The Art of the Guinea Pig
Posted by Lauren Kessler, May 31, 2013 10:00 am
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Filed under: Original Essays.
When did I first realize what I had gotten myself into?
Was it that morning in the 102-degree Bikram studio when, slick with sweat, leaving little puddles on my mat as I grunted through a series of yoga poses, I face-planted during a strenuous downward dog sequence and gave myself a bloody nose?
Maybe it was the evening of the 12th day of my detox and fasting regimen when I made chicken parmesan and spaghettini for my family and then sat down to a sludgy gray rice protein shake.
Or it could have been that afternoon at the Bowerman Sports Clinic, cycling hard on a stationary bike with a heart monitor strapped to my chest, a pair of plastic clips pinching my nose, a mask-and-hose contraption crowning my head, and a nervous young grad student inexpertly pricking my finger every three minutes.
At some moment — really during all these moments and more — I thought to myself: This whole human guinea-pig approach to researching a book has its, uh, downside. Why exactly am I doing this again? Why aren't I sitting comfortably at home in my nice, book-lined office? Or ensconced in a whisper-quiet archive? Or off interviewing someone, preferably in an exotic locale? Why am I sweating, bleeding, gasping for breath, downing Maca-infused wheatgrass shots (don't ask) and otherwise making my life unpleasant? On purpose. And for a year.
I had to keep reminding myself why. And so I'd take a deep breath and turn up the volume on the self-talk: You're on a quest. You're on a journey. This is an adventure. It was true: I had set out to investigate the world of anti-aging, a weird world that was an almost seamless blend of fantasy and reality, of science and hucksterism, of life-changing research and unadulterated opportunism. I wanted to separate the hope from the hype — and take my readers along for the ride. How I'd decided to do that was to not only look at the best research and the worst scams, to go to conferences and clinics, to spend time in cutting-edge laboratories and big-promise websites, to observe and ask questions, but also to use myself — within reason — as a human guinea pig.
I had vowed to try a long list of activities, as well as treatments, therapies, and ways of thinking, that held the promise of slowing or reversing aging. Could I turn back the hands of my own biological clock? Could I go counterclockwise during this yearlong adventure?Could I turn back the hands of my own biological clock? Could I go counterclockwise during this yearlong adventure? This was a journalistic quest — the subject fascinated me as a reporter and writer — but it was also, to state the obvious, a personal quest. I mean: ticktock. The noise gets louder, more insistent (scarier) as the years fly by. I wanted to muffle that noise, slow the ticking, maybe, for a while, halt the movement of those hands. I was not interested in being or recapturing my younger self (an aimless, angst-ridden smoker with a dud of a boyfriend and a job I hated). I was interested in recapturing and preserving all those good things we associate with youthfulness: health, vitality, limitless energy, a sense of adventure. I wanted to look good — of course — but more important, I wanted to feel good, from the inside out. And so, I coupled careful research with the guinea-pig approach.
Time out for an educational aside: Guinea pigs have played a very important role in medical science. In fact, their wide variety of hair types and colors made them a prime choice for studies of genetics and heredity in the 19th and 20th centuries. But it was 1890 that was truly the Year of the G. Pig. That's when the antitoxin for diphtheria was discovered using these little guys in the research lab, resulting in the saving of millions of children's lives (including many of us) and a Nobel prize — the first in medicine — for its discoverer. Today guinea pigs are more likely to be pets (my daughter used to have a pair that she named Joey and Chandler) or menu items (a delicacy in Andean Peru, sometimes baked whole, like a suckling pig, with a hot pepper in its mouth). In case you wanted to know, mice are now the most common research lab animal (75 percent of all experimental animals) followed by zebra fish (18 percent), rats (5 percent), and then everything else (2 percent). I have no idea why guinea pigs are still used as a metaphor for any subject of biological experimentation. But I'm sort of glad. Suppose, to be accurate, I had to tell you that I took the "mouse" approach or that I became a "human mouse" for this book. It just doesn't have a ring to it. (End of educational aside.)
I will admit that the guinea-pig approach had its high points. During my year of research and experimentation I discovered the Face Aging Group, a loose consortium of University of North Carolina-Wilmington computer scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, and anthropologists. Together they were teaching computers how to age images of faces. Their techniques were aimed at catching years-at-large criminals or helping locate long-lost children, but they were using the science of craniofacial morphology (the structure and form of the head and face) and building on a sophisticated understanding of the principles and processes of aging. And if their computers could age a face, then their computers could also de-age a face. My face, for example.
I flew to North Carolina and hung out with them. They were a fascinating bunch, a quirky cast of characters that made me think I was on the set of Criminal Minds. Of course I interviewed them. Of course I read their research papers and observed their work. But the best part was when, as guinea pig, I agreed to join their million-plus database of faces. They took a photograph of my face and let the computer have at it. I sat there, astonished, enthralled, aghast (take your pick) as I watched my face age, by increments of five years, to 75, an experience that is not for the faint of heart. Then, like magic, the computer reversed the process, and I watched as my 75-year-old face lost its lines and furrows and wrinkles, as the effects of gravity slowly disappeared, as my lips plumped and my jaw firmed, and I became a version of my 20-year-old self. That was a good day.
But a month later I was lying on a hospital bed with the left leg of my sweatpants rolled up to expose my upper thigh while an exercise physiologist prepped, draped, swabbed, and anesthetized the "sample site." Then, while he chatted about his research, he dug around in my thigh for two perfect samples. It was quite the thing to see little chunks of your muscle meat on a piece of sterile gauze, let me tell you. It was times like these when you're on a quest/you're on a journey/this is an adventure just didn't cut it. It's times like these I had to say: Hey, this'll make a good story.
I hope it did.
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Lauren Kessler is the author of six works of narrative nonfiction, including My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, a Daughter, a Journey through the Thicket of Adolescence, Pacific Northwest Book Award winner Dancing with Rose, Washington Post bestseller Clever Girl and Los Angeles Times bestseller The Happy Bottom Riding Club. She directs the graduate program in multimedia narrative journalism at the University of Oregon.
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