How Heather Dubrow's First Botox Experience Inspired Her New Book with Husband Terry
The #RHOC couple tried leech therapy so you don't have to.
In Heather and Terry Dubrow's new book Dr. & Mrs. Guinea Pig Present the Only Guide You'll Ever Need to the Best Anti-Aging Treatments, the couple tests everything from anal and vaginal steaming to snail slime facials in order to help readers find what works and what doesn't in their quest to looking and feeling younger.
Though the couple has been working on their first book together in earnest for about a year-and-a-half, Heather really became a guinea pig when she first started dating Terry about 20 years ago. "Long story short, when we first met, she was on a television show, and I saw — she was 27 years old — and when she frowned here, she got a very deep line [on her forehead], and I thought, 'Oh, I should tell her about Botox, even though she was 27, because I thought it would prevent — and of course it has — her from developing a permanent line right there," Terry told The Daily Dish about the inspiration to try out all of these anti-aging treatments for the book.
Even though they both agree that their second date "was a little early" for Terry to be making such a recommendation to Heather, she tried it, and it worked. "And then after that, every time she came home — we got married of course — she'd say, 'What about this new treatment?'" Terry explained. "Most of the time, I'd say there's no evidence that it works until there was evidence it works. So we basically wanted to figure out for ourselves what really does work, what doesn't work, and what will work best for you, so we thought who better to test it on than ourselves? And so we put it to the test, scientifically, on us."
Not only do Heather and Terry bring different types of expertise to the book (Terry's background as a plastic surgeon and Heather's consumer point-of-view), but they also have different philosophies when it comes to anti-aging treatments. "I think me, like most women out there, want hope in a jar. We just want to believe that it works, and I want to believe that everything works," Heather told The Daily Dish. "And Terry believes that nothing works, unless it is proven scientifically to him, and that's why we wanted to test everything."
Heather and Terry didn't just encounter treatments that didn't work while writing the book; some of them were actually painful to use. "Absolutely the worst thing was leeches. The worst thing ever," Heather said. "We didn't realize we were gonna bleed for hours and hours and hours after this."
That's exactly what we saw during last season of The Real Housewives of Orange County, as Heather began to bleed through her clothing at Tamra Judge's sex party (clip above). "Even if you got some effects from having the blood from you sucked out and leeched out of the leech and put on your face, the risk-reward, not good," Heather said. "I mean, we had bite marks for, I'm gonna say six, seven months afterwards."
Leeches aside, working on Dr. & Mrs. Guinea Pig has been a positive experience for both Heather and Terry. "I think it's been amazing. I've had a lot of fun," Heather said of working with her husband on the project. "We've laughed a lot writing this book and doing the experiments, I mean vaginal steaming and leeches, so many things that we had such a good time."
The RHOC couple has enjoyed collaborating so much, they're already planning their next book, or rather, series. "If this book is successful the way we hope it will be, because we have so much to share as a scientist and a clinician and as a great consumer and a little MD herself, we have a series of books that we'd like to launch into," Terry said. "And the next one would be diet and exercise for sure because we're both diet and exercise fanatics. We've done every exercise. We've tried every diet. We know all about them from an exercise, physiology point-of-view and from a functional and practical point-of-view."
There's lots more to come from this dynamic duo in the near future, including a Dr. & Mrs. Guinea Pig podcast and their own segment on E! News, according to Heather. "We love being sort of the Better Business Bureau for all of you guys for health, wellness, and beauty, and really telling you what works out there, what's the hippest, hottest, newest stuff in health, wellness, and beauty, what's snake oil," she said.
It sounds like this partnership is going so well, we might even see another name change party in the future. "We enjoy this so much and plan on writing a series of Dr. & Mrs. Guinea Pig books presents diet and exercise and relationships and things like that that remember the name changing party with the bow that Heather had? Well, we're now gonna change both our names to Dr. and Mrs. Guinea Pig," Terry joked. "It's no longer Terry and Heather Dubrow; it's just Dr. and Mrs. Guinea Pig. That's us."
For now, you can catch Heather and Terry on RHOC every Monday at 9/8c. See how they're juggling their busy schedules this season, below.
