LIVING HEALTHY BEAUTY
No More Frowns Can Botox play a role in mental health? BY LISA FAIRBANKS-ROSSI
P
eople aren’t exactly upfront about receiving Botox therapy for facial wrinkles. Maybe it seems a little vain, in a world full of problems, to focus on erasing a few wrinkles from your face. Could there possibly be anything gained, aside from a youthfully smooth brow, by taming the ability of our faces to fully express our inner thoughts? Eric Finzi thinks there just may be. Equal parts physician and artist, Finzi runs runs two successful dermatology practices in Maryland, and also creates emotive epoxy resin portraits that are featured on the walls of a swanky San Francisco art gallery. You could say he is obsessed with expression, with how our inner thoughts are reflected on our faces. And, lately, with how changing the way our faces respond may have a remarkable effect on those emotions.
RIGHT BETWEEN THE EYES
Finzi’s notions are not really new. In 1872, 13 years after Charles Darwin shook up the field of biology with On the Origin of Species, he debuted another controversial work — The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. In it, he asserted that not only do we all react similarly when upset, but we can also alter the process by simply changing how our facial muscles are set. “The free expression by outward signs of an emotion intensifies it. On the other hand, the repression, as far as this is possible, of all outward signs softens our emotions,” wrote Darwin. The philosopher William James famously reinforced Darwin’s theory that facial expressions themselves help to cue up our emotions. “The more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike or tremble because we are sorry, angry or fearful, ” James stated. “Without our bodies’ ability to express the emotion, it ceases to exist.” ...continued on next page DECEMBER, 2013 - JANUARY, 2014 LIVING LEADinhealthDEC2013.indd 25
Health 25 11/20/13 10:30 AM