sovereignsdaughter

I wrote about the connection between various foods and Adult Acne breakouts . Naturally, the time around Valentine's Day brings up questions about the chocolate-breakout connection. Dermatologists have long poo-pooed the idea that there is a connection between the two, and I think it's because the focus was always on the chocolate -- that is, the cocoa.  There's more here than meets the eye! Think about this: when are you most likely to eat chocolate? Around your period!   And when do you break out the most?  You get the idea... However , and this is a big however, with mounting evidence that there is indeed a connection between dairy and some acne conditions, and between sugar and increased inflammation in the  body leading to worsening of existing acne conditions,  chocolate is starting to be seen under a new light. Considering that most Valentine's Day gifts are in the form of milk chocolate, let's examine dairy first... The most common claim that I hear...

Do you have new jawline and neck breakouts that are bad enough to have you running to your doctor?  Don’t go making an appointment just yet… This winter is cold but the weather keeps fluctuating.  Sometimes it's humid with snow, sometimes bitter cold and dry.  Nothing else bears the brunt of freezing cold like your skin.  But you know what, while everyone is familiar with the drying and chapping effects of frigid winds, very few people take into account how the weather might affect adult acne.  What makes winter different, why would adult acne breakouts be any different than now? The answer is friction. The kind of breakouts that can be caused by friction are painful, red, hard lumps. They often occur in clusters, as you may see right now along your jawline and neck. These "papules" are commonly confused with what some refer to as "cysts" but that's not actually what they are.  Cysts are infected pimples that become so out of control, the inf...

Multi-Task?   Multi-Mask ! I will get to the multi-tasking skincare issue, next week.  I have a few things to say on the subject, and it really does deserve special attention.  But before that, I’d like to start off with another kind of multi-tasking, from another angle, which is how to deal with different parts of your face doing different things, even when your skincare routine is as optimal as can be.   This may surprise you - only 10% of the world’s population has truly dry skin, ie, doesn’t produce enough oil to keep it lubricated and healthy, while only 10% of the world’s population produces way too much oil.   Everyone else falls in the spectrum in between.   This is why my clinical instructor in beauty school first introduced us to the world of skincare with this adage:   “There is no such thing as Normal Skin” 80% of us have combination skin, either on the dry side or the oily side.  How many of us have dealt with the confusion of parts...