Rosacea is bad – though generally not this bad
A question from Lucy
Exciting to find your site… thank you for interesting articles.
Do you know anything about Dermalex Rosacea Cream? It sounds tempting in so far as being antibiotic free and reducing redness but the scary-sounding ingredients are unfamiliar. Is it genuinely safe?
I’d be grateful for your opinion Continue reading
Do elderberries hold the secret to curing dark circles around the eyes?
We’ve all seen and may well have actually experienced the dark marks that you sometimes get around the eyes. They are known as dark marks, dark circles and spider veins. They vary in colour – they can be black, blue or purple. The cause of them is that the skin is particularly thin on this part of the face. This makes the blood capillaries there particularly prone to damage, both as a result of rubbing them and to things that affect the size and permeability of the blood vessels. The result is that blood cells can get out of the blood stream and accumulate into this dark coloured structures. The spidery appearance is due to them following the lines of the capillaries. Having got there they can trigger an inflammatory response making the skin puffy as well. Continue reading
A question from Susan who is suffering from sensitive skin that hasn’t yet been tracked down to a specific cause.
My face seems to have become very sensitive to everything creams & makeup I have lost count of the products I have used & the money I have wasted. I asked the doctor what was the most common thing that is put into products that can cause a reaction that’s how I came across your blog, which has now send my head into a tailspin as you say that natural is not always the answer. I am awaiting patch testing to see what is causing reactions but I’m desperate for a moisturiser for my face at the moment all that I can use is a steroid ointment which is very greasy & can only use once a day. I was hoping you could recommend any products I could look at to use or any websites that will help.
A question from George
Hello Colin,
I was hoping to hear your opinion on a moisturiser by D.R. Harris & Co, the world’s oldest pharmacy. The majority of ingredients in this cream seems very standard, but it is also formulated with isopropyl myristate and lanolin – two ingredients which I know you are particularly fond of. This company also produce lots of shaving paraphernalia which you may also be interested in. I have facial eczema and don’t like to rely too heavily on steroid creams, which my dermatologist is all too keen to dish out. I’m also curious if lanolin can be beneficial in countering eczema as opinion on the internet seems to be on the no side. Regards, George
Sarah on my Facebook asked me if I had come across Skinetica. As it happened I had because I had been sent a sample of it when it came out, though I hadn’t taken a lot of notice of it. I get sent a fair bit of stuff and unless it grabs my attention I tend to ignore it. But as someone was asking, I had a quick look at it. Continue reading
The Beauty Brains highlighted a list of three useless cosmetic product categories on their Twitter feed a couple of days ago that they had found on a blog. The first two were pretty hard to argue with. Split ends are going to stay split whatever product you put on them. And cellulite creams, while they might work in theory they have yet to be shown to work in practice. But the third one suggested that lip balms damaged your lips barrier function. This means that while the lip balm itself protects your lips while it is there, it dries them out in the long run. Continue reading
I have written before about how I don’t think that there is very much value in the comedogenic scale that attempts to rate cosmetic ingredient for their potential to cause blackheads. But this rather begs the question, posed to me by Livvi on Twitter, what ingredients do cause them? Livvi actually asked what ingredients block pores – but although blocking pores doesn’t automatically mean blackheads, that is the main problem. Phew, this is a bit of a tough one. Continue reading
The second highest selling personal care product in the UK at the moment is Olay Regenerist Daily 3 Point Treatment Cream. (The top seller is Bio-Oil, but I have already done that one.) Users are giving it pretty good reviews, and if Olay are stuffing the reviews with fake positive ones they are doing it very cleverly because the reviews seem to be pretty genuine. So lets have a look at the ingredients. Continue reading
A question from Junie
Hi My doctor whi is also a dermatologist says I have dermatitis. On my face and eye lids, the cream he gave me made it worse, the next cream he suggested I refused as it contained steroid, which I am told it should not be put on eyelids. Please can you help, I am just covering it up at the moment but I really would like to clear it up Thanks Junie
I am afraid I am not qualified to give medical advice, and if I were I wouldn’t do so over the internet. But hopefully I can give a bit of background information that might help a little. Continue reading
