Acne Magazine : Skin Care, Tips, Treatment Reviews

It seems sort of ludicrous to worry about self tanning when there is snow on the ground. At the moment I’m writing this, there is over a foot of snow on the ground where I live in the Cleveland/Akron area of Ohio. Oh yes, we get plenty of snow, and we have long, cold winters, but this winter hasn’t been too cold or too much snow for that matter. We just suddenly got walloped out of the blue with the white fluffy stuff, and it seems like it might continue for a few days, so it’s only natural that I start doing my daydreaming about the summer right around now.

More specifically, what I’m tired of in the winter is how drab my complexion looks. I don’t really bother as much with the self tanners for my face, and I certainly never expose my skin to a tanning bed on my face, so I would only ever self tan, but somehow in the winter this escapes me. I forget what a nice, healthy glow this can add to your complexion, so I’m starting to put it on my face about once a week at night after I’ve exfoliated and washed.

Just a light little layer is enough to add that glow and warmth to the skin, and also it’s a great camouflage for skin imperfection. I love putting it on because it makes the skin seem more luminous and young, and it hides my fine lines as well. I get more compliments on my complexion when I have a self tanner on my face.

I also make sure that I apply the self tanner to my neck and behind my neck, as well as behind my ears, so that there is complete coverage, and no dead giveaway line that shows my secret that it’s a self tanner and not just a naturally great healthy glow. You can use self tanners in the winter, just make sure they are non pore clogging so that you maintain clear, clean pores to reduce incidents of breakouts on your face.

I have no problems with my self tanner that I’m using now, which happens to be the spray one by Neutrogena. It’s totally noncomedogenic and it works great at giving you that natural glow. I apply it with a makeup application pad to make the blending easier, and to ensure I don’t need to wash my hands afterwards to get the brown off.

I’m always on the lookout for new ingredients that can give my skin that natural luminescence that makes you look so young, fresh and energetic. I think that’s what we’re all looking for, after all, isn’t it!? There are a number of ingredients which help to keep the skin looking fresh and young, probably one of the more notable ones for helping you look bright and luminous is vitamin C in a very concentrated form.

However, there are other ingredients that will also infuse your skin with that coveted natural dewiness that usually are an indicator of youth and vibrance, but of course, they are also an indicator of a healthy body and healthy skin, so eating right is vital if you want your skin to look it’s very best from the inside out. See a great skin care vitamin here for more info on that.

Well, one of the other ingredients that I like in my skin care products is kind of a weird one to find in skin care, but Aveeno has been using them quite abundantly in their skin care line, and they’re very popular because they’re very mild and anti allergen, and they also happen to make your skin look very good. They also have a high SPF in them, 15 to 30 depending on the product, which is awesome because many day creams don’t offer sun protection, and they also tend to irritate the skin if they do.

Soy is a great ingredient to help blend the skin tone better and bring out the natural glow because of it’s naturally polishing and antioxidant values. With continued use, it can really make a difference in the texture and tone of your skin and give it that all around natural glow you’re looking for as well. Another good thing is that soy skin care products usually aren’t outrageously expensive because soy is such an easily made ingredient, and it is grown right here in the US with manufacturers having easy access to it, so it’s cheap to make.

With this recession, mine and my husband’s pay has dried up quite a bit. Not only are our jobs paying less now and giving us less of a raise, but we both have sidelines that rely on sales of goods to consumers, and a lot of that income, as a given, has really dried up as well. It’s not disastrous, but we’ve definitely had to tighten the household purse straps if you know what I mean.

One of the areas that I’ve found I’ve become quite good at tightening is spending on extraneous items like skin care products, beauty products, and even toiletries, because I’ve found that you can get coupons for a lot of drugstore skin care acne products and also you can get a lot of coupons online now for the higher end spa quality stuff as well because they are hurting too, and want to entice people to buy their products.

Some of the recent coupons I’ve been able to use are for the Aveeno facial lotions that contain sunscreen. These babies normally go for sixteen bucks a pop, and now I can find $2 and $3 coupons for them online by searching various coupon sites. I’m also on a mailing list so I get notified when new coupons are available. This is also a great way to do your grocery shopping and save money on foods and other grocery items.

It might not make a huge dent, but hey, here and there, saving five to ten dollars really does make a difference in your household spending, and if you add those savings up over a year, you have quite impressive compilations of savings that you can feel good about – and if the coupons are out there, why not?

So, I just got reaquainted with a good old beauty stand by from the eighties and nineties. My old friend, the Buf Puf. If you’re a little too young to remember this piece of marketing genius, it’s just an exfoliating sponge that you swipe over your face to either use to get a deeper cleansing with your facial cleanser, although I never used it this way because I found that too drying, or, like I use it, you can use it after you’ve washed and your skin is still wet. I like to use it then, because it’s easier to get all the flakes of dead skin and the older skin cells that are just sitting on the surface, dulling up my skin.

They are much more susceptible to being swept away (aka exfoliated), when they are wet and much more easy to remove. I had found when I was younger, in my early teens, that it was hard for me to consistently use the Buf Puf or other similar skin exfoliators like it, because I so often had new, broken, and already irritated acne lesions cropping up, and using the Buf Puf was just too painful, or I had to so strategically maneuver around the eruptions on my face so as not to further irriate or erupt them, or rub off any scabs, that it was was a pain.

Now that I’m older, and I enjoy a much more acne free complexion, I’m getting friendly with this old beauty scrubbing tool, using it occasionally after washing my face to scrub away the ol’ nasty skin cells and other debris after it’s been loosened off by washing, and I really like it. It’s a nice way to make your skin glow and get off any dry spots, flaking, or roughness that tends to cloud the complexion.

However, you will have a hard time finding the genuine Buf Puf article. I had to order mine online, and I honestly don’t know if drugstores sell anything comparably convenient and economical that lasts as long. Buf Pufs are very durable, and you really get your $6 worth, so I’ll be having this in my shower for bi-nightly exfoliation for a long time to come. Only time I won’t use it as much is in the summer when I put self tanner on my face quite a bit to keep that warm, summer-kissed glow in place of my ghastly white facade in the winter

I wrote in the last post about how I looked at the ingredients in a skin care product designed for acne prone skin, and it contained maltitol. This confused me since I’m only used to seeing maltitol as a sugar alcohol (sugar substitute) sweetener in mostly diet and low carb processed foods, and things like sugar free ice cream, candies and gum. And by the way, I also mentioned that eating anything with this ingredient in it happens to give me terrible gas pains, so I try to stay away from it, that’s why I’m so keenly aware of it in labels.

Maltitol is a sugar alcohol. It is made from the starch of corn, which is fermented and made into a sweet syrup or powder, and maltitol is not as sweet as sugar, but almost. I’ve found that eating products that have maltitol in them, they have a slightly bitter taste to them. The syrup is supposed to be sweeter than the powder,and so less of the syrup is needed.

Maltitol produces excess gas and even diarrhea in a lot of people because it is designed to be slowly digested by the body (not so sure this can be good for you, it sounds similar to that Olestra fat substitute that gave so many people painful diarrhea and gas almost a decade ago), especially people who may have highly sensitive digestive systems, like myself.

So, you’re probably wondering, gee maltitol sounds like a decent sugar substitute, but what about it’s use as a skin care additive? Well, the only information I found on maltitol as a skin care product additive is that is does have slightly hydrating properties, so it is probably added as a moisturizing agent that is not comedogenic for acne prone skin.

HOWEVER, I also found that one of the properties of maltitol as applied topically can function as a skin irritant. While this may be broadly deciphered, since I know that salicylic acid and my other favorite acne skin care ingredients can also cause “irritation” in some more sensitive individuals, of course this raised my eyebrows. But I also read (again, the research and availability of material on this on the internet is very limited, mostly what I found was about maltitol as ingested in food products, not much else), that it is used as a humectant in skin care products.

It also serves as an emulsion stabilizer, so perhaps it stabilizes lotions and creams so that they form bonds and stay as a lotion or cream instead of basically disintegrating. I don’t know how widely it is used, but the FDA has approved it for both topical use and oral ingestion, so it can’t be too bad.

I used to think that your skin cleanser didn’t matter so much because it seemed that every cleanser I had dried my face out and actually irritated my festering acne sores even more, to the point where they would scab and crust over numerous times before they finally gave in and healed into a nice, pale, red scar. However, what I didn’t realize at that time was that I was just washing my face for too long, allowing the lather to set on my face for far too long, because I thought that would make my skin problems better by getting a deeper clean.

That was also before I got turned onto the awesome acne skin care ingredient that I love to have in all of my skin cleansers, salicylic acid. This ideal ingredient for acne, I’m convinced, is this one in your cleanser because it is exfoliating and refreshes that last skin layer while clearing away debris which causes pore cloggage and makes a nice, big fat zit wherever it happens to settle on yoru skin.

Your cleanser does matter, but you don’t need to spend a whole lot of money to get one that agrees with your skin. However, that being said, I do believe that the ones without the harsh ingredients like sodium laurel sulfate and parabens are the best, since it is my opinion and experience that these types of natural, organic cleasers are actually better for acne prone skin because they have no drying or irritating or allergenic ingredients, which many times can just inflame acne further and make your face look worse.

As long as you stay as natural as possible, you can’t go wrong. You just have to figure out which natural ingredients work best with yoru skin. Is it glycerin? Maybe a vitamin C based cleanser, as is what works for my skin by chance? Maybe it’s something like naturla cucumber extract to calm the skin, or maybe it’s green tea extract, or better yet, many people respond well to the astringent qualities of tea tree oil, which is excellent for acne prone skin.

Finding the right cleanser, as you know, is just half the battle. Eating the right foods, taking the right herbal and vitamin supplements to help fight acne, and keeping your hormones and your skin oil in balance is the most important aspect of keeping clear skin, and as long as you don’t forget that the cleaser is only one minor piece of the puzzle, then you’ve won half the battle to understanding how to fight and win against acne.

I, for one, believe that your diet makes a huge difference in the appearance of your skin. However, I do think that acne is sometimes a different animal, and if you have tons of hormonal issues at your back pushing you into having acne prone skin, then it is much more difficult to battle these issues strictly with diet alone. When you have deeply hormonally based acne, you really do need to treat it on all fronts.

That means you need to be able to take either an internal medication or something like an herbal acne supplement to help combat it from the inside, and you also need to confront the problem from the outside using whatever method you find happens to work for your skin.

An example of how my diet has affected my acne over the years is my sugar and caffeine intake. I have noticed that when my sugar intake is very low, my skin happens to look brighter, tighter, and I have many less bumps and roughness of the skin that if I’m eating a lot of sugar, refined carbs, things like chocolate and coffee and other caffeinated beverages – especially soda since I think the carbonation and the caffeine on top of that really do a one two punch number on your skin.

A great diet for acne that I went on was the Zone Diet. This is that famous one that is similar to the South Beach Diet, in that it uses combinations of protein and veggies and fruit that make for a perfect hormonal balance in the body, burning of fat, and excellent skin health since they also advocate the use of omega 3 fatty acid rich oils and other foods like almonds, fish and walnuts. Foods like this are true friends to the skin. They infuse it with additional moisture and suppleness from the inside basically.

Also, if you are eating a diet rich in antioxidants, as is the approach with the supplement called Acnezine (they use a ton of potent antioxidants to help combat acne in this supplement), you are going to enjoy smoother, clearer skin because they are battling the free radicals that cause skin damage.

Also when you are eating a lot of antioxidants, you are tending to also get a lot of the other good stuff because you are probably eating a lot of plant based foods, which are rich in tons of other nutrients, minerals, fiber and everything else that nourishes the skin and keeps it young and acne free.

It seems like we all tend to have the same problem areas not only when it comes to more acne prone areas of the face, but also when it comes to the areas of the face that seem to be the most prone to drying out on most people. Especially women, it seems. It’s ironic too, because this actual part of your face – your nose, the appendage that sticks out the farthest on your face, is one of the more acne prone areas as well. We all know too well that those pesky blackheads are always apt to pop up on the bridge of your nose, and they’re hard to get rid of.

Why, then, is the dryest part of the face, on the sides of the nose? I’ve always wondered that. It seems like the more sun damaged your facial skin is, the more problems you have with this area of your face as well.

I thought initially that it might be because I wasn’t getting proper amounts of moisturizer on this tricky, hidden area, but even when I consciously made sure I was putting a ton of moisturizer in this area, it still tended toward dryness and flaking, and also toward redness, which was maddening to try to get rid of.

It’s important to always attempt to exfoliate this area of the face when it is wet and the dry, flaking skin that tend to accumulate there is swept away. This is really the reason that you notice the dryness more there – its’ a crevace where all of the dead, dry flakes can accumulate, but if you make sure you are getting rid of those flakes on a nightly basis when you wash them away either with a manual exfoliator, or with your hand, then it will be much less noticeable.

Heck, even the woman who helped me pick out a facial cleanser the other day at the store noticed that my skin was red around my nose. Although, let me add, I went to the store with not a trace of makeup on. I guess that makes me feel a little better about that comment, however, it always still stings a bit when someone critiques your facial skin!

I was shopping in a newer Giant Eagle store by us, a huge one that offers not only groceries, but also a wide range of natural and organic beauty products, cleansers, toners, acne products, anti aging creams, and more. Basically, it’s a product junkies heaven, and yes I happen to love this store because not only can I go grocery shopping, but I can also by some top notch skin care products while I’m there too. Oh, and they have this program, for those of you that don’t like in the Northeastern Ohio area and might not be familiar with this chain, called Fuel Perks. for every fifty bucks you spend there, you get ten cents off every gallon of gas you purchase at their fuel pumps.

Great deal, obviously, so it’s pretty cool that I can buy cosmetics and skin care products there and also get points toward filling up my small SUV (it’s just a Honda CRV, hardly a gas guzzler, but still). Anyways, a very zealous sales woman helped me out this time. Let me be honest. While I appreciate people trying to help, when I browse for cosmetics or beauty or skin care related products, I really like to be left alone.

For me, it’s an enjoyment to go through the process of reading the backs of the packages and seeing what they have in them, comparing prices and generally just kind of seeing what different lines have to offer. Besides, it’s my job to review different skin care products all the time, so it’s always fun to pick out the newest products with the latest “grail” skin care ingredients in them.

So I was none too pleased when she stopped me, but I went along with it because she offered me a $3 coupon off any purchase of ten bucks or more, which I thought was a pretty good deal. Between several different skin care lines, I ended up choosing the JASON vitamin C esther face wash. It costs $10.95, but with the coupon I paid about $7.95 for it, so it was a pretty good deal. It’s a vitamin C based cleanser, I have not used it yet, but I’ll let you know how it works when I’ve used it a few times.

I recently purchased Clean & Clear (by Johnson and Johnson, I haven’t tried one of their Clean & Clear products in ages, so I figured why not), Advantage 3-in-1 Foaming Acne Wash to try out. As you probably know if you read this blog frequently, I purchase quite a few different acne face washes every time I run out, simply so I can try them out and report them back to you.

What I saw on the front packaging for this product sold me instantly. It has my favorite over the counter acne wash additive, salicylic acid, so I was sold when I saw that. I love that salicylic acid not only helps to clear away debris to keep your face clear, but it also has an anti drying effect because it helps to slough away dead skin cells that make the skin appear dull and dry.

Ok, ok, I have to admit, I also love to buy new products! I love the new smells, the new feel of a slippery wash for the first time, the way that a new product makes my face feel, whether it’s positive or negative, and the packaging.

I’m a sucker for scents though, as you may already know, and I hate anything that is strongly chemically perfumed. Natural scents are good, I think that strong scents that indicate a lot of chemicals are not good, as they make me think they added quite a few chemical cocktails to get them to smell that way. That’s just me though. And I notice that the older I get, the more sensitive my sniffer gets to any offensive or too-strong odors, so I’m also gettin’ old!

I bring this up because the first thing that hit me, quite literally, about this Clean & Clear face wash was the smell. It was very heavily perfumed with a somewhat flowery smell. That I did not like right away, however, please keep reading because I have more to say. I liked the way my face felt after using this face wash. It did not feel too dry or tight, and yet it felt totally cleansed. It really washed away my makeup, including my mascara and eyeliner well too.

You have to use a little more of this product than some other face washes to get it to suds up enough to cleanse, but I’m ok with that since that actually indicates it doesn’t have too many irritating surfactants like sodium laurel sulfate in it. Of course, it still contains them because it’s not an all natural facial cleanser (which is my preferred status quo), but it’s nice to know it doesn’t have so much that it’s going to instantly strip your skin of all oil and protection and moisture in a matter of seconds.

This product only cost me about five bucks at Target. A great deal, especially since it’s in a fairly generous 8 oz. bottle, so it should last a few weeks since I only use it once a day. By the way, that’s my routine, I usually use one product in the morning and one at night, usually a gentler product in the morning since I’ve already cleansed the previous day’s dirt, grime and makeup the previous night with a more serious cleanser.