Acne Solutions

Acne is one of the most the frustrating problems people young and old can face. While there's no cure, it is treatable. Different causes of acne: teenage & adult acne that's hormone related, clogged follicles, bacteria called Propionibacterium acnes, or P. bacteria for short, which is a natural part of the skin's maintenance system. Once a follicle is plugged, however, the P. bacteria multiply rapidly, creating a inflammation in the follicle and surrounding skin.

The hardest thing I face as an aesthetician is to figure out where it stems from and then figure out ways to treat it. A lot of times it can be treated with just the right skin care products. Since so many products just have toxic chemicals in them, there's is more susceptibility to an allergic-type reaction. In others, however, it might be more systemic, having to do with stress, medications, drug or alcohol abuse, etc. If you remember that since your skin is your largest organ, blemishes on your face indicate an imbalance in one of your internal organs. You can't have healthy skin, without a healthy liver. (A proper liver cleanse or detox will sometimes do the trick.) Your chin and jawline is the area where hormonal acne shows up.

In trying to clear up acne, there is a checklist and a process of elimination. If it's all over your face, it could be stress related or a sign of a systemic yeast infection, aka candida albicans, if you have a diet that's high in sugar. A good probiotic or acidophilus can help. Zinc with copper has also shown to help with acne.

Now, what are you using for products? Anything with a high alcohol content, which is in most OTC skin care products, seems to be the biggest culprit. What it does is strip your acid mantle (lipid barrier or oils in your skin), when it does that, your skin's natural reaction is compensate and overproduce more sebum (oil), when you have an overproduction of sebum, on its journey up the follicle toward the surface, the sebum mixes with common skin bacteria and dead skin cells that have been shed from the lining of the follicle. While this is a normal process, the extra sebum in the follicle increases the chance of clogging, thereby causing acne.

In the 2 years that I've been an aesthetician, I have been using Rhonda Allison. This is an awesome professional product that uses no fragrances, and very few preservatives, if any. Although I have seen good results with this line, I was just introduced to another skin care line called Glimpse Intuitive Skin Care by Xango. This new skin nutrition system is clean, green, and toxin free, and reinforces your skin with the natural power of mangosteen and other pure and safe botanicals, and it really works! Wow, a skin care line that's safe for you and works-there's a first!

Some benefits of Glimpse include:

*Toxin free, results-oriented skin care.
* Nourishes developing skin cells.
* Cleans your skin without caustic detergents or sulfates
* EXCLUSIVE BioActive X3 Complex:
1. BioActive Pericarp Oil for Anti-inflammatory Support (acne, hyperpigmentation, redness)
2. BioActive Polymeric Complex for Antioxidant Support (fights free radical damage)
3. BioActive Acidic Complex for Collagen Synthesis & Anti-bacterial Support (acne, fine lines & wrinkles)
* Tones, repairs, renews, and reminds your skin's cells to function how they did when we were younger.

I have seen personal results with acne using Glimpse. My skin tone has more clairty, the tone is more even, my pores are smaller, and it just looks more youthful. If I have had a blemish, it's cleared up immediately and greatly reduced the healing time. It speeds up the cell turnover more than anything I've ever seen using professional products.

I am in the business of helping people. If you have any questions about skin care, I would love to help! Please don't hesitate to ask.

Not All Products Are Created Equal

The reason I am doing this blog is for educational purposes only. I will provide some opinions, some facts from viable sources, but first and foremost, it's a way for me to reach more people in a shorter amount of time about this serious issue. I am a Licensed Aesthetician with a passion to help people with their skin, but not at the expense of their health. I have learned so much in the last couple years, both in school and out, about personal care products and the ingredients in them. I'd like to thank Stacy Malkan for writing the book, 'Not Just a Pretty Face, The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry'. This is an absolute must read for everyone. I learned a lot about the dangers of phthalates and parabens in aesthetics school, and since then, have tried hard to keep those products containing them away from my kids. BUT, I didn't know the extent and the severity of the problem that links unregulated (only 11% of the 10,500 ingredients are tested for safety) cosmetic ingredients to different chronic diseases and illness. The FDA doesn't regulate the cosmetics industry's ingredients because they are understaffed and underfunded, so leave it to the Cosmetics Industry Review panel to do their job. It's self-policed, by the way. It is sad to think that potentially most of the health-related problems we have here in America can be controlled or prevented just by what we put on our bodies & faces. Are we dying to be beautiful in America? Seems so.

Thanks to the EWG, Environmental Working Group, they have created a database, www.cosmeticsdatabase.org and you can go on there and type in your personal care products, whether it's toothpaste, body lotion, makeup, shampoo, etc., and it will rate it on a scale of 0-10 for safety. For those with children, you definitely want to do this. The best thing I've found for babies and kids for body wash &/or shampoo that's safe is Dr. Bronner's Pure Castile Soap. You have to watch out for their eyes, but their skin and hair will love it.

We have to take a more proactive and preventative approach to our own health and the health of our children. We are solely responsible for making the decision to use something or not. If it has an ingredient or ingredients that have been linked to cancer, would you knowingly continue to put it on your skin everyday? I think most people feel that it won't happen to them, and that if it's sold in Target or Walmart, or even health food stores, that it's "safe". As women, we use dozens of products everyday with about 168 chemical ingredients everyday. And men, about 85. Can you see how the day-after-day use of these 85-168 chemicals might take a toll on your body? Don't take the advertisers word for it, know the ingredients and read the labels. Another fyi, just because it says "all natural" or even "organic", doesn't mean there's no harmful chemicals in it. Again, you have to read the labels.

Some interesting facts to consider:

*33% of products contain ingredients linked to cancer.
*45% contain ingredients that may be harmful to the reproductive system or to a baby's development.
* 60% have ingredients that can act like estrogen or disrupt hormones (which is a reason women get breast cancer).

Another frightening finding:

"Scientific studies have increasingly demonstrated that toxic chemicals are contributing to childhood cancer, hormone-related cancers, asthma (fragrance, the biggest culprit), learning disabilities, birth defects, infertility and other health problems that have been increasing in recent decades." Excerpt from the book 'Not Just a Pretty Face', Stacy Malkan

When you learn this information, what do you do with it? Maybe tell family and friends? If you care about them, I would hope so. All I can ask, is provide people with the information. It's up to them whether they choose to do anything with it. If you found a cure to a disease, would you keep it secret?

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure...