skin question

[Skylark]

I've put toothpaste on my facial zits for the past few nights now... and I haven't seen much/any improvement.

[MsRuthieB]

Hmmm..I always use Crest and it worked for me. Could it be the brand? Sorry to hear that it's not working for you though.

[BarbB]

I use Arbonne skin care products. They have a great oil-free line called Bio-Matte and an acne line called Clear Advantage. They have never tested on animals, use no animal by-products, and use none of the products that are bad for your skin like mineral oil, dyes, wax, etc.
You can check them out at www.arbonne.com.

Barb

[Skylark]

MRB,
I was using Crest, too. Perhaps I should try Colgate and see if that works.

[MsRuthieB]

Sky..maybe your skin is just reacts differently for some reason to whatever the active ingredient in the toothpaste is?

[Skylark]

*sigh* I guess so. Perhaps I should try some other paste-like thing and see if that works. I don't think Vaseline is quite what I want, though. ;-)

[MsRuthieB]

Nope, not vaseline. Maybe try peroxide on a cotton ball and compress for a little while to kill the bacteria. I'd be careful though using to many things at one time on your skin. It may irritate it and cause a worse reaction. I found a sample size grapefruit peel off mask at Marc's and tried it last night. What a freaky feeling peeling that thing off. I can't tell that it did anything. I've heard oatmeal is great for your face. I think in a couple of days I'm going to heat some up with a little soy milk and oatmeal (leaving it thick) and throw in some vanilla for scent and put it all over my face. Ill let you know how it turns out. The heat will probably feel wonderful (I'll have to be carefull to test it on my wrist or something first).

[LadyFaile]

yeah skylark it definately sounds like your hair gel. try getting an alcohol-free brand next time and be careful to not get it on your skin or wipe it off right away if you do. also if it's reacting to your skin like that i'd be careful not to get it on your scalp as well, just on the top layer of hair.


right now i have a big fat one right under my nose, right in the centre. it hurts. i always get them in the worst places :cry:
hurts to blow my nose (which i do 12 zillion times a day), smile, talk, any time i move my upper lip. argh. i think when i'm home alone tomorrow night i'll put a pore cleansing masque on. also in my xmas stocking i got a sample bottle of exfoliating apricot scrub from Yves Rocher, my brother swears by it so i'm gonna try it tonight. he used to have really bad skin when he was younger, but since he started using that stuff he's had really nice skin.

[soilman]

I must tell you all: i had zits until my early twenties. Not alot, but enough. And they did not go away when i went vegetarian. However when I went vegan, they miraculously disappeared. I cannnot say that veganism helped with my sinus problems; I cannot say that veganism helped with my facial nerve damage, or with my severe head pain -- but it certainly was very helpful for my acne.

Yes, oils and chemicals from hair falling onto your forehead, can promote zits on the forehead.

While bacteria are involved in the growth and development of zits, it is not the bacteria which cause the zits. Those bacteria are everywhere, and mostly unavoidable. I am reasonably certain that it is the systemic condition of one's immune system, what is circulating in one's blood stream, and certain things in one's diet, that has more to do with zits developing than anything else. More so than what is on your face. Also, certain industrial chemicals that permeate air, food, and soil, and get into our blood stream seem to have something to do with zit development.

I am utterly convinced that elimanting dairy products from ones' diet will greatly reduce zits.

I don't think most of the things people put on their face are worth a damn. Just wash accumulated dirt off, once in awhile. The layer of dead skin cells that forms on one's skins is protective -- it protects against zits. It is crazy to scrub it off or remove it with salicylic acid.

The one thing that it helps to do externally, on one's face, is to clean out clogged pores, remove "blackheads." These can be removed mechanically with simple, clean, stainless steel tools. You can have a dermatologist do this or do it youself. As far as I know, the chemical tacky-strips used to remove blackheads, are helpful, tho i have not looked into them and am not sure.

Sure, it is probably a good idea to kill the bacteria that come out with them, when you remove blackheads, unclog the pores that they clog. But again, it is not really the bacteria that cause zits, it is the inabiltity of our immune system to kill them, that causes zits. You can kill the bacteria on your face with chemicals, but within an hour they will land on your face again, and grow there.

Squeeze out blackheads. If you must pop or a white head, wash off the area thorougly. That's where more of the bacteria are, in whiteheads, not blackheads. A whitehead is an active infection process (the whiteness is due to the accumulation of phagocytes, "white" blood cells, that are busy eating the bacteria).

Blackheads, from what I can figure out, are simply the clogging substance of clogged pores, clogged hair follicles -- they tend to develop into whiteheads because they prevent the pores from doing their normal excretion process, and "food" for bacteria accumulates. So if you clean out the hair follicle by pressing out the black plug, they don't get a chance to develop into whiteheads.

From what I can fig they are a mixture of dead skin cell particles, particles of whatnot that come from the air and land on the skin, and oils that are secreted by the skin, thru the pores, the hair follicles (not all hair follicles have a noticable hair, but they are hair follicles anyway).

In short:
quit dairy products
quit all animal fats
press squeeze or chemcially remove blackheads, and then wash your face afterwards with mild soap and water and rinse thoroughly, or with alcohol or an alcohol-wipe type thing. I think the alcohol wipe type thing may be better than soap and water. Soaps have residues of oil which may encourage bacteria growth. Alcohol doesn't.

Dont wear makeup or leave anything on you skin. This may help quite a lot.

That' all you need to do.

[MsRuthieB]

Wow Soilman.. :wayne: I was under the impression that that it's good to remove the first layer, or dead layer, of skin off of your face to help regenerate new cells. That's probably all a bunch of crap to make up buy products we don't need, huh? As for the makeup (foundation, cover up) I noticed a long time ago that woman that wore it looked older and more wrinkled. I summized that the chemicals was drying the skin and suffocating it so that it couldn't "live" like it should. I believe that the last time I wore it was in my late teens/early 20's. I'm so glad I decided not to because I can really tell a difference between by skin and some of the people that are the same age as I am and wearing makeup. Big Difference.

[Skylark]

Soilman,
That's very interesting... I wasn't sure if it was just myth to squeeze zits or not. I have this one huge zit, kinda like LF's, cept mine is probably 1/4 of an inch righter on my face than hers is. It's been around for about a week, and it's still here, grrrr. I had pretty much been leaving it alone except for the toothpaste that MRB suggested and the foundation I usually wear. Its sounding like I should leave off the makeup. I hate it when my dad's right. I thought that it was only Bad News Bears to put on a ton of makeup, but maybe even the light foundation and touch of blush is too much.

It's sooo annoying to have a zit just on the border between the lip and the regular skin because that means when I kiss my 6 year old sisters goodnight, it feels funny. Not to mention that when I take MRB's suggestion and apply toothpaste, the paste stings for awhile.

[soilman]

Skylark I think it is better to stick a zit right in the middle with a pin before you gently squeeze it, pressing it gently, going from point ot point in a circle around the central hole. Then all the fluid flows out one perfectly round little hole in the middle, instead of thru a long jagged explosivly-made line-break, that reaches from edge to edge, and you have much less of a scar when it heals. I don't think sqeezing blackheads causes scars at all, just squeezing pussy zits does, but only if you don't know how to squeeze them properly.

Pierce. Squeeze slowly and gently being careful to push all the puss out of the hole you made with the pin, and not tear a hole or make an extensiv "tear-line" as a result of squeezing. Soak up the puss with a soft clean paper towel. Wipe off the area with a soft paper towel with a little rubbing alcohol poured onto it. That's it.

Keep your bottle of alchol out of contact with any paper towels you use. That is, dont' touch the towel to the bottle, but hold the bottle above the piece of towel and carefully pour onto the towel. This prevents introduction of bacteria onto or into the bottle -- which might go back onto your face next time you use the bottle.

You may have to repeat a few hours later -- the pustule may fill up again with more pus. If the hole has sealed up, try to find it and remake the new hole in the same spot. You may have to squeeze again a 3rd or 4th time. Usually that should be enough. You will have the zit for less total days this way. I believe this is actually advantagous -- helps nature along, speeds the healing process, reduces the likelyhood of the zit breaking when you are busy and don't notice it breaking, increases the likelyhood of you cleaning up with alcohol when it breaks, and therefore reduces the amount of new zits that form from bacterial spread when the first zit breaks.

[LadyFaile]

sounds like fun.

so what do you do about enlarged pores?

ETA: oops the apricot scrub isn't yves rocher it's st. ives.

[Skylark]

Ohhhhh... Even if the toothpaste treatment did do anything for the zits other than the big one that I really want to get rid of, I think the paste had the side effect of drying out my skin. I had put paste on the beginning-to-appear zits along the sides of my nose, and yesterday night I noticed that the skin there felt really dry and the dead skin was pulling away from the now-reduced zits kind of like the way athlete's foot looks.

[matt]

I have only ever had very mild acne but being obsessive and so attached to myself I've been through alot of **** over the last 3-4 or so years to try and get rid of it including antibiotics (over the counter & prescribed), diet changes, drinking a ton of water and everything else.

Switching to a vegan diet, the range of foods at first decreased so it was easier for me to look closely and notice patterns. I saw long ago that eliminating the obvious perpetrators like fat, oil, sugar etc helped and so did drinking alot of water and using aleo vera but it still didn't clear it completely.

Since then and experimenting with my diet my Skin is basically clear. Most product at best can only mask becuase the 'problem' is generally form inside.

As usual most 'problems' contain and suggest their own solution

Just speaking from my experience and that is all one can do,
It comes down to 3 factors:

- Your Environment
- Your Diet
- Your Psychological state


I recommend eating a good amount of citrus fruit at night also :)

[MsRuthieB]

Interesting. Along with noticing less acne, do you also notice an overall positive change in your skin tone? Like, it had a nice fresh look to it? I don't have acne trouble, but I do like a rosy glow in my cheeks :D

[matt]

Absolutely. Aloe vera can be good for that as well. The biggest noticeable difference (positive) in overall skin tone & feel for me comes when going raw / fruitarian.

[LadyFaile]

Originally posted by skylark
Ohhhhh... Even if the toothpaste treatment did do anything for the zits other than the big one that I really want to get rid of, I think the paste had the side effect of drying out my skin. I had put paste on the beginning-to-appear zits along the sides of my nose, and yesterday night I noticed that the skin there felt really dry and the dead skin was pulling away from the now-reduced zits kind of like the way athlete's foot looks.

yeah toothpaste does dry your skin, that's how it gets rid of the zit i guess, drying and sucking out all the junk. but most zit creams are drying as well. i'd suggest exfoliating and then use a good moisturizer that's not oil-based. marcelle makes a good one but i doubt it's vegan or animal-friendly. i'm sure you can find a veg one at a health food store

[Skylark]

Have there been any studies done on fruitarians and their skin? I'd be interested to find out.

[matt]

There are lots of arguments around over which diet it the 'right' one. People love to argue and quote their 'facts' etc. I would suggest that if you are interested in the effects of any diet to try it yourself but to remember one thing that you must have in any diet in my opinion and that is balance. What is and what isn't healthy is seen through the magnifying glass of mans knowledge which is always limited and always changing.

As you know a 'vegan' or 'vegetarian' or otherwise diet isn't nessecarily a balanced diet. For instance my sister is vegetarian but eats too much bread, pasta, white rice etc and not enough protein fruit or greens etc and she has paid the price for that through reasonably serious problems with her skin and bowel.

One 'xx' diet is all 'xx' diets. This may sound obvious but then why do so many look outward to others to try and find what is good for themselves?

[MsRuthieB]

I find that the more water I drink and the less sugar I eat the better my skin looks. Plus, I always wash my face before I go to bed. Warm oatmeal once a week also feels so good and makes your skin look soooo good.

[Skylark]

Matt,
Studies don't produce facts. If anything, they produce statistics and probability. If I haven't learned anything else from the first two class periods in my Stats for Social Sciences and Research Methods classes, I have learned that. If there is a study and an academic article written about it, then most likely there is truth to be gained from it.

[matt]

I gave up facts along with beliefs.

Warm oatmeal :)

[Skylark]

Matt,
Then is it a fact that you are a person? Is it a fact that warm oatmeal helps your skin? Or is it a fact that warm oatmeal helps some people's skin? ;)

[matt]

Perception. but again thats just me, if one gives up beliefs and facts then surely he/she has long ago given up the notion there is really a 'right'/'wrong'.

If everyone was color blind, we would call it a fact that this light in front of me is red when in fact we would see it as green.


once again, warm oatmeal :)