Acne Magazine : Skin Care, Tips, Treatment Reviews

We recently rented a hot tub for two weeks. Well, it was actually a charity raffle item that my (now husband) won, and we of course were more than happy to take it. Although I still prefer the dry heat of a sauna, it was nice to experience the wet heat and muscle relaxing power of the jets in the hot tub for a few days. I must say though, getting out of it into the cold night and running inside was not my cup of tea! They are, however, a bit more romantic than a sauna is, and that was our goal since we just got married a few weeks ago.

I remembered, since the intense smell of chlorine set it off in my memory, that when I was younger and really struggle with acne pretty badly, that my acne used to actually clear up when I happened to go in the pool several days in a row. I always wondered if the chlorine or the combination of the usual chlorine and sun exposure had anything to do with my suddenly pristine skin. Of course, then the hormones would come along and the days when you couldn’t go swimming because it was just too cold, and you’d inevitably break out again, but it was nice for a few days to have a clear complexion after going in a chlorine soaked pool.

I have to admit, I don’t like chlorine, and the smell of it makes me nauseous sometimes, which is why I’m not particularly a fan of highly chlorinated pools and spas, since they have to continuously pour this noxious chemical in them to stave off mildew and mold, but I do think there is something to it helping to keep clear skin. Although now, with my more mature skin that I’m in my thirties, I actually noticed it really dried my face out and I had to heavily moisturize.

However, I believe the reason it has benefits against acne is because it kills surface bacteria, and bacteria on the surface and in the pores is essentially what causes acne lesions. I’m sure that over time chlorine isn’t good for the skin, and I even have my doubts about how good it is for your body in general, exposing it to high levels of this potent chemical, after all, it does turn blond hair green, so what should that tell you!? However, I can’t ignore the fact that it does seem to help clear acne in some ways.

For my recent wedding in Las Vegas, I went to one of my all time favorite makeup counters, the new MAC counter in our local Macy’s at our mall, which I was thrilled to find, since the closest one to me was by where I work which is about 45 minutes away from my home.

At the MAC counter, I had one of the makeup artists give me a whole new look on my eyes, with new, vibrant color palettes, that I knew would show up really well in photographs, which was my main goal since I wanted to make sure you could see my eyes in the pictures, since eyes and eyebrows often get obscured in photos too easily.

In real life, it might have been laid on a little thick for my taste, but they did end up showing up nicely in pictures. One of the products she used on me which I did end up purchasing was a little paint pot of eyeshadow foundation that was a hard, thick skin toned cream that you brushed onto your eyelids and upper eyes near your brow bone with a professional flat, stiff bristled brush (which I also bought and love, it’s my new favorite eyeshadow brush as well).

Even though, as far as I know, this little pot of foundation only came in one color, it seemed to be pretty universally flattering. When you put it on your eyes, even though it was just a nude tone, it seemed to brighten the whole area. The makeup artist told me that some people use it as a concealer for blemishes too, and it does work really well as a concealer for old red spots from acne scars as well as newer acne lesions since it’s so thick. I tried it out for that purpose, and it’s great, and you only need a little bit since it provides such thick coverage.

You would however, need to buy a concealer brush so you can get the foundation out of the pot and onto your blemish correctly. A concealer brush is a very small one with short, stiffer bristles and it’s very skinny as well, to give you more control over where you are applying your chosen concealer over your blemishes. She also told me that this fun multipurpose stuff can be used as a lipstick foundation.

She said she uses it and her lipstick doesn’t budge for hours at a time. The purpose of it for your eye makeup is to make the colors more vibrant and rich, and also of course to make them stay put a lot longer, and boy does it do that job.

I recently returned from Las Vegas. We stayed for 4 days, and I actually got married! So, needless to say, in addition to all the usual nerves that occur when you are going on a trip and have to organize everything, be certain places at certain times, and yadda yadda, there was a lot more stress on me that I had to take into account, and plan ahead so that my skin wouldn’t break out on my most important day.

Not only that, but there are some preventive and cautionary measures you should take before you go on any vacation, since the stressors of going away can sometimes take quite a toll on your largest organ. First, take into consideration the type of climate you are visiting. If it’s a really humid climate, take a lot of blotting sheets, and don’t be afraid to use more drying skin products that help soak up that extra oil that’s bound to produce on your skin.

When I was in Costa Rica, for instance, it felt like my face was working overtime on producing sebum, and I actually had to wash my face once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and then again at night just to not appear like a big greaseball in pictures. I actually enjoyed not wearing any foundation in Costa Rica, and it was hard to actually try to since the humidity just pretty much melted it off your face anyways.

You may want to take advantage of time in a climate like that and give your skin a break by not wearing a whole lot of makeup. Just MAKE SURE you use a lot of skin friendly, noncomedogenic SPF on your face and other areas still. The extra protection that many foundations offer wouldn’t be there, so you must compensate my applying a high rate SPF religiously.

If you’re going ot a dry climate, take along a great noncomedogenic moisturizer that has no mineral oils in it – something that you can apply and reapply without irritating the skin or clogging those pores, and make sure you keep it well hydrated. You may want to bring a red-reducing cream as well, so that your skin doesn’t appear red if it does get overly dried out. And, I know it’s hard to do on vacation, but try to limit sugar and alcohol for the best complexion on your whole trip. I know, hard!

I’m an avid user of oil blotting sheets. This is not only because I believe that a shiny, slick looking face just isn’t all that attractive (have you ever seen a picture where your face literally looks like it’s glistening?), but also because I believe that it helps keep my skin’s acne-producing abilities to a minimum. Why? Well, because you’re essentially mopping up all that surface oil that is the “trap” which baits in dirt and bacteria. This, in turn, causes inflammation of the skin’s pores, and thus, in turn, this causes either blackheads or whiteheads, which we all know are a headache to deal with, and can linger for days or weeks, marring our complexion.

You can buy oil blotting sheets for a really reasonable price almost anywhere now, whereas they used to be somewhat hard to find in stores. I’ve found my most recent batch for a buck (yes, a dollar!) at Target by that cheap makeup brand called ELF (Eyes Face Lips). I love their oil blotting sheets because they come in a compact little recyclable sort of carton that fits easily in your purse pockets and takes up the space of a few credit cards maybe. They work great, there’s not much technology that goes into making blotting sheets, so don’t spend a ton of money on them.

Heck, in a bind, you can even use a single ply of toilet paper, or you can also use a piece of a toilet seat cover, which works like a charm as well. Usually, for me, since my skin is still very oily at the age of 35 years old (yes, dealing with wrinkles and acne is no fun at this age, trust me), I have to blot for the first time at around ten o’clock AM.

If I miss that, then my skin becomes a veritable grease pit. I can literally take my nail and scrape my face, and get a combination of oil and foundation under my nails. It’s that greasy! So, if you have very oily skin, you may want to start carrying blotters around with you to minimize that surface oil and keep your skin looking matte and fresh all day. It’s really worth the small investment, and it may even help prevent some of your acne from forming in the first place. I’d just go to Target and pick up a cheap pack, or your local drugstore and see what they have and start trying them out, I guarantee you’ll get addicted to them after a little while!

You’ve probably heard the fact reported that adult acne has been on the rise over the past few years. So, what could be the reason? It can’t simply be that we’re all under the same increasing amounts of pressure over the every day dealings of life in general, or some sort of a mass shift in genetics, could it? Not really, but there are probably several contributing factors to the increase in both adult acne, and teen acne.

One of the reasons that has been looked at, but never really proven one way or another, and keep in mind that the reasons in general can be additive in nature, especially since we consume tons of soybean oil every day in processed foods that we don’t even know about, and this has been known to mess up the hormonal balance by adding too much phony estrogen into our bodies and throwing off the hormone balance that’s supposed to be there. Meat though, unless it is bought from a butcher that does not add artificial hormones and antibiotics, usually is treated with some sort of hormones.

This is because adding hormones to a chicken or a cow’s diet actually increases their growth and meat, and makes them ready to slaughter earlier than the animals that don’t get the hormones. In other words, it’s a cheap and dirty trick the meat companies use to help them turn profits faster and make their chicken, beef, or whatever other meat they are packing, grow into marketable pieces of meat much faster.

However, those hormones aren’t without their negative human interactions, some think. It’s been considered that the addition of hormones to a lot of our meats has actually contributed to several things, among them potentially the increases in adolescent and adult acne, increases in breast cancers and even prostate and other hormonally charged cancers, and a variety of other health problems and other basically harmless but nonetheless annoying issues.

What you might want to try, just to be safe, if you are a carnivore and not a vegetarian, is to start buying the hormone free meats. There are usually hormone free options now even at grocery stores that you can buy. They cost a little more, sure, but honestly they taste worlds better than the other stuff with the hormones and antibiotics in them. After all, every little bit of healthy living choices makes a difference in your overall health and well being, so it might not just benefit your complexion, but also your overall health and longevity.

Well, the countdown is on to my wedding to my fiance of a few months, in Las Vegas, and it’s only another week until we leave! I’m really excited, but I am starting to get nervous about “being on stage” and also getting everything in order before the trip. Whenever there’s a lot to think about, you can almost count on me breaking out in some large zit that inevitably won’t go away for at least a week, so I’ve been preparing my skin to equalize and my hormones to stay calm for about a month now by taking the dermacleanse capsules and also by using a tea tree oil astringent every single night to make sure that every trace of makeup, bacteria and any other acne causing stuff is gone.

I’m also making sure I blot the oil off my face several times a day at work, as my skin seems too ooze oil there for some reason, and since oil collecting on the surface of the face causes acne, at least it makes me feel like I’m doing something else preventive to keep those nasty zits at bay. When I start to feel my breath get rapid and shallow, I know that I’m panicking and getting nervous, so I have been good about “talking myself down” and calming myself so that I can make sure all those hormones that cause acne don’t get stirred up, and my cortisol (stress) hormones aren’t stirred up, which cause problems for your other hormones getting stirred up.

SO far, knock on wood, I have not gotten any major breakouts or zits for my wedding, and I’m hoping that it stays that way. I’ve found that by internally and externally limiting my stress triggers and then managing them properly when they do happen, as well as doing the surface treatment to my skin it needs to stay clean and oil free, yet not dried out and irritated, I’ve averted a potential wedding photo disaster. Wish me luck! I’ll let you know how it goes once I’m back from Vegas. At least the air there is dry, and I won’t have too much excess oil production or sweat!

Well, I had heard about this Grandpa’s brand pine tar soap for a while, and how unique it was, and that it was different because it was so natural, so I figured I’d finally give it a try. Grandpa’s pine tar soap is definitely a bargain at anywhere from three to five bucks a bar, depending on where you look, and it’s been around since the early 1900′s, so it’s a brand that enough people like that they have kept it around by faithfully purchasing it for a while, which is a good sign that the stuff is good for something!

One consistent thing I kept reading about this unique, pine tar infused soap, was that it had a “unique” smell. Well, it is definitely unique, and it really is kind of repulsive to me to be honest. It smells like burning rubber, that’s the best way I can describe it, and the scent is very strong, I can smell it in the shower actually when I get in. The color of the soap might catch you off guard too, it’s a very dark brown color. Here are the ingredients in this soap : palm oil, coconut oil, purified water, pine tar oil, and vegetable glycerin. That’s it, there’s nothing unnatural in this stuff, which earns it huge points in this day and age where there seem to be tons of chemicals in a lot of our toiletries.

Even though the soap is dark brown, it does lather a white color, and it has more lather than you’d expect for a soap that does not contain sodium laurel sulfate, the ultimate lathering chemical that is added to most soaps and shampoos. It can not only be used as a skin soap, but some people even use it for shampooing their hair, and it’s supposed to be excellent for those with psoriasis and dandruff.

When I cleansed my face with this, it lathered very well, and left my face extremely clean – actually squeaky clean, which did worry me a bit since usually that indicates that your skin has been too dried out by a product you are cleansing with. However, I found that as long as I put a lot of my night time moisturizer on, my skin did not dry out using this product. It has not made me break out yet, so that’s good, and I like the fact that it is all natural, so I’ve added this for now to my night time cleansing routine because I don’t want to use it in the morning also for fear of drying too much.

One word of caution. For some reason, this soap makes my eyes sting, so make sure you rinse your eyes well if any of the soap gets in them.

Aging of the skin has always been a fascinating area of study, and now that good skin is totally “in”, and has been a hallmark of the ultimate mark of beauty for quite a few years now, it’s being studied more and and more not only in terms of how to treat common and marring skin conditions such as acne and rosacea, but also in terms of how to turn back the clock on aging skin and help prevent it from happening in the first place.

I thought the study that was performed on twins and how their skin aged differently, even though they were identical and from the same DNA, was an interesting case in point about how we can actually control the rate at which our skin ages and what it looks like, much more than we probably thought we could. After all, it’s not just good genes that get you skin that doesn’t age as quickly or ages more gracefully, but it in large part has to do with ……drum roll please……YOUR LIFESTYLE.

Yes, this has been hammered home here at Acnemag for years, but it’s a point nonetheless that shouldn’t be taken lightly if you take the appearance of your skin seriously, and you want to keep it looking great for as long as you possibly can. The studies involved several sets of identical twins. The most interesting one was a set of female twins that were bicoastal. One lives in Ohio, the other in Florida, and the differences in their skin’s appearance is quite remarkable.

The one that lives in Florida actually had more sun exposure over the years than her twin, which right there, puts her in a higher risk of aging skin to a larger degree and more photodamage, which creates sunspots and other telltale signs of aging on the skin. Not only that, the Florida twin has been a smoker for several years.

Smoking accelerates aging of the skin because it is a toxin, it cuts off oxygen to the skin, and therefore not only is a grey pallor eventually visible on smoker’s skin, but also their collagen production suffers because of a chain reaction of events related to the inhalation of the toxin over and over, and their cells go rigid much quicker, which means that wrinkles appear much more easily than when collagen is present, and makes the skin more flexible and smoother.

Another interesting point made by the study was that people, once past the age of forty, who have more body fat, tend to look younger longer because their fat fills out the wrinkles in their face, making it appear more supple, while more lean body types tended to look older due to the lack of facial fat. However, when younger than forty or so, the opposite apparently holds true, and those that are leaner actually look younger than their biological age. Food for thought!

So, I’m going to go out on a limb and try something very different from what I’ve tried in the past for my facial cleansing. I’m going to try a bar soap that is 100% natural, which means no chemicals, no acids, nothing. I’m a little concerned that an all natural soap just won’t get my skin as clean as a soap that maybe has a little something unnatural in it, but time will tell. I’ve actually ordered several to try. They are organic soaps that have no lathering agents, chemical scents or any other common chemicals in them like parabens or anything.

I have tried an all natural pure glycerin soap on my face before, but it actually made me break out, because I just don’t think it was cleansing out the impurities like a regular soap or liquid cleanser could have done, which would have seeped down into the pores and gotten that dirt and bacteria out, which we all know is what leads to blemishes on the skin. Someone with totally normal, great skin may have the luxury of using soaps that are all natural without problems, but thus far I have not. We’ll see once I try these on my face, I’ll let you know.

I really more so bought them for my body instead of my face. They’re fine on the body (unless you’re treating body acne, in which case I do recommend something with salicylic acid, my favorite, or benzoyl peroxide if you must), because they are gentle and the rest of your body generally doesn’t need that deep down clean that your face does when you have acne problems.

I’m already successfully using a lemon glycerin soap on my body, which works great because it doesn’t dry out my skin like some other soaps do, but I already had to to stop using it on my chest because I noticed some small zits popping up there (I have an oily chest area too, quite common for those of us women with acne), so I switched back to using the same face wash I use on my face there and it cleared up pretty quickly.

All of this is in my current obsession with going natural on as many things as I possibly can. It started with me going natural on my shampoo, which was hard to do since it’s really hard to find a great natural shampoo that doesn’t leave your hair looking like a rats nest, and from there, it’s been onto body lotions and other natural experiments. Oh, and how could I forget the most important natural product I’ve always used – deodorant!

Still can’t make the leap with toothpaste though, I gotta have my whiteners in that!

It seems like one of the top requests for the skin is to have smaller pores, which is why so many products focus on shrinking and tightening and clearing the pores, so that you can have one solid, smooth mask of skin on your face with no intermittent “interruptions” in the form of big black pores on there, disrupting the illusion of perfection. There are lots of things that can help with the appearance of larger pores, however, it’s unfortunately a truth that we have to generally live with enlarged pores as they are hard to actually shrink down, especially if we have oilier skin.

In fact, let’s answer that question about why the pores are larger on the facial skin than anywhere else on the body. Well, the answer is very simple. We have waaaay more oil glands on our face than we do on other areas of the body in general. Sure, some of us are a little more active, speaking of sebum production, however, in general, most people tend to have more oily skin on their face, which means the pores enlarge to let that oil come to the surface.

That’s why acne sufferers generally have a harder time with large pores, they have oilier skin, which provides for larger pores, and the oilier the skin, the larger they appear. However, you can help to camouflage large pores, which especially occur near the nose, with a great foundation. You can also help shrink the pores by using a great astringent, which helps to temporarily shrink the pores so that they aren’t so obvious.

I like to use a green tea or tea tree oil astringent, as they really help to close up the pores after you’ve washed your face. Another trick of course, is to splash the face with ice cold water after washing it in warm water, to help to shrink or close the pores. This also acts as a barrier against invading bacteria into the pores which can cause the pores to become infected and to start an acne postule at the surface, which we all don’t want.

There are some professional spa treatments that can help to shrink the pores, but these are also usually temporary. You may want to stay away from pore strips that rip the gook out of pores, as they can leave you with open, iflamed, and potentially infected pores, which look ten times worse than just a normal blackhead.