At 45 years old, Demi is 15 years older than her toy boy husband Ashton Kutcher. She hit the headlines a few years ago when she spend a whopping £220,000 on head-to-toe plastic surgery in order to improve her bikini body for a comeback role in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.

The actress, who was formally married to Bruce Willis, explained that she enjoyed undertaking unorthodox alternative treatments. She said: “I feel like I’ve always been someone looking for the cutting edge of things that optimise your health and healing.”

Demi decided to have the leech therapy when she was in Austria, she explains: “I was in Austria doing a cleanse and part of the treatment was leech therapy.” In order to prepare for the treatment, she shaved and took a bath in turpentine.

Although the detoxifying treatment may sound a little odd, Demi was quick to assert that she wasn’t being covered in just any old leeches. She said: “These aren’t just swamp leeches though - we are talking about highly trained medical leeches. These are not some low level scavengers - we’re talking high level blood suckers.”

The treatment works by applying leeches to the body and allowing them to bite the skin in order to release a detox enzyme. As Demi explains: “It detoxifies your blood - I’m feeling very detoxified right now. I did it in some woman’s house lying on her bed. We did a little sampler first, which is in the belly button.”

Demi was happy to talk to David Lettermen at length about her treatment. She described the moment at which the leech is applied to the skin, as well as watching the creatures suck her blood. She said “It crawls in and you feel it bite down on you and you want to go, 'You b*****d.’ Then you relax and work on your Lamaze breathing just to kind of relax. You watch it swell up on your blood, watching it get fatter and fatter - then when it’s super drunk on your blood it just kind of rolls over like it is stumbling out of the bar.”

Demi was so happy with her first leech treatment that she is eager to give it another go. She said: “I’m going back – I only got four leeches and I felt a bit cheated.”

Although Demi’s treatment sounds unusual, medicinal leeches have been used for clinical purposes for thousands of years. Use of leeches for this purpose was thought to have originated in Egypt around 2,500 years ago.

Leeches are popular creatures for clinical use, because they secrete an anticoagulant that often makes bites bleed more than normal after the leech is removed from the skin. The anticoagulant they secrete fights blood clots and restores blood flow, making them ideal for use in plastic and reconstructive surgery.

Source:

Daily Telegraph