sovereignsdaughter

New swimsuit, check.  New sandals, check.  Wide-brimmed hat, check.  Electronic ticket, check.  If only you could check off getting rid of those pesky things on your bikini line, but there they are, staring you right in the face!  Check. Mate. “Why me?!” Some people are more prone to ingrown hairs on the bikini line than others.   The type of ingrowns you get makes a significant difference when it comes to how to get rid of them.   One remedy does not fit all! How do you get ingrown hairs? Ingrown hairs are basically caused by three things:  Skin being pulled while shaving, which causes your hair to point in the wrong direction once you let go of the skin you’re pulling. The hair begins to grow into the skin, or scratches the wall of the follicle as it grows out, so now your body thinks it's an invader.   It reacts by sending the same artillery as when you have an infection; blood for added heat, lymph to bring ammunition to kill the invader, and if things get bad enough, white bl

You would think washing your face is a complete no-brainer, but consider this:  on more than one occasion, I’ve been prompted to ask clients with congestion and breakouts on their entire hairline if they tend to avoid those areas when washing.    Often people will avoid the area not wanting to get it wet.   This can sometimes be why I see such congestion there.    Now granted, someone who washes their hair every day will not have this problem no matter how they wash their face.  But not everyone does that. There is a part of this issue that is very much not a no-brainer, and that is the matter of using the wrong cleanser .   On one hand, the skin feels nice and soft after washing but is not getting clean and you may not even know it; all you know is your skin is getting more and more congested, dull and eventually, a little dried out, ironically, because skin that’s not clean doesn’t function or flow properly, leaving it vulnerable to water-loss.   On the other hand, skin feels squea

As an Adult Acne Specialist , I get asked all the time how to get rid of large pores - slash - make them smaller - slash - make them disappear, etc. The answer is pretty disappointing (no, they cannot be shrunk), but also kind of fascinating.   There is, however, a way to prevent them from looking bigger than they already are. Large pores are a sign  that your skin is genetically oily. Right at puberty, as your testosterone rises to start your journey to adulthood, so does your skin’s oil production.   As described in a previous post , testosterone is responsible for oil production in your skin.   Now, since before puberty there is so much less oil being produced, your baby pores have no reason to be anything but invisible.    However, as soon as the rising testosterone comes and tells your oil glands to start pumping out more oil, more room needs to be made.   So, the funnel-like mouth of each pore, also known as the Ostium (the very opening of the pore) and Infundibulum (the funnel t