combination skin

The 5 Skin Care Products You Should Stop Using

The world of cosmetics is full of choices, and it can be hard to choose the products that are best suited for your skin. However, there are a few products I would outright ban if I had the chance because they are wildly popular, but often responsible for skin issues I see in clients. I’ll admit— I’ve been guilty of using every single one of these products at some point in my life, too! Almost everyone is using at least one of them, so take a look and see what skin sins you may not even know you’re committing!

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1. Apricot Scrub

I’ll admit— I used this exfoliating scrub every day for years.  It’s like a drug, right?  I used to think apricot scrub was the only thing keeping my skin from the brink of real disaster, but it turns out it was a major reason I had problems at all.

Why?  Well, if you are using this product daily you’re probably also having issues with blackheads, redness, flakiness, combination skin, or large pores.  See, it’s ok to exfoliate your face 1-2 times a week with light pressure, but you want to make sure the little particles that are doing the scrubbing won’t damage your skin.  If you look at the crushed shells and seeds in your apricot scrub under a microscope, they will look like little shards of glass and pebbles, and guess what? They tear up your skin just like little shards of glass and pebbles would. Even with light pressure, these particles leave tiny rips and tears in the skin and break down your skin’s natural barriers and defenses to environmental damage, which leads to rapid aging and unwanted redness. In addition, it over-strips your skin of the natural oils it needs.  This leads to oil over-production that can cause combination skin issues, blackheads, and larger pores.

Ideally, your exfoliating scrub contains something called jojoba beads/seeds, instead. Jojoba beads/seeds are made by mother nature and are rounded, smooth spheres that will remove dull, dead surface skin cells but won’t tear or rip at your skin in the process.

However, still don’t want to throw your apricot scrub out?  No problem! It makes an excellent foot scrub!  Just don’t put it anywhere above your shoulders.

What to use instead: I like Murad’s AHA/BHA Exfoliating Cleanser* and Aveda’s Tourmaline Charged Exfoliating Cleanser. However, what you’re really looking for is an ingredients list that includes jojoba beads or seeds, so use any scrub you love that contains them

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2. Cetaphil Cleanser

This product isn’t actually bad, but using the wrong cleanser for your skin is. There are far more people using this cleanser than their skin types call for. It’s a clear gel cleanser, which means it’s fairly high in surfactant. If you skin feels tight or squeaky clean after using this product, it’s just not right for you.  Try switching to a light cream cleanser.

What to use instead:  Click here for a guide to choosing the right cleanser for you.

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3. Chapstick

From time to time, especially long cold winters like this one, our lips dry out and could use a little help.  Unfortunately, many lip balms contain ingredients like camphor, phenol and menthol that can actually dry the lips out further and discourage your lips’ natural ability to rehydrate and lubricate themselves.  This can lead to your lips being “addicted” to lip balm, because you need more and more of it to keep feeling normal! Quite the marketing racket, eh? Chapstick, arguably the most popular brand of lip balm, is notorious for this.

What to use instead: Aquaphor, Vaseline (petroleum jelly), and even coconut oil are great ways to give your lips temporary help and relief without the addictive side effects. Have a really bad case of chapped lips?  You can also buy Bag Balm at local drug stores.  Yes, I know it’s udder cream for cows, but it’s udderly fantastic and can provide relief for even the worst case of chapped lips. There’s probably no butter product on the market, unless I’ve made a miscowculation.  Ok, I don’t want to get cheesy and milk this pun pasture tolerance levels. 😀

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4. Nose Strips

This was another skin-sin that was hard for me to give up.  It’s just SO satisfying to pull the strip off and see all the stuff that comes out of your pores!  However, repeated use of nose strips tends to create more blackheads than you would have had in the first place.  The strips don’t just remove blackheads, but they also remove a thin layer of skin and tiny hairs, which leaves you with open pores that are perfect for bacteria to settle into.  Natural oils get stripped away, as well, which leads to extra oil production that further clogs the open pores. This combination of oil and bacteria usually leads to even more blackheads.

What to use instead:  If blackheads are your concern, pick up a hydrating toner instead.  The water it adds to your skin will help cut down oil production, and therefore your blackheads.

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5. Extraction tools

Extraction tools are verboten for all the same reasons as nose strips, with the added bonus that if they’re misused (and if you haven’t been trained to use them, you’re probably misusing them), they have the ability to break, bruise, and to cause bleeding in the skin.  These tools are designed to be used by a professional on a client. Even as a trained esthetician, I cannot properly use the tool on myself; the physics just don’t work.  So stop using them!

What to use instead:  Your esthetician.  Schedule a facial, and they will properly extract for you!  If you really want you, you can always ask to see what comes out of your skin!

As always, please send any questions or suggestions for future posts to megjacobsblog@gmail.com

Check us out on Facebook: www.facebook.com/megjacobsbeauty

See you next Sunday!

*Disclosure— My spa carries the Murad product line.  However, I am not directly compensated by any manufacturer, including Murad, for recommending their products on my blog.

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7 Weird Things That Could Be Causing Your Breakouts

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Is your skin behaving badly, and you can’t figure out what is going on?  You’ve read my blog, switched up your facial products, increased your water consumption, changed your pillow cases, even swapped out your detergents for fragrance-free ones… but your skin is determined to keep breaking out!

Well, it turns out that sometimes life throws you a curveball.  It’s not just about how well you take care of your skin, sometimes there are outside elements that prevent you from having the skin you work hard for!

Here are seven wild-cards that could be behind your skin woes:

1. Your Calendar – You know, that big date you have circled is coming up.  Maybe it’s a wedding, vacation, business trip, or a big presentation at work or school.  You’re excited and also nervous and can’t stop thinking about it.   It turns out, your body can misinterpret that excitement for stress when it last for days at a time.  So, the very same excitement you have over the big day ends up causing the same physical response as stress!  It dehydrates your skin, causes inflammation, puts stress on your immune system ,and can cause a break-out over night.

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What to do: Take a 200mg dose of ibuprofen, another 4-6 hours later, and then one more the next day will help calm the inflammation and give your skin a break.  Just three doses total though.  If you’re a chronic stresser-outer this isn’t a lifetime fix.  A few grams of fish oil supplements can also do the trick (4000mg per dose!).

2. Your Hair – Well, technically your hair products.  People often miss the connection because it can take up to 4-6 weeks for a blemish to fully form. By the time the breakout shows up, you don’t think of a change that happened over a month ago. Hair products often cause breakouts along the hairline, so your sexy new chin-brushing bob could break-out the jaw line, or those bangs like Zooey could be wreaking havoc on your forehead.  Don’t worry, its not your new haircut itself, just your hair product coming into contact with your skin.

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What to do:  If you started trying a new product, see if cutting it out of your routine solves the problem.  If a new haircut is causing your hair to touch your face the best way to solve it is keep it tied back. If that’s not an option, try keeping your hair products to a minimum and slowly introduce products back to your routine to see which one might be causing the issue.  Hey, I didn’t say it was an ideal fix, sometimes a girl’s got to pick her poison!

3. Your Man – Scruff can be adorable, and lots of great fellas participate in “No Shave November”, or Movember, but that scratchy beard is no good for your sensitive facial skin.  His facial hair is like an exfoliating pad on your skin every time you kiss him, and this leads to red, irritated, and possibly broken-out skin around the mouth.  If his beard is a little longer, he may also be using hair products on it that don’t mix well with your skin. Of course if he keeps his face smooth as Fabio’s bare chest, he may be using an aftershave or fragrance that you don’t react well to.

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What to do: Stop kissing him.  Just kidding, but do hand him a razor….or just wait for it to grow out enough to be soft as a puppy.

4. Brushing Your Teeth – A lot of people wash their face and then brush their teeth, and don’t understand why they keep getting unexplained breakouts around their mouth.  Residue from the toothpaste can get left behind and irritate the skin and cause a breakout.

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What to do:  Just switch it up! Brush your teeth first and you’ll get any bits of toothpaste residue off when you cleanse your skin.

5. Your Water – Hard water doesn’t get products off the skin as well as soft water, and that buildup on the skin can lead to clogged, dull-looking skin.

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What to do:  If you suspect hard water, you can get a showerhead filter for around $30—you don’t have to spend several thousand dollars on a whole home filter for clearer skin! Something like this works great and is super easy to install:

http://goo.gl/kwzd2H 

6. Your Tan – Yeah, I know.  Every time you get a tan your skin looks clearer, but you’re making a deal with the devil. A tan is nothing but a sign that your skin has taken damage and it’s trying to protect itself.  When you take UV-ray damage, your skin increases cell production to thicken your epidermis, and this thicker skin can lead to more clogged pores and breakouts that will haunt you weeks later.—not to mention the wrinkles, age spots, sagging skin, and cancer side-effects that tanning brings you.

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What to do: Wear an oil-free SPF protectant on your face every day and leave the idea of a tan being desirable behind.  Sorry.  Tanning is just flat out bad for you, no matter how cute it makes you.  Plus, it’ll age you much, much faster.

7.  Hormones….that aren’t yours – We’ve all heard that birth control can help clear skin, and that is certainly true, but you have to find the right one for you.  A dose that doesn’t work well with your body can cause breakouts, hyperpigmentation, and a general overall feeling of not being yourself. Eating animal products that have been treated with hormones can also wreak havoc on your skin, and unfortunately, hormones are making their way into our water supply, as well.

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What to do: Talk to your doctor if you suspect your hormonal medications may be causing your skin distress and avoid animal food products that have been treated with hormones.  It might also be worth buying a water filter to get rid of any pharmaceuticals that make it into your water supply, too!

Of course, there are other wild cards that the world throws at you, but these are the ones I see most often in clients who come to me exasperated from having tried everything they can think of.  If you have another one, make sure you send me a message and I can do some research for you!

As always if you have any questions email me: megjacobsblog@gmail.com and check us out on Facebook: www.facebook.com/megjacobsbeauty

See you next week!

What You’re Probably Doing Wrong In The Shower

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Showering.  It seems pretty simple.  Turn on the water, soap up, rinse, dry off. Most of us do it every single day, and most of us are probably doing it wrong.  Here are five of the most common missteps we all take when we step into and out of the shower.

1. You’re doing it too hot!  It’s a cruel truth that sometimes too much of our favorite things can be bad for us. Food, wine, chocolate, and of course long hot showers or baths. We always hear “everything in moderation,” and the same is true for the heat of the water we use to cleanse.  Here’s the thing: the temperature of the water affects the outermost layer of your skin, the epidermis.  Your epidermis is your body’s shield against the outside world. It is composed mostly of keratinocytes, skin cells full of keratin, which provide a tough barrier of defense against the outside world and maintain moisture in your skin. To assist with maintaining that moisture, your body produces a thin layer of oil, and it’s this layer of oil and cells, called the stratum corneaum, that the hot water is damaging.   The heat melts the oil, just like when you use hot water to clean off an oily dish, and can leave your skin red, itchy, and prone to dry patches and flaking. So turn the water down just a smidge, and your skin will thank you!

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One does not simply..shower in Mordor.

2. You’re using too much bubbles!  Shower gels, soaps, washes, and general body cleaning products all have a certain level of surfactant. As a rule of thumb, the more a product foams up when you lather, the more oil it strips from your skin—which dries out your skin and can send your facial skin into oil-producing overdrive More bubbles doesn’t mean more clean…it just means drier skin. So, if you’ve turned down the heat and you’re still feeling dry, maybe it’s time to consider a less sudsy soap!

3. You’re not getting it all off.  It can be hard to get all the soap off during a shower.  I know you always try your best, but often when we step out of the shower we leave a little soap behind in the harder to reach areas.  The most common places that product gets left behind are behind the ears, on the nape of the neck, under your breast, and yes…down below in all those places with folds of skin.  Leaving product on your skin can also lead to dryness or irritation, so make sure you get it all off!  Bras are annoying enough, you don’t need underboob soap, too.

4.You’re over-drying while you’re drying.  Ok, so this one isn’t technically IN the shower.  Using a towel to dry off seems simple enough, but believe it or not, you might be doing it wrong.  You step out of the shower, grab the towel, and start rubbing all the excess water off. It’s efficient, but it doesn’t make your skin very happy.  See, your skin actually draws moisture in from your surroundings to lubricate your skin.  Believe it or not, when you apply a moisturizer, the moisturizers mimics this process, as well.  Instead of toweling off after a shower, try patting the skin dry to leave a very light layer of water behind for your skin to use, or to be locked in by using a moisturizer that you apply after showering.

5. Brushing your teeth AFTER you wash your face.  Again, not necessarily in the shower, but still important.  A very common complaint I hear from my clients is that they get breakouts, but just around the mouth. The first question I ask is if they brush their teeth before or after they wash their face.  Almost every time the answer is after.  Toothpaste residue can irritate the very sensitive skin around the mouth and lead to breakouts. So just switching the order of when you brush your teeth and wash your face can help keep unnecessary breakouts away!

Showers should leave your skin feeling refreshed, not stripped out.  Hope this helps your body feel happy and healthy

Also, I have been honored and humbled that the initial reaction from this blog has been so positive.  I already have several hundred weekly readers, and I couldn’t be more thrilled that you all are hopefully learning something valuable!  So, I’d like to open it up—send me your beauty and skincare-related questions at megjacobsblog@gmail.com.  I’ll do my best to answer every question I get, and look forward to tailoring future blog posts to the most common questions!  See you next Sunday!

You can also find me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/megjacobsbeauty

The Not So Dirty Truth Behind Blackheads

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The Not So Dirty Truth Behind Blackheads

Blackheads…by far and away the number one complaint I see in my guests.  Everyone has tried anything promising the elimination of blackheads, from nose strips to sandpaper (I’m not joking), but there they are, your constant companion, staring back at you from the tip of your nose.  So why do you have them, and why won’t they go away?  Why aren’t the products you’re using working? Here are 10 truths about your blackheads to help you find your way to clearer pores.

1. Blackheads are not dirt.  This is a very common misconception, and the first step to understanding the problem. Blackheads are actually pores clogged with the excess oil from sebaceous glands. Sebaceous glands are located in hair follicles and release sebum, which consists mostly of fat, keratin, and cellular material.  Your body produces sebum to lubricate the hair and skin, and when it produces too much, this sebum accumulates in your pores.

2. Blackheads are named after worms. The technical term for a blackhead is an “open comedone,” which is the plural form of “comedo,” a latin word formerly given to worms that devour the body, but has since been co-opted by the medical field to describe bodily secretions that resemble the worms.  Neat, right?  Here’s the fun thing– a whitehead is called a “closed comedone,” because the pore is closed off from air, but the stuff inside blackheads and whiteheads are the same material.

3.  So why are blackheads black?  Well, remember, blackheads are open comedones, which means the tips of them are exposed to air.  Oxidation causes the ends of blackheads to become black.  This is why a blackhead appears black, but when you pop them, the inside part is white.

4. Blackheads are not a result of poor hygiene.  Since blackheads are not dirt, the problem isn’t that you’re not washing your face enough. In fact, cleansing the skin too often or with a cleanser with too much surfactant for you, can lead to more clogged pores because it can overstrip the skin of oil.  This causes your body to go into oil production overdrive.

5. You cannot scrub blackheads away. Many people think they can scrub the blackheads away, but since it’s not surface dirt, you can’t scrub it away. So why is it that your skin looks and feels so fresh and clean when you scrub?  Well, when you scrub, you’re scrubbing off the oxidized tip of a blackhead, which removes the visible dark portion and uppermost layer of skin.  However, the pore remains clogged and will darken again.  What’s more, over-scrubbing can actually lead to more blackheads and clogged pores because it stimulates oil production to replace the oil you strip away.

6. It’s probably not an oil problem. Yes, the pore is clogged with oil, but the important question is why the oil is there.  Dehydration is by far the most common cause than innate oil overproduction.  When the skin gets dehydrated, it makes extra oil to make up for the lack of water, and that extra oil leads to blackheads, particularly in the nose.  As I said above, excess cleansing and scrubbing, and using too harsh a cleanser, can also lead to a lack of oil in your skin and stimulate oil production.

7. Nose strips are not your friends.  Yes I know it’s satisfying to pull that sucker off and see the gunk you just eliminated from your nose, but if you look again you’ll also notice along with the oil plugs you also pulled out all the fine hairs.  Each of those hairs left behind an open pore, which can now get filled up with oil.  Usually, use of these products end up leaving the user with more blackheads over time.

8. Back away from the magnification mirror and don’t use extraction tools. These tools are designed to be used by someone who has been trained in their use. No one but your doctor or esthetician needs to see your pores magnified by 1000x.  It just leads you to think your blackheads are 1000 times worse than they are and then you’ll just freak out and want to extract them yourself. However, using an extraction tool on yourself often leads to bleeding, bruising, and broken capillaries because you probably don’t know how to use the tool without applying excess, damaging pressure.

9. Do use a hydrating toner, not an astringent. No matter what your skin type is, it can use more water.  Stripping the skin of its natural moisture and hydration can lead to extra oil production and more blackheads, but adding water can help diminish oil production and lead to fewer blackheads.

10. Do schedule a facial.  A professionally trained esthetician is your best resource to remove blackheads without damaging your skin or making your problems worse.  They have been trained to get those wriggly little comedones out of your skin safely.  However, if you absolutely, positively, 100% MUST remove the blackheads on your own, here is my suggestion: 1. Wash your face with your normal cleanser and make sure your hands are clean; 2.  Wrap your index fingers with some sort of soft, clean paper or cotton product (toilet paper a cotton 4”x4” pad work best); 3. Place your fingers wide around the affected pore and squeeze gently together, in an upwards motion; 4. If it doesn’t come out easily, rotate your fingers around the pore and repeat step 3 from a different angle; 5. Once the blackhead is extracted, wipe the pore down with your toner; 6. Enjoy your date, because if you’re not going on a date that night then you have no excuse not to wait to have the blackhead extracted by a professional!

Blackheads are a normal part of life.  No one will remain blackhead free forever, regardless of what you do.  But, you can manage them.  The best way to keep blackheads at bay between facials is to make sure your skin is as hydrated as possible– don’t over-wash or over-scrub, avoid drying products such as astringents, drink plenty of water, and try to keep your stress levels as managed as possible!

And don’t pour Tussin on it. 😀

Combination Skin: The Secret You Need To Know

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So you think you have combination skin? Let me guess: you’ve taken at least a dozen quizzes online or from your favorite magazine and you’ve determined that you are the poster child for that obnoxious combination of oily and dry skin, but now what? Nothing fixes it, right? When you use products to clear your blemishes you get dry skin, yet the oil never goes away— in fact, it gets worse and you break out even more! It can be incredibly frustrating, you’ve probably tried everything, and you may feel ready to just give up and accept your skin fate. But, before you throw your hands up and wave the white flag to the Skin Gods, let me let you in on a big secret:

You don’t have combination skin.

Instead, you’ve got a skin condition that any skin type can experience— dehydration.  Oil isn’t the problem, lack of water is. When skin becomes dehydrated, it still needs to lubricate itself.  Unfortunately, your skin can’t make water to hydrate itself, but it can produce oil. So, when you are dehydrated, your skin will produce more oil to make up for the lack of water— because that’s all it can do to solve the dehydration problem. The dehydration gives the skin a tight dry feeling and the over production of oil leads to an oily t-zone, black heads, and small bumps causing a rough texture, usually on the forehead. This is the skin condition that is often referred to as “combination skin”.

The solution: water.  Seriously.

There are three main reasons skin gets dehydrated:

  1. Not consuming enough water.  Ideally, you want to try to drink 1 oz of water for every 2 pounds of body weight, per day (If you weigh 100 pounds, your target is 50 ozs of water every day).  In addition, if you routinely drink caffeine, carbonated beverages, or alcohol, you’ll need to drink extra water to make up for the dehydration those beverages cause. Doing this will ensure that your body has enough water on hand for all of your organs, including your skin.
  2. Stress. Stress dehydrates skin. Most of us have probably noticed that we have more skin problems when we are under stress.  This happens because the human body developed its stress management systems back when our stressors were things like being eaten by saber toothed tigers or trampled by wooly mammoths.  Unfortunately, your body can’t tell the difference between a deadline at work or whether you’re about to become dinner for Tigger, but it does know you’re stressed so it assumes your life is being threatened.  When this happens, your body helps you out by going into a “vital organ protection mode,” which means it chooses to re-route hydration and nutrients from some less critical organs to the organs that will keep you alive.  The first organ that gets cut off is your skin. It makes sense; it’s your largest organ, takes up a lot of resources, and unfortunately beautiful glowing skin isn’t on the list of things that keep you breathing. I know, I know, you might THINK having good skin is a life or death requirement, particularly when you’re stressing about that date next Friday, but your body doesn’t.  So take a deep breath, and relax.  Namaste.
  3. Self-Sabotage.  Using products that strip the skin of oil, which is common in most acne treatment products, will take away the excess oil your skin is producing to make up for the original lack of water.  Unfortunately, these products double the problem because they don’t just remove oil from your skin, but take water out of your skin, as well.  You can see how your body will quickly go into oil production overload— you’re already dehydrated, so your body is producing excess oil.  Now, you use a product that removes the oil, and also removes more water!  Your body simply has no other choice but to up the oil production as a consequence. Over-exfoliation is another common act of self-sabotage that exacerbates the issue.  When you exfoliate, you strip off dead skin cells, but you also remove some oil and water from your skin.  I always tell my clients that they should exfoliate once or twice a week at most. Any more than that, and you could be adding to your dehydration problem.

In addition to encouraging my new clients to drink more water, I always go over their current product usage to ensure that they are not over-exfoliating or using harmful products that will strip away your skin’s natural hydration.  Alcohol is a common ingredient in many beauty products, particularly astringent toners, but alcohol removes oil from your skin, which exacerbates your problems.

Instead of an astringent toner, I usually recommend a hydrating toner to give your skin a hand.  Hydrating toners are different from astringents— they do not contain alcohol, and instead of taking oil away, they put water in.  When you add water, your skin doesn’t have the need to produce as much oil and your face is happier!  Astringent toners can have their place in a beauty regimen, but theses uses are very specialized.  In general, I see far too many people using astringent toners who don’t realize they are worsening their problems!

My approach when treating any new client is to make note of the symptoms, but to focus on the underlying cause of a skin problem.  When dealing with combination skin problems, it’s critical to recognize that the underlying cause is a lack of water hydration— and treat that.  Treating oil production when you have a combination skin problem will only make your problems worse.  So, make sure you’re getting plenty of water, managing your stress, pick up a hydrating toner, and say hello to happier, healthier skin!

Check back every Sunday for a new topic and feel free to email me your questions or suggest a topic you’d like to see tackled!