My Beauty Space : Product Reviews, Tips and Experiences

Well, for those of you that loathe that spongy, loose looking flesh that tends to accumulate so much on women in the same “problem” areas such as the hips, thighs and buttocks, and occasionally even the belly and lower legs (calf area), there may be some very exciting news in cellulite reduction.  But brace yourselves, because it’s probably the most expensive cellulite treatment to date. 

At a rate of about $4,000.00, you may have access to getting cellulite reduction that actually lasts, and also where results can be seen after just one session.  Normally, cellulite treatments take several sessions to gain results, and then take monthly or biweekly treatments just to keep those results going, but this Thermage cellulite reduction treatment may be a little better than what’s currently out there when it comes to permanent results and quick ones too.  It’s called the Thermage Therma Tip CL cellulite tool, and it’s bound to cause a buzz in the beauty and spa industry as soon as women see results after the very first visit, if it works as they company says it does.

Thermage is a system that has been used for a while now, and is usually used on the face as a means of anti aging and wrinkle control.  It is a series of radio frequency waves and heat that are transmitted through the skin via a professional hand held device, and it supposedly can penetrate layers of skin more effectively than even the best layers currently can do. 

This is why they are saying it is so effective at breaking up fat and helping rebuild collagen while improving the circulation and promoting blood flow to help break it up more, and why it is great for breaking up cellulite problem areas, and very quickly.  The cost though is very high, and that is definitely a consideration and something that is casting it into the only-the-rich-can-afford stratosphere of beauty and personal care, so it may be very limiting, but often times when something is first introduced it’s astronomically prices and then comes down shortly thereafter. 

Unfortunately, this is so new that I have not read any reviews or user experiences with the treatment yet, but I do know that many users complained about Thermage that had it done on their face, that it was extremely painful.  This may be different though, since it is not being performed on such a sensitive area, and it may also produce a different set of feelings because traditionally where there’s cellulite, there aren’t many nerve endings of blood flow, which is why it bruises so easily, but which also may be why the pain could be totally tolerable in this area.

There’s been so much in the news lately about sunscreen, since it is, in fact, summer everywhere and everyone almost can’t help but get a little sun exposure, no matter what their skin tone is.  Here it is the Fourth of July so it’s the perfect time to talk about summer sun protection, which we talk about often, but this was actually newsworthy enough to talk about on news sites, so we’re going to talk about it here as well.

There was that news about the new rating system for sunscreens being looked at as a more effective means to rate and grade the levels of UVA and UVB protection, since currently only a certain level of UV protection is FDA supervised and mandated, and now there is news that the American Academny of Dermatology is testing a lot of the more popular name brand sunscreens and saying that they are misleading customers about the level of protection they offer. 

They’re saying that they want to first test the actual effectiveness and efficiency of these sunscreens at providing the assigned level of protection, how long it provides protection according to labeling (which would include how often it has to be re-applied), and also if there are harmful chemicals or compounds in the sunscreen that may absorb into the skin and be harmful when applied, especially to children who use the product. 

One of the popular ingredients (chemicals) found in sunscreens today is called oxybenzone, and this ingredient has been tested and found in some cases to be a hormone interruptor, as well as a possible carcinogen (cancer causing agent).  This would be ironic, because the very thing we are trying to do when we apply sunscreen is protect ourselves against skin cancer, so it would obviously be disappointing if the very thing we put on to protect our skin was actually helping to create carcinogenic conditions in our body and on our skin.

However, other people say that the warnings about oxybenzone are unnecessary frightening and in fact the ingredient was safe.  If the FDA says so, it must be, right?  I’m being facetious by the way, lots of drugs approved by the FDA later come back to bite us in the butt, we all know that.  Critics of those that claim oxybenzone is unsafe say they are more worried about people not using sunscreen for fear of this ingredient.

In the past, another ingredient commonly used in sunscreen called PABA was eliminated from most because of it’s extremely irritating qualities.  Lots of people, including myself had extreme reactions to PABA, so it’s not found in many today. 

As far as the brands that tested on the low end of the effectiveness scale as discussed earlier, you will recognize all of them, and have probably even used them in the past.  They are Neutrogena, Coppertone, and Banana Boat.  No other recognizable names were mentioned.  
 

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 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. 

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. 

We have a brand spanking new page for tons of expert cellulite reduction tips and reviews of a few of the best cellulite creams and treatments around where you can treat yourself to cellulite reduction techniques and tightening ingredients in your own home, making for a smoother behind and thighs for those summer months when you gotta show your stuff!

The new page is cellulite cream reviews, and we hope you enjoy it and the tips that go along with it. 

I have to admit, I’m a sucker for beauty products that sound too good to be true, and I did order one that was actually overpriced I felt, and that I thought would probably help me to shape my thighs, which I always feel are a little too curvaceous for my frame, but I’m not really willing to diet them away since they are very hard to get rid of and other parts of my body have to shrink considerably before they go away. 

Smart lipo was looking like a great option for me to get rid of my saddle bags for a while, but I have to admit the idea isn’t all that appealing to me at the moment, and the cost isn’t either, so I was surfing for something to at least help me sculpt my thighs into submission so that I could fit into some of my cute summer clothes that I used to be able to again. 

That’s when, somehow in my surfing, I came across a site that sold body wraps that would supposedly help you lose inches or some sort of girth off of your stomach, thighs, or wherever it was that you would apply them.  I saw that they sold them for the chin area, since lots of men and women have problems with excess fat under their chins, and then they also sold wraps specially made for the belly area as well as the thighs. 

One thing I didn’t like was that after I had paid a high price for them, and I bought two units already, they took me to a screen which offered me additional products, the exact same things, only marked down considerably.  I thought, well hey I would have ordered more if I’d been given the chance to at this price, but that’s reallly neither here nor there since this is a product effectiveness review of the body wraps. 

The wraps come carefully wrapped in separate plastic bags, and you must peel them apart to reveal their full size once opened.  They smell very strongly of menthol, which makes sense, because the herbal ingredients they say they contained must have menthol usually in order to penetrate the skin fully and go to  work.  Menthol is a known agent to absorption transdermally (under the skin), so it is used widely in patches and wraps to get ingredients, whether they be pharmaceutical in nature or herbal, to penetrate as deeply as possible.

I used ace bandages to keep my wraps on my thighs, and although they didn’t cover my entire problem area, I thought they covered enough.  I wrapped them tightly since the directions say to make sure they are tightly adhered for at least an hour, if not overnight.  I chose to wear them overnight, which was a little rough, considering they kept sliding around and the menthol smell was very strong, so my boyfriend wasn’t too pleased that the whole bed smelled. 

However, I must say that it “feels” like it’s doing something while it’s on there, and in the morning when I woke up, I swore that my thighs did shrink a bit.  I’ve used 3 wraps so far, 3 nights apart as indicated, and I have 3 more to use.  I am not going to use them all consecutively though, since circumstances prevented me from doing this already, and I want to test it better next time and take measurements to see if they indeed do take inches, heck even centimeters off of my thighs. 

It is unclear the mechanism by which this works, and I’m always a little suspicious of products that claim to work yet don’t make clear how they actually work, but these do seem to be somewhat effective, if not a little expensive.  I’ll keep you posted on my next round with these, measurements and all!  Oh as far as cellulite treatment goes, I’m not sure they help with that at all, but I’ll let you know if I notice a difference with these next three wraps. 

This new Ped Egg looks pretty interesting, I have to admit, and if I didn’t know myself well enough to know that I might buy one and then have it sit in my closet because I either A) forget I have it or B) Do not have the time or the inclination to use it, I probably would have tried it by now.  I’ve seen informercials for the Ped Egg pedicure product, which is supposed to soften and smoothe our feet so they look as pretty as a princess’ for the summer time, and then I just recently started to see the product in Target for a good price as well.

The funny thing is, I just spent a lot of money, or at least what I feel is a lot of money, on a pedicure that I wasn’t really that happy with.  The nail polish looked ok, and I liked the color and the fact that my toe polish did last a lot longer than it does when I paint my toes, but the thing is, these salons just don’t take the time they need to with your feet to really get them totally smooth - not $55 worth of smooth at least in my opinion. 

I feel like sometimes getting pedicures is really more for the experience than how your feet will feel even a couple days after the service is performed, especially if you get someone who doesn’t buff them for long enough, which is exactly what happened to me last time.  They did soak them in a tub for a while, but when they were out she literally only went back and forth with the buffer a few times on each foot, and believe me, I had thick and tough enough skin on my feet by then that it needed to be more like twenty solid minutes of buffing, buffing and more buffing. 

My feet returned to their normal, dry scaly looking selves about two days after my last pedicure, and I figured that next time I go I’ll have to make sure I let them know how rough my feet feel and that they need a little TLC.  In the defense of where I got them done and the person who did them, I was about fifteen minutes late to the appointment but that doesnt’ make me any less of a paying customer who wants smooth feet.

Anyways, back to the Ped Egg, if anyone who’s reading has tried this bad boy, let us know and give us a review if you wouldn’t mind.  I have all the foot products and the buffers and files, but if I could buy something that was all in one and worked, and worked quickly, I might consider buying it! 

Women tend to be very conscientious these days about applying SPF lotion to their face, the most important place in my opinion, to apply it, since the face received the brunt of the harmful and prematurely aging UV rays of the sun on a daily basis, even on the days when we think our exposure to the sun may be minimal.  Make no mistake, even when you’re sitting in your car, you are being exposed to UV light that is breaking down your cellular structure faster and causing you to age faster.

Many people are so focused on applying their SPF lotions to the more obvious parts of the body that they many times forget a very important part of UV protection, and that is the hands.  Take a look at any older persons hands, and the age spots and mottle skin tone will tell you that their hands have had a lifetime of sun exposure. 

Now compare their hands to other parts of their body which are covered the majority of the time, and received minimal sun exposure, and you will see a much smoother, less spotted surface, showing much less telltale signs of sun produced photo damage and premature aging. 

This is why it is so important to keep our hands well protected from the sun’s harmful and damaging rays.  There are a few lotions out there that are specifically made for the hands in a more emollient formula (the hands needs a thicker, more lasting formula since they are exposed to washings and other things that strip them), and also have an SPF in them.

I really wish that many of my favorite hand lotions, like the Aveda hand cream for example, would learn and add SPF to their formula.  It would make it all that much more appealing, especially since the hands are one of the main places that dermatologists remove precancerous sunspots from. 

However, I did find a particular hand cream in of all places, one of my least favorite to buy any type of lotion since they are usually drying and heavily perfumed - at Bath and Body Works.  It was in a pump and it was scented, however it contained a 15 SPF, and I loved feelign that I was not only moisturizing my hands but also protecting them from cancer and premature aging when I latherered it on.  It’s hard to find hand lotions with SPF, but it’s well worth it if you can find one. 

For several decades, tanning booths were very popular for people to enjoy a golden bronzed look all year long.  However, due to increased warnings about UV damage with the resulting premature wrinkling and more importantly, the very real danger of skin cancer, people are seeking a safer alternative.  Self tanning products are safe for your skin and have come a long way since the earlier products that left an odd orange tinge to your skin and often appeared blotchy or streaked easily.
 Sunless tanning products come in a wide array of different forms.   They come in lotions, sprays and mousse forms.  It is recommended, prior to application of any sunless tanning solution, to shower using an exfoliating scrub.  St. Tropez features a full line of moisturizers, tan removers, exfoliating scrubs, tanning lotions, sunless self tanning mousses, sunless self tanning sprays and more.

Fake Bake also has an extensive variety of sunless tanning products.  Fake Bake self tanner features Legal Sunburn and Bronzy Babe for facial use.  Similarly, their other products come in a Fake Bake Scrub, Fake Bake Skin Smoothly, Fake Bake Mousse, a self tanning lotion, a face tanner and more.  Airbrush tanning is a new and upcoming method of sunless tanning.  The airbrush method can be done at home or in a salon. 

Airbrush sunless tanning ingredients are FDA approved and safe for use in either setting.   The airbrush sunless tanning method takes 5 to 10 days to achieve a golden tanned look.  The airbrush packages for home use for sunless tanning are a little under $ 400.00.  Whatever sunless tanning method you choose, pick a reputable brand name and follow all instructions precisely.  This will help you to avoid a blotchy orange look and achieve a smooth even golden glow to your skin.

Sunless tanning lotions are meant to be applied about 3 times in the first week and after that they can be applied about 2 times a week.  You may decide to either increase or decrease the frequency of use depending on the depth of the tan color desired.  The tan does not wash off, however, you may notice some of the brown color guide washing off.  The tan will stay.  The sunless tanning lotion by Faux Tan is meant to be applied at night and washed off in the morning to rinse away the brown color guide.