Archive for June, 2008:
Well, I thought I’d share, even though it sounds like this person is talking about a place in Europe, and we’re based out of the US, but who knows, we may have some readers out that way that can benefit from this if they’re into natural skin care and have access to this place…and I’m aware it could just be self promotion, but thought I’d post it anyways…
HI there
Just read through your site and I thought you ought to give this one a
try.
I went to the coast this weekend and found a small shop selling
handmade cosmetics, being a fan of all things natural and having some
“laughterlines” I purchased a Rose Face Cream which stated on the little blurb
on the shelf that it was nature’s anti wrinkle cream. Being on a Rose
“trip” I also bought their Rose Champagne Body Cream.
If all other commercial labels promise us these things and then charge
ex amount of pounds (usually far too much) how comes this small shop
produces something that not only works in plumping up my skin, but also
nourishes, makes it look good and the body cream is heavenly —- all at
a FRACTION of the price others charge and I must say far better
quality than companies like Lush, Body shop and the likes ……. all SLS,
Paraben and the rest are not in these products and even my husband loved
their after shave lotion!
Well anyway …. it was in Lancing near Worting. The shop was called
Pumpkin’s House and had a nice atmosphere….. sorry can’t remember the
road but it was 3 minutes from the beach:-)
I know it is probably not a huge label, I have not seen this shop
anywhere else but it’s time people started looking into things like these
little shop instead of believing everything they read in the papers.
All rosy and fresh
Body wraps are gaining popularity in the realm of body sculptin and shaping, as well as helping with cellulite reduction and shrinking of body parts like the butt, thighs and arms, all of which are common problem areas that are complained about from women, who are of course the most frequent seekers of quick fixes for body fat and downsizing since it’s such an emphasis for women to be thin and trim in today’s mainstream media.
So, do body wraps actually reduce you by inches as they claim? And if so, how does a body wrap work to do this? Well, I’m no expert on body wraps, but I have read about them and what they do to make it appear as though you’ve actually shed weight. By the way, the costs of body wraps today range from about fifty to one hundred dollars per treatment, so a series of treatments does not come very cheap, but if it works and you find you get results, it may be something you would add to your beauty regimen.
Body wrap professionals claim that what body wraps do is to minimize excess water weight by using compression. By wrapping the body in bandages and compressing the fat cells, they say this squeezes out excess water from between the fat cells, and makes them all get closer together, which makes you appear thinner. However, it should be noted that this is only temporary, and once the fat cells expand again, the body expands along with them.
It’s also important to note that body wraps do not actually reduce the fat cells, they only temporarily restrict them so as to shrink the body parts that are wrapped. Body wraps may use any number of natural or mineral solutions (creams or serums) along with the wrap, and these combined with the compression are what they claim makes your body compress and look thinner.
Body wraps are probably good for an event or some special time that you need to lose some inches for, but you may want to make sure that you go to a place that guarantees a loss of so many inches within so many treatments so you don’t throw money down the toilet, especially for something that is a temporary fix and is not going to permanently be around.
Another suggestion is to take a product like this revitol cellulite treatment and buy some ace bandages and just compress the areas yourself – it’d be a lot cheaper and plus you’d be in the comfort of your own home, plus it would provide a lot more treatments than you’d get for the price of one or two at a professional place.
I bought a tube of a Colgate whitening toothpaste, hoping that it would polish my dull teeth back to a bright white after I’ve been having breakfasts of blueberries and yogurt for weeks now, in an effort to eat healthier. I’ve also added in a lot of other teeth staining foods and drinks as of late, and my teeth, although they are still a shade of white, are definitely showing a bit of the dulling and staining effects of the foods and drinks I’ve been choosing.
So this Colgate Simply White toothpaste that is supposed to dramatically brighten and whiten teeth pretty quickly according to the advertisement looked like a genuine bargain at two for five bucks at Giant Eagle, undoubtedly a promotional price to get the newer teeth whitening product off the ground. I only bought one tube though, just in case I didn’t like it or my teeth were made too sensitive by using it, which has been known to happen with my finicky teeth.
The problem with a lot of the whitening products is that they do create teeth sensitivity. While I can say this Colgate Simply White doesn’t promote sensitivity, it doesn’t really seem to be doing much of a job at whitening or getting the stains out after about one week of use. And, I’m not sure what the deal is with the tube, but it’s built so that it comes out of two chambers, one if a blue gel and the other is a white paste, which I think is the “whitening” part of the concoction.
Problem is, I’m not sure if I got a defective tube or not, but hardly any of the white paste comes out and all I get is a big glob of the blue gel pretty much. This might mean I’m totally missing out on the whitening action of the paste, but every time I squeeze it’s barely any paste.
I’m hoping that as the tube dwindles in size, the paste will come out naturally more on its own and I will get more whitening action. As for right now, Colgate Simply White seems to be just an ordinary toothpaste, it does not appear to be whitening my teeth any more than any other run of the mill “whitening” toothpaste. My money’s on the treatments at this point, like Crest White Strips or the trays – you just have to be really careful with the trays because they do create a sensitivity sometimes in those with sensitive teeth or gums.
I have had the pleasure of trying some organically made, high quality spa-like skin care products from a relative newcomer to the skin care and beauty market, a product line called Pure Bliss Essentials that prides itself of completely natural ingredients and high quality formulation. The products that I tried are the Ultimate Skin Serum, which I really loved, and the luxurious Antioxidant Creme.
Both products can be seen at the Pure Bliss Essentials site, and are loaded with excellent antioxidants and known beneficial skin care ingredients like DMAE, Vitamin C Ester and Alpha hydroxy acids, all of which have received numerous accolades for their never ending skin benefits.
I’ll start with the Utimate Skin Serum, which is a slightly orange/rust colored serum formula, which means it is not a cream base. I love using serums because of their ability to quickly penetrate the skin and sink in very deeply. This particular formula did not leave any greasy after-feel or anything like that, which can sometimes happen with skin serums.
Of course, with serums the thing you have to be careful of is that you don’t pumpt out too much of it, because it is a lighter and more liquidy substance than cream, so it is easy to over pump it or pour too much out. A little bit of this stuff went quite a ways, so I would gently rub it under my eyes, and then I would use my fingertips to spread it to the rest of my face – my cheeks, chin and forehead.
My skin is very sensitive and it did not break out from this, but instead took on a nice glow after I had used it for only a few days. It also gave my skin a supple look and seemed to help even out the tone after using it for about one week, combined with the antioxidant creme. I loved the antioxidant creme as well, and used the two in conjunction, which I think really helped boost my results. The creme was a thinner creme formula, which I liked because it also was absorbed very quickly into my skin, and felt very silky going on.
Some heavy creams make you feel like you are wearing a mask, and this was not lke that at all. Instead, I looked forward to slipping it on every night. I would apply the Ultimate Skin Serum first, and then after that had sunken in after about one minute, I would apply a layer of the creme over it. There were no unnatural scents or any additives to any of the products either, which is a huge bonus for those of us with sensitive skin.
As I’ve said before about a lot of the drugstore brands of skin care products, they make me either break out or they make my skin hypersensitive. That will not happen with this Pure Bliss line – it’s a genuine pleasure to use, and your skin gets a very nice glow and evening of texture from using it after only a short period. I’d say it gives the Perricone products a run for their money – and at a fraction of the cost in my opinion.
Well, I bought a product that is technically for blondes, but I knew that it would work on anyones hair since it had no tinting or anything that enhanced color or shades or anything of that nature, so I went for purchasing this product online anyways. The funny thing is, I only ended up with it because I had to order a certain dollar limit of products from the place I bought it from to get free shipping, and it popped up as a suggestion. When I read the reviews from other users, I decided it sounded like one of those fun hair products for the summer, when my hair tends to get pretty big and frizzy anyways.
In the summer, I don’t really battle my hair’s natural waves as much because of the humidity, instead I like to play with the waves a bit and play them up, wearing looser, more fun styles rather than sleek ones where my hair ends up looking like a broom anyways if it’s straightened. The John Frieda Tousled Tresses product is a fine mist wax that is supposed to help texturize and separate the waves in your hair. It goes on like a hair spray, except it’s not an aerosol can, instead it’s one that uses forced air and behaves like aerosol.
I like the fact that you mist it on where you need it, whereas, with a pomade or a gel, you have to spray it out in your hand and then rub it through the sections of your hair, making it hard to get an even distribution, especially if you’re using it on dry hair, which is how you should use this fine misted wax.
This product imparts a TON of shine to your hair, however you have to be very careful not to over spray it, because your hair will look extremely greasy if you put too much product on it. Instead, I would maybe start off with two or three squirts, misted in a large surface area, and go from there – it’s that concentrated. I could see some people thinking it’s way too greasy, but that’s definitely because they used too much.
It does what it says though. It separates and defines, although it may weight the hair down a bit, which I think would be my only complaint. It’s a very fun product for summer, and I’ll be using it on my dry hair when it just looks dry frizzy and borin, in hopes that this will add a little more shape and texture to it. Only other complaint is, why isn’t this one made for brunettes too? We like to have a little fun!
I had an interesting conversation with an “Avon lady” at a local flea market about sunscreen, and although I only took it with a grain of salt because she was trying to get me to buy something (which, incidentally I was already going to buy anyways), it got me thinking that baby sunblock may be the better way to go for adults.
Think about it, a lot of adults actually use baby products because they are formulated to be much more gentle than products used on adults. For example, one of my best girlfriends proclaims that Johnson and Johson baby lotion is the best moisturizer she has ever used on herself. She said that it is non-irritating, does not have any obnoxious scents in it, and also makes your skin feel baby smooth. Some adults even go so far as to use baby shampoo instead of adult shampoo because of the gentle ingredients that don’t irritate the eyes, and they swear that the shampoo is the best thing for their hair.
While I personally don’t use any baby products on myself because I already have favorites that are made for adults, I did purchase a sunblock by Avon that is made with babie in mind, and I love it. It’s called Avon Sun for Babies, and it has an SPF of 40. Not only that, it’s a thick and emollient cream and has no obnoxious scent, other than a hint of that typical sunblock scent to it. It is nonirritating, and I’ve worn it a few times out in the sun when gardening, and where I’ve applied it I have gotten absolutely not a speck of color – not a freckle, not a hint of pinkness, nothing.
So, it definitely works, and although it’s in no frills packaging and has no fancy scents of ingredients, I’m thinking that it’s the perfect sunblock for adults too because it is so simple, and it does exactly what it’s supposed to – protect you from the sun. It’s also very reasonably priced. I purchase a 6.7 oz. bottle of the stuff for just six bucks. Can’t beat that! That’ll probably last me about half a summer, I figure, and it’ll be great for those intense days when I need maximum protection for my face and shoulders, and my hands also.
It seems there may be a glitch in the endeavor to institute a new sunscreen rating program on SPF, or sunscreen lotions. Right now we see that there is an SPF – or sun protection factor rating on every sunscreen we buy, the most common and popular rating being the SPF 15 right now. The higher the number, as most of you well know, the more sun protection the cream or gel or spray offers, so the higher that number is on your bottle of precious sunblock, the better protected your skin is from the sun’s aging and damaging rays.
Well, the FDA has been wanting to institute a new sunblock rating system, but it seems that we may see it later now than sooner. The current sunblock rating system uses the number only to rate it’s protection against UVB rays, which are essentially the rays that burn the skin, and the rating does not currently include the rate at which the sunblock protects against UVA rays. The FDA, by instituting the new rating system, wants the new number, on a scale of 1 through 4, to rate the product on how it protects against both UVA nad UVB rays.
Although the new system was supposed to go into effect the summer of 2008 – this summer, most sunblocks will not be switching over to it for another year, so we may start to see these new ratings cropping up in fall of next year and perhaps even earlier if some manufacturers decide to comply with the ratings system before they actually have to and make a sort of preemptive strike. We all know that using sunblock is a vital part of our wrinkle and anti aging regimen, so this should be a good thing for those of us who are vigilant about taking care of our skin and protecting it from the elements.
The new system they are hoping, will be easier to understand and will include a more complete picture of how much protection a given sunscreen offers against all UV rays, not just one or the other. This way, when you buy a sunblock product, you know you are buying one that offers a full range of broad spectrum sun protection, and this sort of forces the maker’s hands at making a better, more complete product for consumers who will now gain a better understanding at how much protection it offers.
I was trolling the internet a while ago and saw this treatment that was available at some, but very few and far between, spas and cosmetic dermatologists and surgeon’s offices that was designed specifically for cellulite reduction, called Velasmooth. I again saw it when I was doing some further research on mesotherapy, which is the injections that are supposed to make fat cells explode and be destroyed and subsequently excreted through your body’s natural waste elimination cycles, and also smart lipo, which is a fat removal treatment that uses a laser to destroy fat cells, allowing your body to remove them.
I grew curious, so I started to do a little more research on what Velasmooth is, especially since it was very recently approved by the FDA for the treatment of cellulite, and was now available for use by specialists on women who wanted to treat their cellulite. The Velasmooth system seems, from what I can see, to be modeled on the same premise as the endermologie cellulite treatment machine, in that it uses massage to break up the formation of cellulite lumps and bumps.
But it also goes a few more steps further than endermologie, which, who knows, may prove it to be more effective at reducing the appearance of cellulite than endermologie ultimately. However, it’s so new there doesn’t seem to be much information out there, so that verdict is still way far away from being reached.
The other steps that the Velasmooth system uses are radio frequency which is supposed to help break up the spongy appearance of cellulite, and also laser technology, which presumable makes it easier to break up the bands of collagen and the gel-like formation of fatty pockets that cause cellulite to look the way it does.
So, hopefully this newer system will prove effective, but I visited the website for the system itself, and there were only a few before and after pictures showing results, so I’m hoping the company and the people who perform the treatment with the Velasmooth device can come up with many more pictures to prove that the product has excellent results that justify the high end cost of the treatments.
We are all so concerned about caring for the skin on our faces (I’m guilty of this too by the way, before I launch into the reasons why neck skin needs to be cared for as well), yet we seem to forget that there is a part just below our face which has the same impact on our overall aging and how we look. In other words, you can have a dynamite face with smooth skin and if you neglect your neck, you may have a case of a fifty year old neck on a thirty year old face.
You’ve seen it in magazines on Hollywood movie stars, and I’ve seen it plenty in real life, and every time I see it I think of how I need to stop being more complacent about the skin on my neck and start taking care of it better. You neck skin is very delicate, kind of like the skin under your eyes. It’s not very thick skin, and is prone to getting burnt by the UV rays of the sun and is also prone to aging over the years from the environmental factors as well as sagging.
No one wants a “turkey neck”, so it’s even more important to care for the skin on your neck by using firming agents as well to keep it from sagging and to make gravity work in your favor rather than against you. The reason all of this came about is that, as I am preaching against now, I made one of the biggest mistakes there is to make when it comes to caring for your neck, and I went out in full sun to a flea market over the weekend, with my face triple layered in sunscreen and NONE on my neck.
I ended up getting a sunburn in the shape of a crew neck tshirt on my neck because of it, and now I have to worry about photo damage as well as skin cancer since I am prone to skin cancers due to the fair nature of my skin, especially the delicate skin on my neck.
Not only is using sunblock on your neck important, but using your facial moisturizing and firming lotion on your neck as well as your face is too. Anything you use to care for your face (it better be gentle, to start with), should be used on your delicate neck skin as well. A firming cream, perhaps with the great firming agent DMAE (see revitol review for products with this wonderful agent) may be in order for the neck skin, as it will help defy gravity and keep it up, where it’s supposed to be, rather than sagging.
I recently saw a report on cellulite, and how women are basically “stuck” with it. The report talked to a few cosmetic surgeons and dermatologists who believed that there were really no good methods currently to help smooth cellulite, but I happen to disagree adamantly on that assertion since I’ve seen dramatic improvement in mine from cellulite treatment cream combined with some good old fashioned discipline in massaging my problem areas either nightly or maybe even every other night (as much as I can, in other words).
The report explained that about 85% of women suffer from cellulite, whether they are thin or larger women. I happen to also believe that the number of women suffering from the orange peel look is closer to the mid nineties percentage wise, since I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman without the spongy stuff - at least not one that hasn’t had some sort of treatment for celllulite.
It also went on to explain that the cause of cellulite is fatty pockets which are then strained by collagen bands beneath the skin, so it’s really not the deeper fatty tissue that is causing cellulite, it’s really the more superficial fat that is causing it, which is why traditional liposuction does not really help with the appearance of cellulite.
Also, for reasons thought to be linked to estrogen production, women are the most likely to suffer from cellulite, although a few men do as well. Women get the most severe cellulite in their thighs and buttocks, where circulation tends to not be as good because of the extra fat and padding in those areas.
They said that increasing circulation by getting daily exercise or some sort of physical activity in is good for cellulite, and of course massaging is good as well since it stimulate the circulation as well as may help break up the fat deposits and collagen bands that create the puckered look we all love to hate.
I think the best way to approach minimizing and reducing cellulite’s appearance is to lead an active and healthy lifestyle, reduce salty and fatty foods and complex carbohydrates, and make sure you massage those problem areas on a regular basis. If you get in the habit of massaging the cellulite stricken areas every night, then it will seem less like a chore, and believe me, you will see a difference, especially if you pair it with something that really works for skin tightening like the Revitol cellulite treatment cream (see reviews), one of my very favorites.
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