suncream, zits and wrinkles: rolling skincare thread?

wait a second, it's testosterone that causes women to get acne?!

Yes! Just like the steroid-abusing athletes! Well I mean there are other causes, but when the acne is tied to your menstrual cycle, that is probably the culprit.

I wonder if that's why I have had so many probs with hormonal bc.

Hormones are mysterious and powerful things.

the downhill slide of my skin's condition definitely coincided with beginning hormonal bc in my early 20s, and never got better even after i went off it.

you don't even want to know how long i was on it or when i started

two small observations a few hours after this appointment, which btw has given me an iota of hope that my skin will not look shitty anymore

1) let it be known that i find this thread by searching "rolling wrinkles"

2) i'm feeling a little grouchy inside about the recentish pervasiveness of "cleansing" oneself/the need to "give one's organs a break from toxins" in order to "clear the mind and body" (or whatever horseshitty language people are using these days) because it implies that there's something i am doing/ingesting to deserve having shitty skin. and you know what? that's just not true. i dislike the idea that i need to starve myself and/or purify my mind in order to "cleanse" the "toxins" from myself.

that's all, the end

ppl need to "cleanse" themselves from this "toxins" bullshit talk imo

OTM x infinity

LL, if you EVER want to talk shit about the cleansing/toxins bozos, Jesse and I are here for you. It's one of my favorite objects of scorn and derision.

i asked my doc point blank if i was doing something wrong (hygiene, food, hugging my dog, cleanliness of towels, etc) and she said no, as far as she can tell, this is just garden variety acne and it's not my fault. i am inclined to believe her before i try not-eating for a week and seeing the effect that has on my mental and physical health. i can't imagine it would be good.

I AM AWARE that she may be shilling for these product companies, i guess, but she did give me samples and coupons and a little bit of hope and didn't try to starve me, so i will give her benefit of the doubt for now.

it's just hard because people i like and care about (in some cases) are trying this shit and i have to keep my mouth shut but i just...i just think it's cruel to equate starvation diets with purity of any kind.

Well we equate health and beauty (by a narrow definition) and thinness with purity, too, so it all makes sense in a fucked up and gross way. And it's reinforced by the pervasiveness of just-world theory where every time somebody is ill, we rush to figure out what that person may have done to prevent it. I'm sorry that you were feeling like you were doing something wrong and I'm glad your doc didn't reinforce that.

Blame-iness, the idea that a person has this problem because of something they do, is one side of a coin of which the other side is the illusion that we can do something, take control of something, to perfect ourselves. LL, iirc you have NEVER been a fan of the smell of self-flagellation in the morning, which I think is really smart and healthy.

xp lol carl beat me.

The thing is I would actually believe it if a doc told me my skin was all my fault bc of my life choices, I would totally accept that blame for myself, but you have the healthiest diet/life I can possibly imagine.

it's just weird to me how pervasive that idea is -- and how awful and cruel to oneself it is
it sounds like garden variety ED self-talk to me

rrrobyn and you and carl have, in particular, helped me hear the cruelty in those kinds of messages a lot more clearly. In matters of love, body acceptance, beauty, etc.

Aw, shucks. But as I have mentioned, I am standing on the shoulders of giants on that issue, namely the brilliant and beautiful horseshoe.

Self love! Pass it on!

it's just weird to me how pervasive that idea is -- and how awful and cruel to oneself it is

Unformed thoughts in response: bootstrap capitalism, American rugged individualism, Puritanism, regular old capitalism because if you can't control it you can't buy a product to fix it and we can't have that.

p much everything that gets me super angry can be traced back to puritans or greedy capitalists

says i on the rolling skincare thread
?!?!?

also glad to be of service, io :)

Always, always horseshoe.

hahaha I am with you, LL. We have not discussed wrapping paper on the knocked up thread, puritans and capitalism on the skincare thread. Next up - Marxist feminism in the Trader Joe's thread!

LL, if you EVER want to talk shit about the cleansing/toxins bozos, Jesse and I are here for you. It's one of my favorite objects of scorn and derision.

YES. Like one ILXor once said, "I wish I had more time to argue on the internet" b/c there's TOXINS talk is such bullshit. And carl's unformed thoughts OTM.

Ugh, let's include juicing bozos, too.

I too went to the dermatologist yesterday. Mostly to get some little brown spots on my temple looked at. Tthey were "nothing" (hyperkeratosis) but he offered to remove them, which he did w/ a combination of freezing and scraping (so they could be biopsied) and cautery, which caused a visible, stinky smoke.

He also prescribed Retin-A per my request and told me I was unusually sensitive to bug bites and gave me a sample of some cream. Their office has a cosmetology branch and the cosmetologist nurse tried to sell me some $45 retinol lotion instead ("well, your insurance probably won't pay for Retin-A," but they did b/c the doctor wrote that it was indicated for acne) and talked to me about laser resurfacing and I told her get thee behind me.

I'd be all "Lady I'd sooner laser resurface my floors than my face, tyvm"

note to self --
if you are smearing 4 kinds of medicated creams on your face daily, your face is going to peel (exfoliate) and you may want to have a little purse sized moisturizer (that is safe for faces) on hand at ALL TIMES for those moments of severe molting

i can never just leave my face alone and so I basically picked a fucking whole in it that's all scabbed over now and looks just lovely.

i look like a facial leper

eh, one scab does not a leper make

your body cleanses itself of toxins. Unless you have a genetic SNP that makes it so you don't clear toxins well (like MTHFR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTHFR)

HOWEVER, you can have a toxic lifestyle that makes it hard for the body to clear them out. Heavy metals, chemicals in cosmetics, hormone-laden food, etc.

I have been DEEP DIVING into sciencey shit lately about our environment and our genetics snd it's fascinating.

Sooo... in a sentence: toxin cleansing is a real thing, I don't think you can do it by juice fasting specifically or anything like that, but I think women are far more suspectible to toxin build up because of our lifestyles (makeup, hair coloring, etc).

Heavy metal detoxing is like the most intense process ever that can take years and no amount of juicing will ever help.

Amanda: look into a zinc supplement, you may be deficient if you have acne.

I'm the Sanpaku of skincare today!

la lechera otm. tho in general I won't butt into people's business if they want to do a cleanse thing or whatever. I'm kind of a curmudgeon about alternative medicine.

LL did you just quit hormonal BC? When I quit the pill I got horrible acne.

nope
that was 3 years ago

i'm not gonna butt into anyone's life either -- i was just overwhelmed by the # of people i knew who were doing it and the pressure (via their incessant irl updates/kvetching) to believe that my body was deteriorating at my own hand
really i do not lead a toxic lifestyle but also i know it's gonna take a lot more than juice to clean the HEAVY METAL out of my body
lol

YES

Excuse me, but it's time for me to GET THE LED OUT.

http://trolleyla.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/robert-plant.jpg

HEY HEY MAAA

heavy metal detox band name called it

Well, a little over a week into night application of Retin A (.025%) and absolutely no undesirable effects! I think one morning my skin might have felt a little different, like it feels after getting some sun, but it could have been my imagination. Probably want to bump up to .05% next time. How long until I get a porcelain complexion?

That's great but just FYI most people who do go through purging don't get that until around week 3. Porcelain complexion around 4-6 months.

:( Just let me pretend I'm special.

I'm mostly surprised that I haven't gotten redness or sensitivity despite not having changed any other aspects of what I do to my face.

Me in 4-6 mos

http://drfreex.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/scob.jpg?w=300&h=223

best movie!
my face is doing ok but i think i chemical burned a little area near my lip because it was flaky this morning

Yeah I sometimes get the lip irritation thing :(

looks like i got scab face but that's better than zits

at least atm it is
please no faces of meth photos

Suddenly got red dots, like tiny broken blood vessels maybe, all round both eyes. They're all over the eyelids as well as under and next to both eyes. I didn't have them at 11am yesterday, and I did when I looked in a mirror at 4pm yesterday. WTF? They're still there this morning. Not painful, and nothing else going on except for a sore throat.

You can get them from any kind of strain that builds up pressure in your head (I don't know the technical term). I've had them from vomiting and coughing for sure.

yep. they should clear up in a couple of days, assuming yr coughing subsides