I never realized just how scary skinny Megan Fox is. You see enough pictures of skinny celebrities and it starts to seriously warp your perspective. Anyone five pounds heavier than Angelina starts to look fat. You just become so used to seeing sticks, that your perspective becomes completely warped. Actress – and maybe Brian Austin Green’s fiancé – Fox says she lost so much weight for a movie – and conveniently forgot to put it back on – that she was forced to gain ten pounds in three weeks for the Transformers sequel.

Megan Fox is still one of the slimmest starlets in Tinseltown, but the ubersexy screen siren was sporting a few more much-needed curves beneath her “Star Wars” T-shirt and jeans at the FOX Television Critics Association party in Santa Monica, Calif., on Monday night.

Fox was forced to gain 10 pounds in three weeks for her role in the second “Transformers” movie following a dramatic and dangerous weight loss for her last film, “Jennifer’s Body.”

“I should have toned up for ‘Transformers’ but I’m really lazy. I had to put on weight,” she told Pop Tarts. “I’d lost a lot of weight and got really scrawny, but I was told I had to put on size for ‘Transformers’ because Michael [Bay, the director] doesn’t like skinny girls.”

But what dangerous dieting regime did Megan use to pop the pounds in the first place? “I just stopped eating,” she said. “I don’t eat very healthy anyway — I have a serious sugar tooth, so now I eat red-velvet cake before I go to bed every night, and if you eat meals later, you’ll put on weight faster, so I had dinner at 10 p.m.”

[From PopTarts]

Um… just stopped eating? That’s got to be just about the least healthy way to lose weight I can imagine. And I’m surprised Fox isn’t smart enough to add some, “Don’t ever do that, it was dangerous/terrible/I hated it/etc” caveat to that statement. Okay I guess I’m actually not shocked, but I am surprised there wasn’t anyone around her (hello publicist?) to elbow her and add it in on her behalf.

Here’s Megan Fox at the Fox All-Star Party at the Pier held at the Santa Monica Pier yesterday. Photographer: Adriana M. Barraza. Images thanks to WENN.

Holy grossness. I have heard some weird things in my day, but this absolutely takes the cake. N.E.R.D singer/rapper/producer Pharrell Williams has told the Mirror that he doesn’t like his old tattoos. Nearly every inch of his body is covered, and he seems to find some of it juvenile. Not tattoos as a concept, but the art he’s chosen. So what’s a guy to do? Have major laser tattoo removal? Why do that when you can have someone GROW SOME NEW SKIN for you. Yes I had to write it in caps, because that’s the hysterical/freaked out tone in which I say it.

Laser tattoo removal? That’s so yesterday, according to Pharrell Williams. The hotshot rapper and producer has decided to have new skin grown in a test tube just so that he can change his tats. Williams says he’s prepared to drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on the space age technology to get rid of his current crop of tattoos.

“There’s an institute called the Wake Forest Institute in North Carolina for Regenerative Skin Treatment,” he told Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper. “It’s going to be pricey, but … it’s worth it. I got fire on my arms, I don’t need fire on my arms! I’m a grown man.”

Explaining how the icky-sounding process works, Williams said, “It’s basically like getting a skin graft, but you’re not taking skin from your a– or legs - these guys actually grow the skin for you.” Contemplating his new blank canvas, he added, “When it has healed you can go get whatever tattoo you want.”

[From the Daily News]

Raise your hand if you’re totally and completely freaked out. Oh good, I see it’s all of you. I cannot even put words to this. It’s not offensive or anything, but I have this really gross mental image of a Petri dish with a hunk of skin growing on it. And somehow the thought of skin that’s not attached to a body is just too much for me to wrap my brain around.

Pharrell is clearly willing to go to some pretty extreme measures to start fresh. I can sorta understand why this idea might be appealing, as laser tattoo removal still leaves a visible scar. I don’t know much about it, but I can imagine it’d be a huge pain to do for someone who’s as heavily tattooed as Pharrell says he is. But I can’t imagine having new skin put on would feel a whole lot better. I thought about looking it up to find out, but I am way, way, way too afraid there might be pictures. So I’ll assume it’s safe to say Pharrell is really serious if he’s willing to go through all this.

Here’s Pharrell Williams with N.E.R.D with performing live at Roter Salon in Berlin on June 27th. I don’t think he’s all that tattooed – personally I’d move on to the chest before I’d start slapping on new skin. Images thanks to WENN.

Actor/Sarah Jessica Parker’s husband (those are apparently equally important titles) Matthew Broderick gave a rather bizarre interview to New York magazine recently, in which he talked about his son’s curiosity about cigarettes. Both Broderick and Parker smoke – though Broderick claims that he gave up smoking and still smokes – all within the same sentence.

“Sarah Jessica Parker still smokes? She, the perfect mother who hates her nannies to be mentioned in news articles? The Greenwich Village icon who starred in a show about sex but refused to take her bra off during the act? No way!”

But apparently it’s so — and the habit rubs off on her husband, Matthew Broderick, and even (gasp!) her 5-year-old son, James Wilkie. At the screening of Broderick’s new vice-filled film, Finding Amanda, where he plays a gamble-holic having an off-the-wagon weekend in Vegas, Ferris Bueller told us all about it.

“I used to smoke cigarettes, and I still do, lately. I gave that up a long time ago, but every now and then I will fall off for a week.” And guess who’s fault that might be? Broderick says SJP is “worse than me on that.” And James Wilkie is “already curious. He’ll see a cigarette butt and say, ‘What is that? Why do people smoke?’ I can just see the little budding gene of a smoker in there.”

[From New York Magazine]

Umm…. umm… so many things I want to say. Struggling to choose which ones. I’m not going to go off on smoking, everyone knows the statistics. What I’m really surprised about is that Matthew Broderick would have such a cavalier attitude towards his son’s relationship with cigarettes – and that such a normally private actor would choose to share such a thing. In sharing it, it seems like Broderick doesn’t understand that this isn’t a good or normal thing.

When I was growing up, the smoking parents of my friends would constantly talk about how bad it was and how they wished they’d never started. Most of them seemed to constantly be making a big deal about how bad it was – seemingly in an attempt to prevent their children from picking up the habit. Several of them smoked in a bathroom or some isolated area. But none of them seemed to have an open, “whatever” sort of attitude about it. If you think you “see the little budding gene of a smoker” in your kid, it seems to me that the least you should do is actively discourage it.

Here’s : Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick and son James Wilke leaving Claridges Hotel in London in September 2005. Header from the US premiere of Sex and the City in New York on May 27th. Images thanks to WENN.

Lorenzo Odone, the child featured in the film Lorenzo’s Oil has died. I have always wondered what happened to this boy, even though it must have been ten years since I saw the film. I thought, after reading several times that the film gave false hope to the parents of Adrenoleucodystrophy (ALD) sufferers, that Lorenzo must have died soon after the film was made in 1992.

ALD is a genetic condition, affecting mainly boys, where the body produces a fatty acid that accumulates in the
nerve cells and damages the coating of the nerve fibres, called myelin. A rapid loss of motor functions follows, leading usually to death within two years. When Lorenzo’s parents, Augusto and Michaela Odone, were told of this prognosis they researched until they came up with Lorenzo’s Oil, which stopped the progress of the disease but did not reverse the brain damage. Augusto and Michaela (until her death in 2000) continued to research for a cure and care for Lorenzo until his death late last month. They had no medical training.

Lorenzo died of pneumonia on May 30 at age 30.

While the film and Lorenzo’s parents were accused of giving false hope, some studies have suggested that the oil can be used as a preventative measure. Out of 120 children it was used on, 83 did not develop the disease. Unfortunately another family member needs to get the disease before the pre-symptomatic children are tested to see if they carry the gene. I also feel that the film was more about a parent’s love for their child, and less about a miracle cure, which is why the film was so successful. Most every parent can sympathize with loving a child.

Recently scientists claimed a breakthrough that suggests stem cell treatment could rebuild the myelin wall, the part of Lorenzo’s brain that was damaged by the disease.

Actor Kelsey Grammer, 53, had a heart attack on Saturday while paddle boarding with his wife. According to his rep, it was mild and he’s doing alright now. Grammer is expected to be released within a couple days.

ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT has confirmed that Kelsey Grammer suffered a mild heart attack Saturday and is now resting comfortably in a Honolulu hospital. He will be released from the hospital early this week.

His spokesperson tells ET Grammer experienced symptoms Saturday morning after paddle boarding with his wife Camille at their Hawaiian home off the Kona coast. Grammer was immediately taken an area hospital where it was determined that he had a mild heart attack. He was then flown to another hospital in Honolulu.

EXTRA received the following statement from Stan Rosenfield regarding his client Kelsey Grammer

“Kelsey Grammer has suffered a mild heart attack Saturday, and is resting comfortably in a Hawaiian hospital. He will be released from the hospital early this week.

[From the Huffington Post]

It sounds like he’s doing all right, luckily. Often when people have a relatively mild heart attack at a young(ish) age like Grammer, it encourages them to become really proactive about their heart health, and ends up being a great turning point in their lives, instead of something really terrible. Hopefully that’ll be the case here.

Grammer’s Fox sitcom Back to You was canceled after just one low-rated season. He’s been added to the cast of an upcoming ABC show that looks somewhat better.

The briefly unemployed and universally castable Kelsey Grammer, coming off just one season on Fox’s low-rated Back to You, has snatched up another prime-time gig, this time starring in an ABC comedy pilot.

Roman’s Empire centers on a young guy who gets dumped by his girlfriend but can’t seem to extricate himself from her overbearing billionaire family, the Prettys—in particular, from the clan’s eccentric patriarch, played by Grammer.

The sitcom is based on the same named British series and began production over the holiday weekend. Ashton Kutcher’s Katalyst Films produces the pilot.

[From E! News]

Clearly Grammer clearly has a lot on his plate, and it looks like his career could very well be picking up again. Hopefully he’ll be able to get his health back on track and star in another good show.

Here’s Kelsey Grammer and wife Camille arriving at Nobu restaurant in Malibu, California on May 15th. Images thanks to WENN.

Oprah Winfrey – who we’re supposed to believe blogs – wrote on her website that she’s undergoing a 21-day vegan cleansing diet. And by that, I mean Oprah’s assistant’s assistant typed it up really quickly. Oprah, 54, regained a lot of weight recently, and she disclosed that she’s been suffering from hypothyroidism. She’s now determined to lose the weight and change her eating habits again – and is going totally meatless.

Wow, wow, wow! I never imagined meatless meals could be so satisfying.” she writes. “I had been focused on what I had to give up — sugar, gluten, alcohol, meat, chicken, fish, eggs, cheese. ‘What’s left?’ I thought. Apparently a lot. I can honestly say every meal was a surprise and a delight, beginning with breakfast — strawberry rhubarb wheat-free crepes.”

Inspired by Kathy Freston’s book Quantum Wellness, Winfrey says, “this 21-day cleanse gives me a chance to think about [eating] differently and see what my attachments are to certain kinds of foods – and what I’m willing to do to change.”

Her new menu — created by Freston’s own chef Tal Ronnen — features food like tofu scramble roasted tomato, grilled onion and sweet garlic aioli quesadillas with jicama slaw. She plans to blog her the entire dieting process. “Don’t know if I’m going to feel better or worse,” Winfrey writes, “but I’m willing to try to see if my body at least feels differently.”

[From Us Weekly]

Something tells me most people could happily go meatless if they had a professional chef to do all the fancy cooking for them. My vegetarian roommate made a whole wheat tofu pizza the other night and my tongue actually tried to run away from the rest of my body. If I had anything involving the word aioli, jicama, or crepes, I’m pretty sure I could manage. As it is I’m low carb, which means I had four slices of bacon and an Atkins shake for dinner. I would gladly eat Oprah’s vegan quesadilla every day of my life if I never have to repeat that meal again.

Oprah is talking about her diet like it’s this big deal – but her meal plan sounds better than what most of us probably slap together. How much of a sacrifice could it really be? And if it is – wasn’t her whole thing about eating reasonably, in a way that you can maintain? From the way she’s wording it, it doesn’t sound like she plans on going a day beyond the requisite three weeks on this diet. Not that I’m one to judge. I’m eating pork rinds as I write this.

The National Enquirer has details of the diet and fitness regime Britney’s on in an effort to lose 20 pounds and kick start her comeback, and I hope they have some of the details wrong it because it sounds grueling. Supposedly Britney’s newly re-hired manager, Larry Rudolph, put her on the program, and this would make sense because he is also the person who is said to be brokering the deal to have her represent Bally Total Fitness.

Here are the details:

• “Six small meals a day of specially prepared organic food - chicken, salads, vegetables and other low-fat fare.”
• Pampering treatments for encouragement and appearance such as facials, hair and skin care treatments
• Working out “with a trainer, three times a day, five days a week.”
• “She’s been ordered to do a staggering thousand stomach crunches a day on her own.”

[Details and quoted text from The National Enquirer, print edition, May 5, 2008]

A thousand stomach crunches and working out three times a day? That sounds excessive, and like something that could backfire because it’s too difficult. If you have attainable goals and a realistic schedule it’s easier to stick with. I hope they got it wrong and she works out three to five times a week or something. You can work out nearly every day, but you should alternate cardio with strength training to give your muscles a chance to recover. Three times a day sounds like it would really wear your body down.

The Enquirer quotes a source as saying “Larry doesn’t want her to be a joke when he restarts her career - and he wants her to look sexier than ever.” Maybe they should work her at an easier pace. It’s only been a a few months since she had that whole breakdown and she has a tendency to rebel when people force her to do things. Still, you wish her well and all. It’s just doesn’t seem like trying for a singing career again at this point would be the best move for her. It’s not like she knows how to do much else though.

Britney is shown leaving Bally Total Fitness on 4/23/08. She looks really happy and you can see that she’s lost weight.

Keanu Reeves is getting hyperbaric oxygen treatments in Beverly Hills, according to a new exclusive story in The National Enquirer. They say he decided to try the treatments in order to get relief from insomnia, and he feels that it’s working. Hyperbaric oxygen chambers were brought to public awareness in the 1980s when Micheal Jackson claimed that the treatment would help him live to be 150. He was largely dismissed as a quack for his claims, but hyperbaric therapy does have real medical applications and has been approved by Medicare as a reimbursable treatment for specific conditions, including carbon monoxide poisoning and wounds that won’t heal.

The patient either sits in a large pressurized chamber and breathes through an oxygen mask or goes into a smaller one-person chamber that has pure oxygen. Pressurized oxygen enters the tissues of the body and is said to increase the “oxygen transport capacity of the blood.” Sessions usually last for an hour.

The treatment is supposed to improve overall health, and has widespread applications. A large Canadian study published in The Lancet in 2001 showed that children with cerebral palsy treated with hyperbaric oxygen therapy and pressurized air improved significantly compared to most all other conventional therapies. Studies have shown similar improvement with hyperbaric therapy for people with Multiple Sclerosis. The side effects and possible complications are similar to diving disorders, and include trapped air in the body.

Sally Kirkland is a proponent of hyperbaric oxygen treatments, and said it helped her recover from silicone poisoning from breast implants. She claims that it strengthened her immune system and helped clear the silicone from her body. She uses the same treatment center in Beverly Hills, Global Hyperbaric, that Keanu uses.

In Keanu’s case “he has Global Hyperbaric bring a portable chamber to his Hollywood Hills home, and sometimes his movie set, to administer the treatment” and has received it “numerous times,” according to the Enquirer. He also convinced his co-star in the film Street Kings, Naomi Harris, to give it a try.

It would take just one of my friends raving about this to get me to try it. As it is, I want to get the treatment after having read about it. Costs are prohibitive though, and can run from $100 to $200 per session. Here’s a list of some hyperbaric treatment centers around the world.

Keanu Reeves is shown at the Street Kings premiere on 4/3/08, thanks to PRPhotos. He looks great at 43, but would it kill him to smile?

Inset image from Vital Path Health.

[Details and quoted text about hyperbaric therapy from Wikipedia.]

Gwyneth Paltrow is the latest celebrity mom to says she battled post-partum depression. Paltrow says she became very depressed after the birth of her second child Moses, now 2. Despite the attention post-partum depression has gotten in the media and from other famous moms like Brooke Shields, Gwyneth says she had no clue that was what was wrong with her until it was all over.

Gwyneth Paltrow reveals in the May issue of Vogue that she battled post-partum depression after welcoming her second child, son Moses, in 2006.

“I didn’t know I had it until after it was over,” the actress, 35, says. “I just didn’t know what was wrong with me.” She suspects her depression stemmed from scaling back on her usual pre-baby treatments like acupuncture.

“I felt really out of my body,” Paltrow says after giving birth. “I felt really disconnected. I felt really down … I felt pessimistic.”

[From Us Weekly]

At first I thought the acupuncture thing came off as kind of… “oh poor me, I have to cut back on my spa treatments.” But that’s not really the case, and it makes sense that not having any “me” time could make depression worse. Gwyneth’s always been really into alternative therapies (remember her talking about cupping on Oprah?) and often does cleanses and detoxes. It makes sense that someone who’s generally really in tune with her body could feel extra unsettled at the loss of it.

Here’s Gwyneth with Helena Christensen - wearing some crazy shoes - at the 5th Annual Can-Do Awards Dinner marking the 25th anniversary of Food Bank for New York City on April 7th 2008. Images thanks to PR Photos.

Dignity really is taking a serious hit on television today. Either that or the nose is finally having it’s shining moment of glory. This morning on Live with Regis and Kelly, the pair did a segment on sinuses and what you can do to manage them during allergy season. They had sinus expert Dr. Jordan S. Josephson, author of “Sinus Relief Now,” on the show to teach them how to irrigate their nasal passages. Both Regis and Kelly tried to neti (which I long ago made a verb) their noses, flushing out their sinuses for the entire audience to see. It really was a thing of beauty.

I’m a huge fan of the neti, and do it when I brush my teeth… and about 4 other times a day. Though I’ve moved up in the world, and now have that fancy, Waterpik-looking device you see at the beginning of the segment. It has a really loud motor that my roommates just love.

In keeping with today’s nose them, Regis and Kelly also decided to blow up balloons with their nostrils. At first I was confused, as I thought this was somehow related to sinuses. Turns out, Andrew Dahl I, a 13-year-old boy from Blaine, Washington , blew up 213 balloons in an hour this past Friday in the Blaine’s public library. I guess he wasn’t aware that most people go there to read. Dahl is claiming the world record, and is waiting to hear back from Guinness. I guess Regis and Kelly were trying to honor him – though Kelly clearly did a better job.