Archive for the ‘Skin Care Product Reviews’ Category:
So I recently switched from one of my favorite retinol-infused formulas by Revitol anti aging products, and tried an ultra cheap one that I found on Amazon.com called Good ‘n Natural Retinol cream. It was dirt cheap, I think it was like eight or nine bucks for 2 oz. of the product, and it said it had 100,000 IU of Vitamin A, which is the active vitamin in Retinol creams (that is actually what retinols are, vitamin A concentrate), while I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, I bought it, thinking that if it could save me money and be a good skin care product, why not?
Vitamin A is the same vitamin that is used in highly concentrated, pharmaceutical form, in both Retin-A cream and the controversial but many times effective acne medication Accutane.
Dosing your daily diet with Vitamin A orally has been linked to lower incidents of skin cancers, and topical application of retinols and Retin-a has been linked to wrinkle and fine line softening and reduction, so using these vitamins is a great idea for your skin care routine. Only trick is you can only use them at night because they lose their effectiveness from sunlight. It destroys them, and renders them inert, so only apply retinol at night.
So, I bought the Good ‘n Natural retinol cream online. I started using it about a week ago, and here’s my review of it.
It’s a very thick, emollient based, which I don’t mind at all, except when I wash it off in the morning, it does feel like it didn’t properly sink in, because it is like a layer of slickness that washes off my face. I wonder if the ingredients are being properly delivered to my skin at night, because it does somewhat feel waxy, like it’s just sitting on the surface of my skin in the morning.
I tried to look up information on whether or not 100,000 IU’s per ounce was good in a skin cream, and came up with nothing. I will continue to use this for another few weeks, but will probably revert back to a more absorbable brand of retinol afterwards.
I was in our break room at work the other day, and someone always brings in the newspaper and leaves it in there, and I noticed a flyer/insert that was sitting out about a new technique to help reduce wrinkles, reduce the appearance of cellulite, and overall just rejuvenate the tissues with increased collagen production and smoothing, called the Lulum technique, or the Lulum energy treatment for body rejuvenation.
The before and after pics were pretty impressive on there, which is what made me take notice. The place that offered it out here in Ohio was in Avon called Stags Family Chiropractic/Wellness, and it was a chiropractic clinic, which it appears is the only offices that offer it so far, as the only other place I found was in Texas and it too was chiropractic practice.
They had one of a woman’s mouth before and after, it was less lined and her lips appeared a tad fuller, one of a woman’s neckline, which was more taught and smooth after, and one of a woman’s thigh with dimpled cellulite allover it before and very smooth “after first treatment”. The process is non surgical, non invasive, and there is no downtime at all, so I thought, wow, if I were rich, I’d be signing up for this! I couldn’t find the cost for the Lulum energy treatment anywhere online though. In fact, I could find very little on the treatment at all, it must be so new.
My guess is it might be kind of like microdermabrasion or most other cellulite treatments for body, maybe a hundred bucks a pop, although I don’t know how many treatments you need to maintain or even achieve results. If any practitioners read this, please leave comments with this information and your office info for interested people, that would be great.
I was able to find out how the Lulum energy treatment works though. It is a device that uses several different types of electrical currents, color therapy, and heating therapy, to deeply stimulate the tissues, which probably explains how it rejuvenates collagen production. This is probablyl also how it breaks up cellulite formation and is useful as a cellulite treatment as well. Oh, there was also a pretty amazing before and after picture of a woman with crows feet who looked very smoothed out after treatment.
This treatment, like most other rejuvenating aesthetic treatments for anti aging and body sculpting, probably requires ongoing maintenance to maintain any achieved results, but hey, if you get great results, it may be something you choose to use in your anti aging and wrinkled reduction arsenal, and also your body shaping and cellulite treatment regimen. Anyone who has experience or knowledge of the Lulum energy treatment, please comment and share. Thanks!
If I had to say what some of the most important things are, I feel, to keep your skin smooth and supple and hydrated, I would say that there are 3 – my top three at least, of course everyone you talk to will tell you something different because everyone has different experiences with what seems to keep their skin in tip top shape.
My first one is that I try to shield my face at least from any sun exposure whatsoevere. I always wear a high grade SPF on my face so that even when I’m in my car or out on a cloudy day when it seems like I’m not getting a lot of sun, I’m still protected, even if the UV ray concentration isn’t all that high that day. It goes to show how important minimizing sun exposure is when I looked at pictures of twins that had the same DNA (they were identical) and the one looked ten years older than the other.
The only differences were that one lived in Florida and was a sun worshipper and also happened to smoke, and the other one did neither.
I’ve seen the ravages of years of sun damage and what it does to the skin, so I just make sure the only way my face ever gets a tan is with a self tanner – no other rays are touching my face!
The second thing I feel that has been most important is moisturizing the outside of my skin with high quality, skin quenching and therapeutic products. Frequent and thorough moisturization of the face is important because it helps your skin maintain the all important elasticity and suppleness that tends to go away as we age. Of course, it matter what ingredients are in those anti aging and wrinkle reducing moisturizers, creams and serums as well, and I make sure that mine are chock full of antioxidants and skin exfoliating agents like retinols and natural acids.
The third thing to I do to keep my skin looking good is I constantly am drinking water. Keep in mind, I’m naturally a very thirsty person, and I naturally gravitate toward water, which is the most thirst quenching beverage in my opinion. I’m literally always sipping water, and I find that if I’m without it for even an hour, my skin tend to look more drawn in, less smooth and filled out .
I remember a good demonstration of this effect on my was when I took a vacation to Costa Rica. Not only did I sweat buckets there and was constantly dehydrated because I didn’t always have water with me, but my skin really showed it. The hollows in my eyes showed more, and even my lips seemed to thin out. I definitely looked more “haggard” without my water, which is why I believe it is one fo the keys to good skin.
I love doing chemical and natural facial peels on my face. There is nothing that works better to make my skin glow with that natural sheen that healthy, renewed and rejuvenated skin tends to lend to your face like a peel. What peels do, is they literally sheer off layers and layers of skin cells that otherwise would take weeks to shed from the skin as we grow older, since with age, our skin cells tend to renew and turn over at a much slower rate.
Because of this slower turnover, it’s helpful to either produce the same effect of accelerated cell turnover with either a home microdermabrasion type of system or a chemical peel, to literally mechanically force the skin cells to renew themselves, and to reveal fresher, clearer skin. Another huge benefit of chemical peels that I notice is a much improved smoothness.
One thing that I have noticed throughout the years is that my earlier battles with acne left my skin rough looking in certain areas, especially on my chin, where acne lesions were their worst. Since I used to have such bad acne, over the years, my skin’s texture in these areas is noticeably rougher, and when I am regularly doing these chemical peels at home, and my home microdermabrasion kits, I notice that these areas smooth out noticeably.
You see, one of the things that causes skin to look rough in certain areas is a build up of old skin cells that need to be sloughed off by force. This is why younger skin looks much smoother. When you are younger, your skin cells are basically programmed to turn over at a much faster pace, making for more youthful looking skin underneath, and part of the reason we notice our skin is not as smooth or supple when we grow older is because smooth skin is obscured by old, dead skin cells that not only hamper the texture of our skin, but also tend to make the skin look less “alive” and less colored, thereby making us look older than we are.
Chemical peels can also help to reduce the appearance of your pores, so that your pores appear much smaller. This is key to great skin, since large pores tend to make our skin appear less smoothed out. They also reduce the appearance of the fine lines and wrinkles that come with aging, which is a huge benefit .The only drawback to doing peels is that your skin really looks terrible after you do them, I’d say for about a day or two, it looks ruddy and more irritated, but if you’re patient and you perform these on your skin over six weeks, every week, once a week, with breaks in between these cycles, you will enjoy smoother, more wrinkle free skin for years to come.
So I purchased something that I never thought I’d even see again after it boomed in the eighties and nineties as an excellent exfoliating agent for the face, the Buf Puf. However, there I was on Amazon (which I’m slightly addicted to, it’s ridiculous), and I saw that many women were commenting on it and how much they missed being able to pick what used to be considered a beauty staple up in any drug store or department store, and raving about the product and how inexpensive it was, and simple, and how it still did the job for their skin.
The Buf Puf is simply an exfoliating pad that resembles a rough sponge. You use it to wash your face, or like me, you can use it after you wash your face, without suds, and just use it to exfoliate dry skin away from the pores while the face it wet, which is the best time to get the dead skin cells off since they are easily moved off the face with minimum trauma to the skin and minimum effort.
It’s a very durable pad too. It only costs about five bucks, and the shipping is hardly anything since the product is so light to ship anyways. You can definitely feel the exfoliating power when you sweep it over your face, and it leaves your skin with a nice, youthful, pink glow afterwards. I’m using it in place of my exfoliating scrub for a while to see if it does the same job, which it’s doing pretty flawlessly right now. I guess that our mothers were right – simple is better, and you can’t get much simpler of a facial skin care product than the Buf Puf.
Too bad it’s going the way of other cool, useful beauty products just because bigger companies are tantalizing women with products that are more expensive and seem to be more high tech. I’d encourage you to try the Buf Puf if you need an exfoliating part to your skin care program. You just need to be careful not to over scrub, that’s the only drawback, but you will know when to stop, there should be no pain or irritation, just pleasant sloughing off of dry skin and the revelation of new, healthy skin cells.
I think it’s great for aging skin, as well as for acne scarred skin, since it successfully sloughs away a lot of dead skin cells and a lot of old scarred tissue in the process, evening the skin tone and helping smooth out acne and other scars.
Remember the eighties, and how those little spongy, scratchy exfoliating pads called Buf Pufs were all the rage for scrubbing your complexion? Well, they still exist, although by and large you can only find them readily online, and for a good price at that with cheap or free shipping since they have almost no weight to them and are easy to ship in a simple bubble package, no boxes required. Yep, these little things are still available, as I found online when I was shopping for other skin care products for anti aging and came upon something that I thought I had to have until I read a certain few reviews on it.
The product that I thought I had to have was called a Clarisonic facial cleansing tool. It’s catch was that it had a rotating exfoliating and cleansing head that rotates at sonic speed, so that it cleanses and polishes and exfoliates the skin several times deeper than you can get with just your hands or any other normal cleansing tool, so they said.
I was intrigued, so I kept reading all the reviews. It is also an Oprah endorsed product as it was one of her have to have things on one of her lists. I’m not an Oprah follower, but as I understand it, when Oprah recommends or talks about something, it creates a virtual firestorm of demand for said product. That might be where a lot of the hype for the Clarisonic cleansing tool came in, because it did have mixed reviews.
Although some people said it did an excellent job at cleansing and that they were receiving complements left and right on their skin, there were also some who said you can get comparable results from other cleansing and exfoliating tools, like the Buf Puf, which I ended up with instead of the $200 Clarisonic tool after talking some sense into myself that I didn’t need it, did just as good a job, and for hundreds of dollars less, literally.
The Clarisonic may very well be an excellent tool, but I do wonder how much is marketing and hype, since there are a lot of other products that can probably do the same job for less, I may of course eat my words if I try this tool some day, which I still may do, but for now I’ll give my Buf Puf a try and let you know how that works!
You’ve seen the special “night time” skin care products on the shelves, and if you’re like I used to be, you’re probably thinking it’s just another marketing ploy to differentiate their products, after all, why should night time skin care creams, serums and wrinkle fighting and skin renewal products work any differently at night, or have to formulated any differently, than their “daytime” counterparts? Well, there are actual, scientific reasons why it’s a good idea to pull out the bigger guns at night in terms of skin care.
The reason is that night time is the skin’s prime renewal time. It’s when your skin repairs and rejuvenates itself from all the wear and tear of the daytime. It repairs things like sun damage and integrity that have been damaged by the sun’s rays and other environmental factors, and oh, the fact that every day we age as well. Due to chemical (hormonal) changes in the body that occur during the night, our skin pushes more blood to the surface, and this allows serums and creams to penetrate more readily and work better. It also elevates the skin’s temperature, so that ingredients are more readily absorbed than they are during the day.
It important to not that your skin is not only more conducive to repair at night, but there are also some ingredients that work better at night because either the sunlight inactivates them, or they just happen to work better in concert with the other events going on in your skin during the night when you are sleeping. One ingredient that I know of which works only during the night because it is literally inactivated by UV rays is retinol, one of the best ingredients for wrinkles like crows feet out there.
Retinol also happens to be one of the most powerful anti aging and skin renewal ingredients on the market today, so it’s important to make sure you only use it at night – and oh yeah, most retinol products are not cheap, so you don’t want to be wasting it. Retin-A is a powerful retinol, the most powerful in fact, and that should only be used at night as well.
Another important factor for the night time is getting at least those eight hours of recommended sleep. Notice how much more vibrant your skin looks when you have gotten that full eight hours of sleep. When you are sleep deprived, your skin usually takes on a more sallow tone and tends to show wrinkles more readily. This is because when you do not get enough sleep, a hormone called cortisol runs rampant the next day, and basically cortisol is the ultimate skin enemy since it slows the production of collagen, which we all know is responsible for supple, healthy skin.
Getting your beauty sleep takes on a whole new meaning when you consider it’s true scientific impact on the beauty, firmness and vibrance of your skin. You should definitely look into a full anti aging and wrinkle regimen which includes a night time product for your skin. Companies formulate these night time products with the fact that your skin responds better during the night in mind, so it’s wise to take advantage of this window of opportunity to deliver ingredients that will slow aging.
One of the biggest misconceptions and practices is that we start to slack off the facial sunblock in the winter time. I’ve been guilty of this myself, skipping my thicker SPF 15 day cream and using only the lighter one, and instead just relying on my foundation and moisture enhancing foundation with a small amount of SPF to pick up the slack. The problem is that your skin, especially on your face, is still exposed to significant enough sunlight to warrant the constant use of a sunblock cream that lasts all day long.
Those days when you think you’re really not getting much sun could be adding years of sunspots and aging signs to your face if you’re not careful. The sun still has a strength, although admittedly the UV rays during this time are not as raw and powerful, during the winter time. Especially if there is snow on the ground, because the sun’s rays bounce off the snow and hit your face. You can actually get a combination of wind burn and snow burn, for example, if you are skiing in the mountains if you’re not wearing proper sunscreen protection on your face.
I would recommend that you stick with an emollient day cream with a good amount of SPF in it for the winter time, and I always advocate using a foundation with sunblock included in it. The sunblocks of today aren’t as irritating and comedogenic as the sunblocks of yesteryear, which cause many to react in hives and itchiness. Now, they have sunblocks that are not only super effective at blocking the damaging UV rays that the sun sends out for skin to absorb, but they also are comfortable and hypoallergenic.
If you can’t find one that doesn’t make you itch or break out, then you should look online. You might pay a bit more, but there are several high end skincare product lines that offer completely allergen free formulas with sun protection that will keep your skin looking awesome for years to come.
When it comes to face lotions that you wear during the day, you always want to look for two things. One is lightness and how it can reflect the light. When I say lightness, I mean you don’t want your daytime moisturizer to be too heavy or creamy. You want something that is light, that will reflect the light well and bend it to your benefit to make your face look more flawless and alive. There are many good daytime facial lotions out there that get the job done. As long as they are also non pore clogging, you can pick from a variety of lotions.
The night time lotions are where I get a little pickier, since I know that night time is when my facial skin primarily gets to rest and repair itself, and for night time, I want to use a moisturizer that is most conducive to that crucial process and has the most repairing and healing ingredients in it. You also don’t have the sun interfering with the absorption or utilization of ingredients like retinols, which are inactivated by the sunlight, so it’s important to utilize the night time for these types of heavier, therapeutic ingredients.
Two daytime lotions that I’ve recently tried are the Clinique Dramatically Different daytime lotion and Body Shop’s Vitamin C daytime lotion with SPF in it. I liked both, but I have to say the Body Shop one wins out over the Clinique one, simply because I think it moisturized more effectively. I almost felt like I was putting water on my face with the Clinique lotion, because it was almost too thin and light. The Body shop lotion was a bit more emollient, and you didn’t have to put a bunch on. The other obvious reason I chose the Body Shop brand over Clinique was that the Body Shop one has SPF in it.
The Clinique Dramatically Different lotion however, I did feel helped to make my face look a bit more luminous and glowy than the Body Shop one, so maybe because it was such a light formula, it helped to reflect the light a bit better. They both had a great scent, the Clinique having a very light fragrance to it that was clean and fresh, and the Body Shop having a more heavily fragranced smell of citrus.
I’d have to say, one of the turnoffs about Body Shop skin products is how heavily they tend to be scented. I don’t like anything that is heavily scented, since there are often a lot of chemicals that go into the achievement of that level of scent that can be irritating to the skin.
I was really excited almost a year ago when a company called Palomar announced that, in conjunction with Johnson and Johnson, a health and beauty product juggernaut, it was going to release a new, patented, powerful and effective in home laser skin treatment. I don’t know at what price point they were planning on releasing this item, however, it sounded like it was really going to be an effective alternative to going and getting expensive laser treatments done at the dermatologist office or spa.
It was actually going to be the first FDA approved laser device to be used in the home. I’m not sure what that means about the other home soft light lasers I’ve used at home, but maybe it just means that they are endorsing it’s safety, and were not endorsing the safety of the other ones I had tried. At any rate, it’s a comfort to know that there will be a laser device released that actually has the backing of the FDA. I also wonder at what strength they will allow this to treat the skin, and whether it will be strong enough to truly help reduce the appearance of wrinkles and signs of aging like in office treatments do.
Before you get too excited though, not too long ago, Palomar and Johnson and Johnson announced that they had dissolved their partnership, and Palomar was now going to be on it’s own to market and release this product, which as you know, is significantly more difficult and time consuming for a smaller, less known company to do on it’s own, and to finance the correct advertising to get the word out, however Palomar has still announced that it will go ahead without Johnson and Johnson to release this interesting product, and it is also very excited to do so.
J&J gave the reason that under the current economic climate, they did not feel that the release of a product like this was appropriate for their business model, or something to that effect, which to me means that they probably thought the price point would have been a little offputting to people in financial straits now and decided it was a bad business move considering how bad off a lot of people are financially. In other words, they didn’t feel they’d make enough money to justify the cost of the joint venture at this time.
Let’s hope that Palomar can get this thing off the ground quickly so we can read reviews about it and see if it’s something we might want to add to our wrinkle fighting and anti aging arsenal of fun stuff to do to our skin!
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