My Beauty Space : Product Reviews, Tips and Experiences

I just purchased a new gentle acne face wash at the drug store, because I was almost out of my favorite, but much more expensive Murad face wash which retails for $40 a bottle (lasts a long time, but still), and wanted to see if I could just go with something a little less expensive now that my face is in remission from the massive assault of zits I seemed to get before I went back on a more powerful pill.

I bought it just a few days ago, and began washing with it to see if I’d like it or hate it.  It was only around $6.00 for a fairly generous sized tube, so I would be happy if it provided comparable skin care for less.  I’m not disappointed, but I’m also not overly impressed. 

Here’s what I don’t like about it.  It’s a cream cleanser, which I don’t have a problem with, but I have to admit I had grown accustomed to my Murad gel.  I loved the Murad product’s great smell and the way it made my skin feel afterwards, not the slightest bit tight.  I also loved that it used one of my favorite anti acne ingredients, salicylic acid.

The Neutrogena wash does use the same ingredient, but it doesn’t feel like it is cleaning my face as well, and to boot, my face is a tad bit tight feeling when I’m done washing.  I don’t know how both of those happened together, but they did.  It’s a white cream, and it almost feels like the consistency of shaving cream mixed with a lotion.  It’s a bit too slip-slidey when I lather, so I suppose that’s kind of what I don’t like.  I know, picky right! 

It’ll do for now, but I’m still on the hunt for a cleanser that is more like my Murad, without the steep price. 

We know that antioxidants are good for our bodies and probably also our skin from the inside, but what about the outside?  Can we gain some of those good therapeutic properties from antioxidants by rubbing them into our faces, our necks, and other areas of our body that tend to show wear and tear as we age?  Can antioxidants in anti aging and wrinkle skin care products that are applied topically actually help prevent free radical damage, like they do when ingested internally in our foods via dark and vibrantly colored veggies and fruits?

Well, lots of skin care companies would have you believe so, and they are packing the latest skin care products touted for everything from anti aging and wrinkle reduction to clarifying, toning, evening, and brightenning.  Can we gain some benefit from these externally applied antioxidants? 

Well, it’s looking like they definitely can have some benefits if you choose the right products with enough of a concentration of them.  Take for instance the antioxidant soy.  DMAE and vitamin C is now included in many skin care products as an additive, specifically for the purpose of brightening the skin and making it look fresh and new. 

Both are in fact excellent skin care vitamins that indeed may provide your skin some extra protection and also have some refreshing, scrubbing and clarifying qualities, but they probably don’t actually fight free radicals simply by being applied topically.  That’s where mega antioxidant intake comes in.  If you really want beautiful skin from the inside out, try fortifying your diet with little shots of pomegranate juice, acai juice, mangosteen juice, or another one of the new juices that are antioxidant powerhouses. 

Also be sure to eat lots of lightly steamed broccoli, and deeply colored berries in your diet.  You should notice a positive change in your face and other skin as these antioxidant properties do tend to make the face look clearer, younger with less wrinkles and more vibrant.  I can notice a difference in my face when I’ve been eating the right foods, for sure. 

It can make me look five years younger when I’m getting all the nutrients I need inside, not just putting them on the outside of my body, where they are invariably backed away by the sun or stripped away by the environment. 

You’ve probably seen ads for anti aging skin care products that are topical in nature, such as cremes, serums, lotions and other topically applied skin care, that contain “peptides”, “oligopeptides” and other types of peptides that at the moment may have expanded further than my knowledge.  So, what are peptides, and why are they of benefit in anti aging and anti wrinkles creams? 

Peptides are essentially a chain of essential amino acids that act as a strengthening bond.  Look at them, as far as anti aging goes, as more of a topical “glue” that sort of helps the skin hold itself together and maintain its solidarity and integrity.  They are an excellent additive to anti aging and wrinkle skin care products, because they are such a powerful linking substance, and they do help the skin keep it’s bonds and itegrity for longer.  They are actually naturally occurring in the skin as well, and the theory is that applying them topically can help to keep that bond going, and to supplement the natural decrease in peptides in the skin as we age. 

Peptides that are applied topically are also supposed to send a signal to the nerves beneath the facial skin’s surface to slow down muscle movement, which helps to relax the muscles, which are actually lending to wrinkles because they cause our face to emote and this in turn causes the look of wrinkles. 

This is what Botox is used for as well, only it is a much more potend and long lasting muscle relaxant and it can help prevent new wrinkles from forming, not just relax existing ones by partially paralyzing the muscle beneath the surface which causes the wrinkle in the first place.  Revitol skin care products are reviewed well to help prevent new wrinkles because of their advanced peptides and vitamin technology, so they are one that is well worth looking into for this purpose. 

Creams or serums using peptide technology are beneficial for the purposes of strengthening skin bonds as well as helping relax muscle activity.

I just happened to be flipping through channels the other day, and a movie that I actually didn’t have much desire to see, “The Devil Wears Prada” was on, so I got sucked into it and watched it all the way through.  It was actually a pretty decent movie, and now I kind of like that actress Anne Hathaway.   She’s very pretty, not in a totally conventional way, but she seems very likeable and down to earth (sometimes you can tell, even when someone is acting), so she really carried the movie.

The movie is based on a novel about an overbearing, egotistical Editor-in-Chief of the most influential magazine in fashion, called “Runway”.  The villainous Miranda is played well by veteran actress Meryl Streep, who carries the performance of a career obsessed, shallow and many times mean editor in chief who care only about impressions and looks, rather than people’s feelings.  She is surrounded by Yes People all of the time, and hires a fish out of water, played by Anne Hathaway, who happens to have no sense of style but wins her over by telling her she’s smart, learns fast, and will get the job done. 

As the movie goes on, the inevitable happens, and the normally unfashionable, sweats and a tshirt Anne Hathaway makes a transition to a very stylish fashion queen, to the pleasure of her coworkers and Miranda, but to the dismay of her long time boyfriend and down to earth friends who could care less about couture and more about the things that really matter in life.  Ok, so it’s a bit cliche, but it’s a fun movie! 

You can probably guess where the movie goes.  Anne must choose between her boyfriend and friends and her new high fashion career, full of makeup and cosmetic freebies, expensive watches and purses, and fashion freebees, albeit with a steep price of having no life, and her old life where she was happy just to eat bagels and cream cheese for breakfast and watch movies and eat grilled cheese sandwiches in her sweats. 

Oh, one gripe.  Anne is supposed to be a “big” (for the fashion world) size six in the movie, but she doesn’t look much bigger than a two, especially considering the camera adds ten pounds.  And, oh, she does look like a model, so the part about her being an ugly duckling is a bit farfetched when you see her dressed to the nines with her mile long, pencil thin legs in a dress, but oh well, it’s a movie, what do I want? 

I absolutely love color on my eyes. I love greens, blues and purples, and of course my everyday brown is just a neutral must have that pairs with anything I am wearing. Sometimes though, I want to change it up a little from brown, and give my eyes a little color. What I like to do sometimes is mix eyeshadows. You know how many eyeshados come in quads or threes of similar colors.

Are you a self tanner?  Or maybe you’re a combination self tanner and sun basker.  Whatever the case may be, if you want to get an even sunless tan, then you need some sort of exfoliating sponge, and the loofah probably fits that bill best, since it is a natural exfoliant and gentle enough so that it doesn’t rip up the skin, yet abrasive enough so that it does slough off dead skin cells as well as old self tanner or uneven spots that can mess up a perfectly good sunless tan.

I couldn’t figure out why I get getting blotchy, and my sister, who’s a self tanner extraordinaire, told me that I had to exfoliate every single time I showered if I intended to put on self tanner that night or day, because if I didn’t then I would definitely get streaky.  She must have perfected it and figured that out over the years she’s been self tanning, because I thought you only had to exfoliate once in a while and still be able to get a good self tan by doing it that way, but apparently it’s more often ideally.

And, it works.  I started exfoliating every time before a self tan, even if it was just with a gradual self tanner, one of the ones that builds itself slowly over time, and only delivers a little bit of DHA every time, instead of mega dosing your skin with it to give you a dramatic color change right away.  Actually, either way, you want to exfoliate generously, but more so if you’re going for a big change in color, since most likely at that point you’re not very dark anyways, you won’t be sloughing off any kind of self tanner anyways. 

If you do a gradual self tan, and apply it often because it is so weak, you don’t want to vigorously exfoliate, just very lightly, so that you do not rub off too much and inadvertently make yourself blotchy, since that’s counterproductive to what you’re trying to do, which is get an all-over, even sunless tan, without blotches or uneven buildup. 

I had previously paid lots of bucks to get a combination glycolic/lactic acid peel and microdermabrasion done in a dermatologist’s office, but of course, the online shopper and researcher that I am, I knew, as with almost everything else, there was a cheaper way to get this done in my own home.  And I did find out that I could indeed do this myself at home.  I purchased a glycolic acid peel on Amazon.com for $19.99 for anti aging and wrinkle improvement and improvement in my skin’s texture.  It’s a 30% acid peel, and that’s the same serious stuff they use in esthetician’s and dermatologist’s offices for many times the price. 

Granted, you have a professional administering the peel in an office, and if you have any doubts whatsoever that you can do this yourself safely and correctly, you should have someone else do it, without a doubt.  However, if you feel pretty confident in yourself, and you know you won’t be one of those people that’s going to totally over do it the first time, hoping to get better results by leaving it on longer than required or anything silly and careless like that, then doing it yourself at home for a fraction of the cost might be an option for you.

Like I said, I purchase my glycolic acid peel for twenty bucks.  It wasn’t what I thought it would be.  The picture showed a couple of bottles and swabs, and what I got was simply a foil packet that looked like a wetnap.  It had specific instructions that told me, yes, this will sting, this is the real thing, and warning me not to leave it on for longer than indicated or I could be in for burning, scabbing and lots of other unpleasantries that I wasn’t willing to find out about.

So, I finally did the peel yesterday, knowing that I didn’t have to return to work for a few days, so if I disastrously ended up a red faced mess, I’d have a few days to recuperate.  It’s a very simple process, and takes just few minutes.  You wash your face, make sure it is thoroughly dried, and then swab the wetnap like thing containing the glycolic acid all over your face, making sure to avoid your eyes, your lips, and your neck - you can’t use it on your neck, by the way. 

Let me tell you - this stuff BURNS.  Yes, it burns, pretty bad, and I couldn’t wait to wash it off.  They indicated that you should not leave it on more than five minutes, and suggested that you leave it on for about 3-5 minutes, depending on sensitivity.  It was not recommended for people who have every had the herpes simplex virus, as it may cause outbreaks, anyone with extremely sensitive skin, with open wounds on the face, or anyone with rosacea or similar skin conditions as it could aggravate this skin condition. 

The only thing I had to do to neutralize the solution was splash cool water on my face until the burning/stinging stopped.  I did that after about three and a half minutes on my face.  There was no way I was going to try the full five minutes on my first try, especially since I felt the burning right away.  I gently toweled my face off.  It was pink, not red.

The Aftermath

 I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I was really hoping the burning would stop right away, and it did subside quickly.  I put a cool washcloth over my face as indicated, and my skin felt fine.  When my face dried, as indicated, I added tons of moisturizer to keep well hydrated.  They tell you to keep your skin very well hydrated for the next several weeks to ensure no scabbing or excessive dryness occurs, since essentially you are removing layers of old skin, that protect you, but also are the source of old, tired looking skin.

You cannot use any sort of retinoid cream after you use this peel.  You also are not  able to get ANY sun exposure and must be extremely diligent about applying sunscreen.  I would suggest if you do a home peel like this, to make sure you have a few days before any important social functions, so you’re covered if your face takes a while to recover.  My skin is fine just a day later.  I’ve kept it well hydrated, and it looks smooth and invigorated.  I’ll keep you posted. 

Well, I know that this certainly applies to me, as I’m constantly reaching in my purse’s little cosmetic bag and getting my lip balm out.  I put it on in the morning, twice, after every time I eat, because I feel that it’s worn off, and pretty much at least 15-20 times a day I’d say, easily.  Yes, I do go through a lot of lip balm! 

There was a recent article that exposed the fact that many people have become “addicted” to lip balm, as I have.  I can count many of my female friends among lip balm addicts, although I sort of think I’m still in the extreme category lol.  Lip balm addiction really happens because we become so used to having increased moisture content in our lips, and when they feel the least bit dry (which is actually normal), we feel that they look cracked, or we can’t stand the feeling. 

For me, it’s more of a feeling that I don’t like, and I feel a compulsion to add moisture to them.  For me, it’s almost like having dry hands.  I can’t concentrate until they’re moisturized!  Oh, the neuroses the beauty industry has instilled in us!  Hey, I guess it’s better than other more serious addictions, right?  Researchers did note that lip balm addiction is just fine (what a shock), as long as you don’t develop any allergies to the balms or balm you habitually use. 

I have to say, I’ve been very diligent in my weekly exfoliation, and actually even have stepped it up a notch by doing it twice weekly, and I am enjoying the look of smaller, more refined pores around my nose, which is my biggest oil production area, and also where my most visible pores are. As an esthetician once told me, where there’s oil production, there’s enlarged pores, and you really can’t do much about them other than microdermabrasion to help minimize their appearance, acid peels, and exfoliation at home.

I have been using Strivectin’s wrinkle cream that supposedly started out as a stretch mark cream for a while now, and I do like the results I get, but I have to say that the results only tend to be for the duration the stuff is actually on my face, and they do wear off throughout the day. 

I’m thinking that the primary force at work here in Strivectin is some sort of plumping and filling out agent that makes your wrinkles virtually disappear when the cream is rubbed in forcefully, and throughout the day as the cream is absorbed by the skin and the ingredients begin to wear off, you will notice that your wrinkles do become more visible. 

Not only is it a loss of hydration, which naturally make wrinkles and fine lines stand out more, but it is also the loss of the plumping ingredients.  I think this is why they say adamantly that you must put the cream on three times a day, since your skin looks best when the ingredients are still active and the heavy moisture base is still hydrating the skin, making wrinkles less obvious. 

I don’t know that it actually really permanently fills anything in or helps “iron out” wrinkles over the long haul though, unfortunately.  I do like the effects it has on my skin, and it does sink in quickly and does not leave a greasy feel or look, so I would still recommend it to people with anti aging and wrinkle concerns - just don’t expect a “cure” for your wrinkles.