My Beauty Space

Murad has a new product, and if it’s anything like it’s acne prone face wash, then it’s a great product.  Murad is a company that was founded by dermatologist Howard Murad, and has expanded into anti cellulite treatments, as well as top of the line skin care products both for acne, normal skin, and anti aging skin care.  It is available at Sephora, but is also available a few other places online. 

It’s limited availability is a testament that it wants to keep in that higher price, exclusive bracket, but it’s products seem to speak for themselves that they have high quality.  I just received an email from them that they have a new product out called Pomegranate Pore Refining T-Zone Gel. 

No matter what your skin type, almost everyone has a noticeable “T zone”, which is that ubiquitous area where your skin seems to instantly turn the oil production on.  The reason it’s called the T zone is that the shape of the space it inhabits on your face draws a capital T, starting across the forehead, and trailing down the nose in T formation.  If you ever take an oil blotting paper to these areas, you’ll usually see that the catchy name has a meaning behind it, when your paper has oil on it from all those very places.

The Pomegranate pore refining T zone gel by Murad claims to help even out oily and dry skin, to exfoliate (pomegranate contains great enzymes for natural exfoliation of skin’s outermost layers, which are often dry and may even clog pores) and therefore help to clear the pores, and also to help create better tone which improves the appearance and creates an overall more even look to the skin.

The product is actually a former product called Combination Skin Treatment, but they repackaged it and added an additional benefit of pomegranate, of which the attributes we discussed should help to clarify and tone skin, and are now selling it as a pore clearing and toning product.  This is probably also a great product for people with acne and enlarged pores to take a look at. 

Some of the benefits of ordering from Murad skin care products are that orders over sixty five bucks get free shipping, and you always get free samples with your order, which is always fun! 

Remember that story we talked about quite a while ago, about how women were being put in jeopardy out of their desire to receive dirt cheap plastic surgery, and there was a ring of Brazilian “doctors” performing surgeries like liposuction at extremely reduced rates, who had no business or credentials to perform such surgeries?  Well, the case the killed a Maryland woman who had liposuction performed by a Mr. Ribeiro has begun and prosecutors are hoping for a conviction of manslaughter in the case. 

Liposuction, as we all know well, is an incredibly popular and expensive procedure which extracts fat pockets from targeted parts of the body, most often requested belly, buttocks and thighs.  It is not a cellulite treatment as well, but has been known to help tone down cellulite as well since it does in effect reduce the amount of fat bulging and the spongy effect. 

The trial is to determine that the man is guilty of involuntary manslaughter in a female immigrant who had liposuction surgery done by him, where he says he performed the surgery in a sterile environment (oh, he should get off then, right?  I’m being facetious of course).  The patient actually ended up dying of complication arising from the surgery, one that is fairly rare but has been reported before, where fat cells migrate to the lungs, or an embolism. 

The catch is that Ribeiro was a licensed plastic surgeon in his native Brazil, but was not licensed to perform surgery in the US, so he set up shop in unsanitary conditions in the basement of a condominium where his clientele was mostly Brazilian immigrants, and he had no sophisticated equipment or monitors like one would receive in a normal medical environment. 

Prosecutors contend that if the women were in a professional office, she would have lived since the proper equipment was available to monitor her progress. 

In an effort to keep a youthful, wrinkle free facial appearance, many women have turned to using Botox cosmetically for prevention of wrinkles and anti aging maintenance skin care.  Botox works by blocking nerve impulses to muscles, which in turn causes the muscles to relax.
Recently, after 16 deaths and 180 reports of adverse effects, a public interest group is petitioning the FDA to increase the warnings on Botox.  This public interest group wants the use of black box warnings on Botox.
In the cases of serious adverse reactions, the botulinum toxin spreads to other parts of the body.  This can result in paralysis of muscles of the respiratory system or cause difficulty swallowing.  The difficulty swallowing can lead to aspiration pneumonia from liquid or food entering the lungs.
The concept behind the more advanced warnings is to let the public know what the possible dangers are.  In the event they should gave earlier symptoms of muscle paralysis elsewhere in their body, they could seek medical help. 
Early signs of serious side effects would be drooping eyelids, muscle weakness, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing, dry mouth or difficulty breathing.  If any of these symptoms occur, you should seek immediate medical intervention.  With how commonplace the use of Botox is today, the group claims that more enhanced warnings would be advisable to prevent possibly tragic results.

Occasionally I love to support local companies trying to make a name for themselves, whether it has to do with food, makeup or toiletry products.  I happened upon a small line of what looks like a natural cosmetics start up at the local Mustard Seed Market I frequent called Savannah Moon which makes natural body care products (one of my favorites). 

Amongsth the Burt’s Bee’s, Badger brand and other more well knowns in the lip balm aisle I browsed for way too long for such a small product, I found the Savannah Moon  LavenMint lip balm, a mix between lavender and mint lip balm.  Since I’m a fan of lavender because it’s relaxing smell and soothing natural chemical qualities to the skin, I decided to try it.  The packaging was nothing too fancy, but very natural looking, which I liked.

Overall, I like the product.  While it glides on a bit waxy feeling, it doesn’t wear right off like some other lip balms do.  Case in point, the Burt’s Bees pomegranate lip balm which feels great going on but ends up drying the lips and making them “addicted” to more and more balm just to keep them slightly moisturized. 

The LavenMint is nothing extravagent, and I’d still vote for the Burt’s Bees honey flavored balm over it, but it’s definitely not a bad lip balm and contains some excellent natural emollients like sweet almond oil and an essential oil blend of lavendar and mint.  Better than chapstick!  Plus it’s all natural, so you really can’t go wrong there, and I love the soothing scent that wafts up to my nose whenever I put some on. 

I know, what an odd title for a post, but it’s the best I could think of for this sort of odd problem I’ve always had. Seems my lips like to completely shed their outer layer at least once a year, usually mid winter, as they are now.  For years now I’ve experienced the same thing, and they always seem to resist even the heaviest of moisturizers to try to prevent the full on shedding from occurring.

The shedding usually lasts about a week or so, with several layers peeling off at a time.  I can perform some damage control by every morning and night gently exfoliating them while they are wet, but even this seems to only lead to more peeling and shedding.  I’ve found it’s best just to let it happen, exfoliate them twice a day, and try to apply my lip moisturizer and really focus on not licking my lips at all during the duration so as not to add to the problem.

Licking your lips and biting them is a habit that lots of us women have.  Not only that, we frequently will press our lips together, and believe it or not, these actions all lead to further drying and the faster wearing off of our protective lip coating of our choice, namely some sort of lip balm or chapstick.  My favorite lip protectant is still Burt’s Bees Honey flavored, as I find that any balms with mint in them tend to dry me out more, personally. 

I recently bought a new face wash, along with an older school Neutrogena face wash, neither of them targeted to acne, which is what I usually buy, since my skin still is prone to break out once in a while when I’m under stress.  The other one is a Garnier Nuritioniste face wash, which I’ve never tried.  I tried one of their hair products before, but didn’t really care for it too much, but figured their newer skin care line ranging from anti acne to anti aging and wrinkle skin care, was worth a shot.

The product I ended up buying from Garnier was a clear face wash in a pump bottle, called Detoxifying Face Wash.  On the front of the label, it was said to contain Vitamin E and Green Tea extract, both of which are supposed to be good detoxifiers of the skin, so I figured that was a good start.  The price was reasonable, I think no more than six bucks for a decent sized pump bottle, and the packaging was a cool green color, which made it appealing.  I know this has nothing to do with the performance of a product, but let’s admit it’s nice to look at a nice package!

I tried the Garnier face wash product for the first time a couple nights ago, and thought it might have made my face a bit tight and dry afterwards.  So I decided to see if it was just a one time thing or would happen again, so I used it the next night and I was right, it did tend to dry my skin out a bit.  I was surprised the drying occurred, since it’s kind of supposed to be a gentle, herbal skin care product.   

I then thought if I didn’t lather it up for as long it may not be as drying and this did seem to do the trick, making my skin feel refreshed, but not overly tight.  I had to educate my boyfriend who is also using the face wash with his nightly shower, and who also mentioned that it made his face feel a bit dry, to not lather for a as long. 

Overall, I’d say this would be a decent product to try if you have oily to normal skin, but never for a person who tends to have dry skin.  I have oily skin myself, and if it dried me out and I had to tweak the cleansing time to not feel dried out, I wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending it to a person with dry or easily irritated skin.  It has not caused any breakouts though, which is good, and it does make the skin feel refreshed after it’s used.  As far as detoxifying, I’m not really sure it does that. 

Healthy eating habits, exercising regularly and generally taking excellent care of yourself can keep aging appearance at bay the most effectively from the inside out.  There are also steps you can take cosmetically to keep a more youthful appearance.  For what shade of lipstick you’re wearing, you may want to adjust which shade you choose.   If you’re accustomed to a darker shade of red lipstick, you should change to a lighter softer pink hue.