Do you love eating chocolate and hate how aging affects your skin? Then a spin-off lab from Cambridge University has the perfect snack for you. Researchers claim their new candy bar, Esthechoc, increases circulation to the skin, preventing lines and giving you a youthful glow. The bar’s magical properties come from its mix of astaxanthin, an antioxidant found in salmon, and the same amount of free-radical-fighting polyphenols you’d find in 100 grams of dark chocolate.
“We’re using the same antioxidant that keeps goldfish gold and flamingos pink,” Esthechoc’s creator and former Cambridge University researcher Dr. Ivan Petyaev said. “In clinical trials we saw that inflammation in the skin starting to go down and the tissues began to benefit. We used people in their 50s and 60s and in terms of skin biomarkers we found it had brought skin back to the levels of a 20 or 30 year old. So we’ve improved the skin’s physiology. People using it claimed that their skin was better and we can see that the product is working to slow down ageing.”
[quote position="full" is_quote="true"]We’re using the same antioxidant that keeps goldfish gold and flamingos pink.[/quote]
Although the ingredients in Esthechoc are proven to combat the effects of aging on skin, not all researchers are sold on the idea.
“There is a potentially sound scientific base to this although it is obviously early days,” University College London nutritionist Dr. George Grimble said. “There needs to be further clinical trials to show that it is safe but astaxanthin has been shown to have antioxidant effects and low toxicity, so from that respect, it seems promising.”
Esthechoc will be sold in high-end retailers throughout Britain starting next month.
Gif of Bryan CRanston being angry via 
Hungry and ready.Photo credit 
The mac and cheese staple presentation.Photo credit 
Pizza ready from the oven.Photo credit 
Friends hover around the barbeque.Photo credit 
Seafood platter on the beach.Photo credit 
Scarecrow watches over a vegetable garden.Photo credit 
Happiness next exit.Photo credit: 
Butterflies in a flower patch.Photo credit: 
Happy running doggie.Photo credit: 
Positive confirmation.Photo credit:
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.