0092 - Marketing Ploys

My whole life I've had oily skin, and I've been at war with my skin for as long as I can remember. I've thrown chemicals of all sorts at my face in a futile attempt to stop it from breaking out... antibiotic pills... topical gels that caused my skin to get red and flake... even Accutane - and when one didn't work, I moved on to another one. As a result, years of antibiotics destroyed my gut flora, and I can't use Eyrthromycin anymore; it simply stopped working. The gut flora I killed still haunt me to this day, and on top of my digestive issues, there seems to be some evidence that lack of beneficial gut flora can cause obesity.

It was also ingrained in me, by my dermatologist, that I should avoid products containing oil as this would only exacerbate the problem.

So what I did next was crazy.

It must have been three or four years ago that my friend Kato wrote a blog post about her skincare routine. She said that she rubbed olive oil on her face, massaged it in for a few minutes, then ran hot water over a washcloth that she then used to remove the oil. That's it. That's how she cleaned her face. It sounded insane. And yet, it piqued my interest because she said she never broke out and her skin never felt better.

At that point in my life I was willing to try anything, but I was also interested in more natural ways of doing things. So I tried it. I'll be honest - it felt disgusting. As I said, it was ingrained in me for years that oil was bad, so I went into it expecting it to be bad. The weird thing was, after I massaged the oil in and wiped it off, my skin felt clean and soft. Not oily at all. And I didn't break out.

I did this for about a week before I succumbed to marketing ploys and decided to go back to another skin care routine that worked for me. I can't even explain why, because it was working just fine. The routine I switched to was a Triclosan-based antibacterial soap, followed by a toner, and a high content alphahydroxy lotion. In my quest to figure out what happened to my thyroid I've since learned that "Animal studies are showing that [Triclosan] is an endocrine-disrupting chemical with a penchant for disrupting thyroid hormone at the level of gene expression." (Article here)

So I have once again been forced to re-evaluate my skin care regimen and I'm back to oil cleansing. I used to follow that up with a 'toner'... which is basically a couple of drops of tea tree oil on a cotton pad that I run under the water for a second to dilute it. I figured that would get rid of any remaining oil residue, and it's an anti-bacterial, too. But I have started using a mix of castor oil and olive oil and find that I don't even need the toner. Maybe my skin is changing, or maybe it's just that my mindset has.

I have finally realized that there is credence to the 'oil removes oil' school of thought.

I am trying not to be a victim of marketing anymore. Just as I am trying to tear myself away from storebought cleaning products if I can make some of my own that are just as effective. It's not necessarily that it's easier to buy them ready-made, it's just that I have been conditioned to do so. I am a victim of pretty packages (hi Mike)... I love browsing the aisles at a big HEB, grabbing the fancy soaps in the health section... the Watkins... the Meyers... I *do* judge a book by its cover before I open it up to examine the pages. Sorry, but it's true. But I'm also trying to become more healthy, and that appears to be so much more than what goes into my mouth. Skin is the largest organ in the body, what you expose your skin to can affect you just as much as if you swallowed it.

It only took me 39 years to figure that out.

Progress Report:

The shampoo smells heavenly. It doesn't lather up very much, and it's so thin that I have to pour it directly onto my head, but my hair feels clean. The most expensive part of it is the baby shampoo... we drink coconut milk, cook with olive oil, and the essential oil will last a long time (I chose grapefruit), so those are very low cost items. I don't know how long it will last since it's watery and I use probably 1/4 cup to wash my hair, but I think since it doesn't have a preservative (unless you use the vitamin E), it's probably best not to keep it around for too long anyway. I keep it in the empty bottle of Dawn that I emptied to make another cleanser. Yea for me. I'm recycling. :)

The laundry detergent smells won-der-ful. I broke down and used the two bottles of Purex Crystals. It makes a TON of powder... I filled the two Purex bottles and there is more than 1/3rd of a Tidy Cats litter bucket left. Anyway, I used it today and my clothes were soft and the smell was very light and clean, not overpowering - I was a little worried because the powder in the bucket has a very strong smell. In fact, mix it in the garage, not in the house... I had to open the windows. All in all it ended up costing me around $25 (without coupons), but I used a generic version of Oxyclean. The hardest part was finding the Borax (not at Target, not at Walgreens, not at Family Dollar, not even at Walmart... I found it at HEB) - and after I did find it, I kind of wondered what the difference between Borax and Washing Soda is... they say the same thing on the front of the box... sooooo... hmmm... The pink Zote smells like Ivory soap... I don't know what it's made of, there are no ingredients on the package. Out of curiosity, I smelled some Fels Naptha, and it has a milder scent so it's up to you, that and Kirk's Castille are all supposedly interchangable - just pay attention to the ounces. I know it's stupid, but I kind of like the way the detergent looks with the strips of pink and pearls of purple scattered throughout (and I hate pink...), so... it's not so bad.

Homemade Febreze is easy. Smells a little less intense than storebought, but for the price, I'm cool with that. I doubled the recipe to fill a Febreze bottle. And I had to google how to open the bottle because it doesn't just screw off... if you submerge the pump end in hot water for a couple of minutes and twist... for some reason it magically comes off. Brian bought the real thing and it was $4.64 at Walmart... mine hardly cost anything because the bottle of fabric softener will make tons more.

Blessing in a Bottle didn't clean as well as I'd hoped. I tried it on soap scum and used the sponge side, not the scrubby side, I guess because I thought it had magical properties. Soap scum - 1, BIAB - 0. It's soapy, you can probably deduce that from the amount of Dawn it contains. I will try it again on something else, but even with the laundry detergent, it smells too vinegary for me (I also used a scented Dawn). I think I will try the citrus infused vinegar and see if that's any better.