousness with an attempt to formulate a way

The third film is also directed by Ridley Scott named Alien which is being in the year 1979. The film is about in stellar mining vehicle Nostromo, heading back to Earth, intercepts a signal from a nearby planet, the crew are under obligation to investigate. The most important scene from this film almost became iconic with an infant creature bursting bloodily through John Hurt’s chest. The interstellar mining vessel takes onboard a life form with concentrated acid for blood and two sets of jaws, which then messily dispatches the crew. The film was praised for the gothic set design and Sigourney Weaver’s portrayal of reluctant hero Ellen Ripley.

The fourth film is called 2001 A Space Oddesy directed by Stanely Kubrick. This film was being made in the year 1968. The film is one of the finest works of director Staley Kubrick. This film achieved enormous fame for its then revolutionary special effects. Even before the invention of super computers and stunning special effects, this film has brilliance of the simulations, which would never be done better despite all the modern computer graphics.

The fifth film is called Solaris, which is directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. This film is being made in the year 1972. This fantastic science fiction was remade in the year 2002 but the original holds a fascination for fans of the novel by Stanislaw Lem. This film is about a psychologist who travels to a base on a remote planet to replace a mysteriously deceased scientist. There he encounters the secretive survivors and his dead wife. Reality is supplanted by the increasingly attractive alternative of the alien intelligence of that planet.

Victor Epand is an expert consultant for used DVDs, used movies, and used car stereos. You can find the best marketplace for used DVDs, used movies, and used car stereos at these sites for DVD, VCD, magnetic tape, used movies, and Science fiction, Star Wars, Blade Runner, Solaris, Alien.

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One year the big breasts are in fashion, so everyone goes and enlarges their breasts. One year, the small breasts are in fashion, so they all go and reduce their breasts. How many surgeries can we perform on our poor breasts and can we keep changing them all the time?!

The women’s breasts are made of fat, body tissues, and glands all covered with skin. When performing a breast surgery, small incisions are made in order to perform the procedure, the more procedures the surgeon will perform, the more incisions will be performed and the more scars will show.

When a reduction surgery is made, the fat, tissues, glands, and skin are being removed to get smaller breasts. When the procedure is made because of medical issues it make sense but when it is made only because fashion says it’s a better look this year, then is it the right thing to do? The patient might not be able to get her breasts back after she took some of it off, and won’t be able to fit herself to the New Year’s new fashion, if different.

When an enlargement surgery is made, implants are inserted into the breasts, these implants will cause the breast to look bigger and stand up nicely, after a while the skin and tissues will get use to having the alien object and will grow around it. When the women would want to take the implants out, the breasts will slowly get back to a normal form but not exactly to what they were before. The skin and tissues grew around the implants so now they will have to readjust to the new implant or to having no implants. If no new

Before considering any surgery it is very important to know the consequences and to find out what happens if you want to reverse the procedure. When talking to the surgeon about the results and risks it is very important not to forget to talk about the options you will have if you are unsatisfied with the results and also if you want to completely reverse the result.

Mary Rogers
professional appearance advisor

<a href="http://www.bestoflook.com">Plastic surgeries</a>

<a href="http://www.bestoflook.com/cosmetics/Breast-surgery.aspx">Breast surgery</a>

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The ADA 67th Scientific Sessions in Chicago started today and there has been a noisy buzz on everything diabetes. However, what got my interest more is the research development on oral insulin. The Type 1 diabetics are dependent on insulin. While the type 2 diabetics do not, still at a later stage, they will insulin as well. At the moment, insulin is only available by injection. Of course there are ongoing trials and investigation on oral insulin, but as far as I know, there is nothing approved in the market yet, and everything is still investigational. Here are a few recent lead stories I got on oral insulin:

‘Insulin pill” hope for diabetes – a UK company, Diabetology and Cardiff University experts may have solved the previous setback on oral insulin with their capsules’ special coating that protects the drug from acids in the stomach, which will allow it to pass into the small intestine where it is absorbed.

Capsules against diabetes – Biotechnologists at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have developed a new type of alginate capsule -called TAM (the Trondheim Alginate Microcapsule) – that could solve the problem of the body’s immune system recognizing and attacking alien, implanted insulin cells. The say that the gel capsule is designed with a view to camouflage the insulin-producing cells to the body’s immune system.

Also, since the type 2 diabetes is characterized by being insensitive to insulin leading to high sugar levels, a leading a team of researchers from

However, if the study proved to be successful in human, we are looking at a future of a dermal diagnostic tool that will detect type 2 diabetes even before the symptoms appear. This method can also have possible applications in other serious diseases.

The author writes about snack for diabetics and blogs at http://www.daily-diabetic.com/.

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By Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, authors of Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)

False memories allow us to forgive ourselves and justify our mistakes, but sometimes at a high price: an inability to take responsibility for our lives. An appreciation of the distortions of memory, a realization that even deeply felt memories might be wrong, might encourage people to hold their memories more lightly, to drop the certainty that their memories are always accurate, and to let go of the appealing impulse to use the past to justify problems of the present. If we are to be careful about what we wish for because it might come true, we must also be careful which memories we select to justify our lives, because then we will have to live by them.

Certainly one of the most powerful stories that many people wish to live by is the victim narrative. Nobody has actually been abducted by aliens (though experiencers will argue fiercely with us), but millions have survived cruelties as children: neglect, sexual abuse, parental alcoholism, violence, abandonment, the horrors of war. Many people have come forward to tell their stories: how they coped, how they endured, what they learned, how they moved on. Stories of trauma and transcendence are inspiring examples of human resilience.

It is precisely because these accounts are so emotionally powerful that thousands of people have been drawn to construct “me, too” versions of them. A few have claimed to be Holocaust survivors; thousands have claimed to be survivors of alien abducti

It is no wonder, then, that most of the people who have created false memories of early suffering, like those who believe they were abducted by aliens, go to great lengths to justify and preserve their new explanations. Consider the story of a young woman named Holly Ramona, who, after a year in college, went into therapy for treatment of depression and bulimia. The therapist told her that these common problems were usually symptoms of child sexual abuse, which Holly denied had ever happened to her. Yet over time, at the urging of the therapist and then at the hands of a psychiatrist who administered sodium amytal (popularly and mistakenly called “truth serum”), Holly came to remember that between the ages of five and sixteen she had been repeatedly raped by her father, who even forced her to have sex with the family dog. Holly’s outraged father sued both therapists for malpractice, for “implanting or reinforcing false memories that [he] had molested her as a child.” The jury agreed, exonerating the father and finding the therapists guilty.

This ruling put Holly in a state of dissonance that she could resolve in one of two ways: She could accept the verdict, realize that her memories were false, beg her father’s forgiveness, and attempt to reconcile the family that had been torn apart over her accusations. Or she could reject the verdict as a travesty of justice, become more convinced than ever that her father had abused her, and renew her commitment to recovered-memory therapy. By far, the latter was the easier choice because of her need to justify the harm she had caused father and the rest of her family. To change her mind now would have been like turning a steamship around in a narrow river — not much room to maneuver and hazards in every direction; much easier to stay the course. Indeed, Holly Ramona not only vehemently rejected the verdict; she bolstered that decision by going to graduate school to become a psychotherapist. The last we heard, she was encouraging some of her own clients to recover memories of their childhood sexual abuse.

Yet every once in a while someone steps forward to speak up for truth, even when the truth gets in the way of a good, self-justifying story. It’s not easy, because it means taking a fresh, skeptical look at the comforting memory we have lived by, scrutinizing it from every angle for its plausibility, and, no matter how great the ensuing dissonance, letting go of it. For her entire adult life, for example, writer Mary Karr had harbored the memory of how, as an innocent teenager, she had been abandoned by her father. That memory allowed her to feel like a heroic survivor of her father’s neglect. But when she sat down to write her memoirs, she faced the realization that the story could not have been true.

Copyright © 2007 by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson from Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me); Published by Harcourt, Inc. May 2007; $25.00US; 978-0-15-101098-1

Carol Tavris is a social psychologist, lecturer, and writer whose books include Anger and The Mismeasure of Woman. She has written on psychological topics for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Scientific American, and many other publications. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science, and a member of the editorial board of Psychological Science in the Public Interest. She lives in Los Angeles.

Elliot Aronson is one of the most distinguished social psychologists in the world. His books include The Social Animal and The Jigsaw Classroom. Chosen by his peers as one of the 100 most influential psychologists of the twentieth century, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is the only psychologist to have won all three of the American Psychological Association’s top awards — for writing, teaching, and research. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.

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