You To Be Healthy

  A good exfoliation can make skin feel smooth and silky because it helps to remove old skin cells that are flaking and just lying there on the surface trapped in oil and debris. This can clog pores and make skin appear dull. Using a gentle skin scrub can revive tired, dull skin and smooth dry, rough skin as well as remove pore clogging black heads. Exfoliating scrubs though can be expensive. They can be harsh on the skin because of the artificial ingredients and dangerous chemicals in them. They are also an environmental disaster because the plastic beads and other ingredients end up in our water supply and oceans. This pollutes our environment and can kill marine life as they try to eat it. One simple way to fix all of that is to make your own, safe scrub. I will share what I use and it's the same one our teens use to help remove blackheads, especially around the nose and T-zone area. Whether you have oily skin or dry skin - it helps them both and it only costs pennies! Here is w...

Acne is the most common skin condition in the United States, affecting up to 50 million Americans every year.  Unfortunately for teenagers, who are often more self-conscious about how they look, they are the ones who tend to suffer the most.  An estimated 85 percent of people ages 12 to 24 will experience an acne outbreak at some point. In order to help prevent or address acne, it's critical to understand how it develops. I had acne for many years from my teens through my 30' s and suffered with the embarrassment and scarring. I understand how hard it is to deal with and how hard it can be to treat. What Causes Acne? Acne occurs when the oil-secreting sebaceous glands in the skin become clogged, inflamed, and infected by bacteria.  Blackheads, which are small, round bumps with black centers, and whiteheads, which are similar but without the dark centers, form in the clogged pores. Fortunately, there is a way to help teens prevent acne formation. ...

I started having problems with acne at the age of 14. After about 9 months, I saw a dermatologist. He gave me Tetracycline pills, and 2 topical antibiotics. My face cleared up after about 1 month, and I had clear skin for about the next 3 years. I then went to college. Thinking my ailment had been "cured", I stopped using the topical antibiotics. I hadn't been taking the oral tetracycline.....it seemed that 30 days of it in the beginning did the trick, and I didn't need any more. So......I went through the same routine again—took Tetracycline for 30 days, and started using the creams on my face. The same thing happened a couple more times over the next 4 years--about 4 months after I stopped the medicines, the acne would come back worse than the time before. After the birth of my daughter in 1997, I again stopped using the medicines, thinking that maybe with the hormonal changes my body had experienced, I was finally over it. Unfortunately, about a year a...

A story by Barbara Mulin When I was 13 years old, my face started breaking out. My sisters had peaches and cream complexions. My mom felt badly for me, so she started taking me to dermatologists. Within a 10 year span, I went to 14 different doctors. Each doctor had his own solution; and all of them included some type of antibiotic. I had salves (that burned), shots in my arm and cortisone shots in my face, dry ice therapy, sun lamp treatments, etc. Each time my skin would clear up, but then after stopping the treatments, my skin would break out again and get worse. My few pimples turned into acne and I was eventually referred to the head of dermatology at Johns Hopkins. There, they put me on 6 tetracycline tablets a day for 2 years. Can you imagine taking antibiotics for 2 years – and at such high levels? I moved to New York when I was 23 years old. One day at my new job, my mom called to say she had made an appointment for me with the head of Columbia Hospital. I started cryin...