• Cool down the H2O.

While hot steamy water is a serious temptation during the frigid winter months, you don’t need blazing hot water to wash the dirt and makeup off your face and body. Hot water dries out your skin, which is the last thing it needs when it’s fighting bitter cold winds and negative humidity. Turn the faucet to tepid.

• Mini-massage your skin.
  

Take an extra minute to massage your serum and moisturizer into your skin. Warm the product up in your hands and massage in an upward motion. This will help boost circulation and help plump up fine lines.

• Wash your face. No, REALLY wash your face!

It’s late, you’re exhausted and making it to the bathroom feels nothing short of the New York Marathon. So your face wash is a quick slap of product and a splash of water to rinse. Just one extra minute massaging the cleanser into the skin (using upward circular motions), and then really rinsing away the residue (more than a splash or two please), will work wonders on the complexion.

• Wash your makeup brushes.

It’s one of those things that we never seem to have time to do, but giving your makeup brushes a good scrub will not only increase the longevity of the brush, it will keep acne bacteria at bay. Use a gentle baby shampoo and swirl the brush bristles around in the palm of your hand, rinse until the water runs clear, blot out the excess water, reshape, and then air dry.

• Invest in those ugly-ass bug eye sunglasses. And wear them!

I think those huge sunglasses that the Olsen Twins regularly sport are crazy ugly, but I own a super cheap pair. And while I endure relentless teasing from the Manly Man Husband, those ugly-ass glasses keep the sun off the sensitive orbital area, where sunscreen is usually not applied. This not only helps shield this area from sun damage, but keeps your squinting to a minimum, staving off the crows-feet a little while longer.

When organic-minded new moms gave a thumbs up to California Baby, I gave that a whirl, but I found the products kind of drying (particularly their hair care). So when I stumbled on Weleda at an organic esthetician’s skin studio while we were on a long beach weekend, I picked up a bottle of their Calendula Cream Bath for my kid.

As a sensitive skinner myself, I have always been partial to Calendula. It’s anti inflammatory and incredibly gentle and healing. The base of Weleda’s Calendula Bath Cream is sweet almond oil, which is easily absorbed and very moisturizing. It protects the skin barrier and keeps the skin super smooth.

Weleda is an organic brand that has almost invincible staying-power. Eighty years ago, they pioneered the concept of Biodynamic farming, which is only now being used as trendy organic buzz words in the beauty biz today. The company was founded on the principle that the products support and enhance the body’s own natural healing tendencies.

Since my kid’s the one using it, I asked her to provide her review of the product during bath time tonight:

I like it. It makes me smell pretty and I love how it feels really soft. My skin feels nice and soft after. If I don’t use it the night before, the next day my skin feels all wrinkley. But when I do use it… Not wrinkley!

And isn’t that what we all want from our skin care products?

Apparently, a Chicago plastic surgeon is treating acne with Botox injections. This report has been out for a bit, but I just caught on via this post from the really great blog over at Beauty Schools Directory (seriously, the blog is fab and not only for students looking for a cosmo school). He did a study, published in the Journal of Drugs in Dermatology, that showed patients experienced a decrease in sebum production and a reduction in pore size. I do want to point out that this study was conducted on 20 patients, 17 of which said they saw improvement. I don’t know too much about the study, or how controlled it was, because I am too cheap to buy the article on line and can only read the abstract.

Anyway… Personal biases about Botox aside, my initial reaction is why try to inhibit sebum production? I really do think oil really draws the short straw when it comes to the acne conversation.

Acne is not caused by oil alone. In fact, the oil on properly functioning skin actually helps keep skin protected from environmental pollutants and also serves as a natural moisturizer. Further, the bacteria that cause acne is found not only on inflamed areas of the face, but also areas of unaffected skin. So what gives?

When the bacteria and oil get trapped under the surface of the skin (i.e. clogged pore), the bacteria is now deprived of oxygen. Without oxygen, the bacteria thrives, inflaming the surrounding tissue and essentially causing that zit (ok, there’s more too it than this, like rupturing under the dermis, etc, but let’s leave it here for the time being). So, while the bacteria is thriving in this particularly oily, anaerobic environment, it is NOT functioning in another area that is oily and exposed to air. Which is why we always talk about exfoliation.

I am seeing a teen acne client now, who has tried every acne product on the market. She came to me with the tightest, driest skin, riddled with inflamed red bumps. Extractions were so difficult to perform without out potentially damaging her skin, that I kept them to a minimum.  I put her on a new cleansing routine that eliminated all acne topical treatments for the time being.

When she came to see me after several weeks, she still had the acne, but her skin was not dry and tight and the acne had migrated towards the surface. She was not pimple free (nor did I expect her to be) but this time I was actually able to extract more of the existing acne and as well as some blackhead formations.

I know it’s killing her that it didn’t completely disappear, and I believe she will need to add in a BP or SA spot treatment eventually, but what I need to do first is get her skin back into balance before I add back in more aggressive acne treatments. The complete removal of the natural oil from the surface of her skin was causing the dead skin to trap the oil coming up through the pore, which was exacerbating the acne.

Essentially, healthy skin is balanced skin and when you start inhibiting your oil production you are throwing this balance completely out of whack, and quite likely exacerbating the problem.

As for the Botox… Without knowing the subjects involved in the study, I can’t really say. Perhaps they do have super oily skin that’s throwing their balance off, and the removal of the oil is necessary. But at 500 bucks a pop, there are certainly cheaper ways to treat acne. So I am not sold on this method.

Curious, would you Botox your acne away?

The ingredient list was so promising–carrot seed oil, cucumber water, Dead Sea  water, hyaluronic acid and other really sensational ingreds–that I was psyched to try this skin care cocktail. Since I am a bit of a product snob, to find a drugstore brand I could really get behind would be  a Very Big Deal indeed.

Then I opened it…  There is some sort of fragrance in there (listed only as “fragrance” in the ingredient list) that made me begin question applying it to my skin.

It was not completely awful scent exactly, just kind of flowery with a slight undernote of chemical. Since I have a pretty sensitive sniffer, I held my nose and applied every night for two weeks. The result was a very angry chin and jaw line–with several small pustules popping up. Disaster.