Wake up and smell my socks

Who knew that scented clothing was all the rage?  Yesterday it was odor-absorbing, musk and pears (?!) fragranced men's underwear.  Now it's socks made with coffee-bean fibers.  The carbonized coffee stuff is supposed to absorb sweat and odor.  And then what? I'm sure some guys will use that as an excuse to wear them again instead of washing them, right?  Cuz they don't smell that bad yet?

Oh yeah, just found it.  The real story:  I Wore These Socks For A Week And They Don't Smell. Yowza.

They are a walkin' on their own now.

This is what science is working on?  Anyway, if you think you can't live without this, Ministry of Supply are the ones creating these beauties, funded through Kickstarter with a hugely successful campaign.

By the way, Kickstarter kicks ass.  Go over there and help fund some creative genius with their next brilliant project.  I'm not sure I would have picked these sock guys, but I could get lost for hours looking at all the amazing ideas that people are working on: art, design, dance, food, music, theater . . . everything.  

Science Friday: Body Renewal

"Everything old is new again."  You know that old saying? It's especially true of the human body. 

I'm a total geek about health and science - seriously.  And I have no idea where I got that or why.  But I read an article recently on New Scientist (subscriber only, see?  GEEK!) about how fast the cells in your body re-grow and replace themselves - and was totally amazed at how speedy it is.  In fact, in an average adult, the vast majority of their cells is only 7 to 10 years old - so you're not as old as you feel :)

And all this new cell info is incredibly hopeful too.  I mean dang, in  just a few days you can have a totally new intestinal lining.  And you can grow back almost your entire liver, though that's not an excuse to have that extra glass (or five) of wine later.

I did a little more researching and came up with a bit of a list for body parts and how quickly they turn over, just to share with y'all.

Hair

- The hair on your head could be anything up to 6 to 7 years old. 
- Each day your head hairs grow 0.5mm. 
- Body hair grows more slowly, about 0.27mm per day.
 - Your eyebrows renew themselves every 64 days.

Eyes

- The surface of the cornea is covered in a thin layer of cells that is continually

renewed. Complete turnover is every 7 to 10 days. 
- Cells in the retina do not regenerate, which is why vision problems arise with age. However, stem cell treatments are beginning to target degenerating retinas.
- Researchers have managed to regenerate rods, the photoreceptors that capture dim light. But only in a Petri dish, so far.

Skin

- The epidermis or surface of the skin is replaced every couple of weeks. 
- Skin cells regenerate four times faster after a gentle injury, like ripping the top layer with sticky tape.

Nerves

- Damaged nerve cells can regrow to some extent, as long as the nerve cell body is intact. 
- The rate of nerve regeneration after injury is thought to be around 2 to 3mm per day.

Fat

- The average age of a fat cell is 10 years. 
- Each year 10 per cent of your fat cells are replaced.

Liver

- Liver cells turn over every 300 to 500 days.
- The human liver has an amazing capacity to regenerate itself. Remove up to 70 per cent of the organ and it will grow back to its normal healthy size in as little as a couple of months.
- Surgeons have even removed as much as 90 percent of the liver, although recovery is incomplete.

Guts

- The epithelial cells or surface of the gut lining is replaced every 2 to 3 days, some say 5 days, the same as the stomach lining.
- Some cells last longer – those that release antimicrobial fluid last 6 to 8 weeks.
- The average age of the main part of the gut is 16 years.

Nails

- Your fingernails grow almost 3.5mm each month, although the little fingernail grows more slowly than the others.
- Toenails grow at a rate of 1.6mm each month and the big toenail grows fastest.

Heart

- The heart is one of the least regenerative organs of the human body. 
- A 25 year old turns over just 1 per cent of their heart cells ever year, and this figure decreases with age. 
- In the course of a normal lifespan, less than half of your heart cells are replaced.

Mouth

- Your taste buds are replaced every 10 days.

Hands

- Our fingertips can grow back after injury – at least partly. 
- The best results are seen in children, who can regenerate a new fingertip within a few months. But it works for adults too. 
- For this to happen, you need an intact nail bed. The new fingertip has sensation and a fingerprint too.

Lungs

- The lining of the bronchial tubes is replaced every 2-10 days.
- Microscopic air sacs called alveoli last 4 to 5 weeks.

Blood

- Oxygen-carrying red blood cells are replaced every 4 months or 120 days.
- The most common type of white blood cell, neutrophils, only last for a few hours. 
- Another important type called lymphocytes are replaced at a rate of 10,000 cells every second.

Muscle

- The average age of a muscle cell is 15 years, though obviously you build more muscle with exercise.

Bones

- All your bones, the whole skeleton is completely replaced every 10 years.

Brain

The brain is the only part of the body that does not generate new neurons after its structure is complete - except in two specific regions: the olfactory bulb (your sense of smell) and the hippocampus, where initial memories of faces and places are stored.  So your cerebral cortex is the same age as you - we don't get new brains as we age.  Boo.

All really cool stuff, eh?  I'm hoping it inspires me to eat healthier and grow healthier new cells every second that I'm breathing.  

Fun Fact: Sexy Smells

There's all kinds of scientific research and studies in the area of scent - some of them focused on what smells turn people on.

The scents for women vary - with lists including Vanilla, Jasmine, Musk, Patchouli, Lavender, Mint and Ylang ylang.  Another list said cucumber, licorice, and baby powder have been shown to turn women on, increasing vaginal blood flow by 13 percent.

Pumpkin pie and lavender increase penile blood flow by 11 percent in men. The men's list also includes cinnamon buns, donuts, licorice/anise.  I guess guys like food, eh?  The way to a man's heart is through his stomach and nose?

Another study found that women love "the smell of gas, pain, printer ink, or leather on a man.  While men love "the scent of lipstick, baby lotion or a roast dinner on a women."
Weird, right?  I can't see getting turned on by a guy who just exploded a cartridge of printer ink on himself.  And gals, dab a little bit of roast beef and mashed potatoes right behind the ears.

What it all says to me is that scent is a pretty variable thing for everybody - and it's usually affiliated with memories.  Pleasant and not so pleasant.   That's one of the really fun things about my job - seeing how differently people react to the soap scents I've got.  And I have definitely seen some folks get pretty turned on by a bar of soap - sniffing it so deeply, over and over, that they just can't put it down and end up taking it home to sniff up some more and enjoy in private :)

10 worst chemicals in cosmetics

10 worst chemicals in cosmetics via unhealthy earth

A great primer on what to watch out for. BTW, my products don't use any of these. :)

What is creativity

"Creativity is just connecting things." - Steve Jobs

Creativity. We always seem to think other people have it and we don't. Or that it's some mysterious thing that appears out of nowhere and we have no control over it. This new book delves into what creativity really is, how it works in the brain, how it's a part of each of us. Completely fascinating.

IMAGINE from Jonah Lehrer on Vimeo.

Jonah Lehrer, from the introduction: "The sheer secrecy of creativity — the difficulty in understanding how it happens, even when it happens to us — means that we often associate breakthroughs with an external force. In fact, until the Enlightenment, the imagination was entirely synonymous with higher powers: being creative meant channeling the muses, giving voice to the ingenious gods. (Inspiration, after all, literally means ‘breathed upon.’) Because people couldn’t understand creativity, they assumed that their best ideas came from somewhere else. The imagination was outsourced.”

As he begins to explain, it's just our own humble brains sifting through all kinds of bits and pieces all day long. Putting things together, trying to make sense of random information, making connections, accepting them or rejecting them, and then sometimes there are "AHA" moments, when two dots connect that we hadn't expected to. The excitement to have discovered something we think is new and that will make sense to other people too - that's the point of creativity.

"Creativity shouldn’t be seen as something otherworldly. It shouldn’t be thought of as a process reserved for artists and inventors and other ‘creative types.’ The human mind, after all, has the creative impulse built into its operating system, hard-wired into its most essential programming code. At any given moment, the brain is automatically forming new associations, continually connecting an everyday x to an unexpected y.” - Lehrer

And as I read on, I think "Ahhh. Why didn't I think of that before?" But it's really all about where you put your focus. Because where your thoughts go, that's where your own creativity lies. Some days I'm only thinking about smells. Or colors. Other days it's the business of the business - operations and functions and process. And still other days it's marketing and selling. I'm not sure if all that scattering around is more or less creative. But I'm looking at it in a whole new way.

Science Friday

(Photo: New York CIty in the Fog)

I've featured "Science Days" in the past, but not for a long time. Today seems like a good day to share a few links, stuff I've read lately that's interesting. About food and diet, scent and stars. Science stuff fascinates me. And the new information about health and nutrition changes daily.

In case you've got a minute or two, here's a little snippet of spots that's I've surfed in the past week or two.

Just for Earth Week, whale poop will save our oceans. (New Scientist)

Being fat is bad. But it's especially bad for your brain. (New York Times) Heavier people in their middle age have significantly atrophied brains in later life, leading to dementia and other problems.

Eating healthy is getting harder and harder. Agave sweetener is worse than high fructose corn syrup (Huffington Post)

Health insurance companies invest in fast food corporate stocks. (ABC News) Not surprising, but very telling. Here's how it works: they want to make profits. They profit on us being sick. The more we eat fast foods, the un-healthier we are. Connect the dots. And the top 5 investments? the five largest fast-food corporations: Jack in the Box, McDonald's, Burger King, Yum! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and others), and Wendy's/Arby's. Reason enough not to eat there.

"Of all the people in human history who ever reached the age of 65, half are alive now." That's a pretty shocking thought. We are becoming a planet of elderly folks. Welcome to the elderly age (New Scientist)

Portable ozone machines, found in hunting stores, are scent killing devices which could be the new secret weapon for terrorists and criminals. (Fox News) It destroys scents completely, allowing drugs or bombs to saunter right past the bomb-sniffing dogs at airports.

Learn about the stars in the sky at Hubblesite.org. A short video explains the constellations to watch for each month. April is the beginning of spring and features Leo the Lion. (Hubblesite.org)

And because this always makes me laugh: the most stupid wheel of fortune fails of all time (Urlesque)

Science Friday

Good morning! Today's "Science Friday" subject is smell - one of my favorite senses. I will now attempt to bombard you with a bunch of interesting facts about smell and scents, most of which you probably didn't know. Because learning new stuff is fun!

Here goes: Humans have more receptors dedicated to smell than to any other sense except vision, with around 20 million smell receptors. For comparison, a rabbit has 100 million of these olfactory receptors, and a dog 220 million.

The average person can detect more than 10,000 different smells.

Smell plays a powerful role in sexual attraction and genetic diversity. In studies, women prefer the body odor of men whose genes are noticeably different from their own. Well, unless they are on the Pill. The Pill works by hormonally mimicking pregnancy, and scientists say pregnant women may be biologically predisposed to prefer the company and smell of family members.

Scent favorites differ by country and culture. Many Asian countries find the odor of cheese obnoxious, while in Britain the smell of wintergreen is considered off-putting.

Vanilla is thought to be the most universally beloved scent, probably because breast milk contains a similar flavor.

Losing the ability to smell is a condition called anosmia, which can lead to depression. It works both ways, because depression can hamper one's sense of smell too. However, sometimes people who are taking anti-depressant medications find that their sense of smell returns.

On the most fertile days of a woman's menstrual cycle, women have better sense of smell than men. At other times, men and women are equal. But during a woman's period, the ability to distinguish scent is often much worse.

Our sense of smell shuts down while we are asleep.

As you grow older, your sense of smell diminishes. Our smelling ability increases to reach a plateau at about the age of eight, and declines in old age. Some researchers claim that our smell-sensitivity begins to deteriorate long before old age, perhaps even from the early 20s.

Newborn babies and their mothers recognize each other by their scent.

Scent, emotions, and long term memory are directly connected due to the olfactory system's close anatomical ties to the limbic system and hippocampus, areas of the brain that have long been known to be involved in emotion and place memory, respectively.

The human nose is in fact the main organ of taste as well as smell. The so-called taste-buds on our tongues can only distinguish four qualities – sweet, sour, bitter and salt -all other ‘tastes’ are detected by the olfactory receptors high up in our nasal passages.

Lots more information here at The Smell Report. Have a great weekend -