Healing Dry Sensitive Skin

Rosacea has come out of the closet – that’s the word from Cynthia Bailey MD in her post Celebrities With Rosacea.

What’s new is that celebrities are talking about their rosacea, including Emmy Award-winning Actress Cynthia Nixon from Sex and the City. She just created a really great series of rosacea public service announcements that you’re bound to see.

You can see a list of famous people with rosacea at the post, but you will probably be more interested in Dr. Bailey’s protocol for dealing with rosacea. You’ll find her advice in the post.

For my part, I have had great success in dealing with reddened and inflamed skin by using products containing colostrum.

Check out the post to discover who, besides Bill Clinton, makes the list.

There are chemicals in our cosmetics and skincare products that are known to cause serious disease in wildlife and are suspected of being profoundly harmful to humans. The European Environment Agency, after reviewing 15 years of scientific findings,  is advocating a more cautious approach to their use, as reported in today’s Daily Mail.

Chemicals found in household products may be causing significant increases in cancers, diabetes, obesity and falling fertility, the European Environment Agency has warned.

Among the everyday items containing endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which affect the hormone system, are food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals. Daily Mail UK

There are even synthetic chemicals in skin care products that are known to aggravate the very conditions that the products are prescribed to treat. For example, the most-prescribed eczema cream contains a chemical that irritates the skin and can make eczema worse, according to this report in Science Daily.

That’s why I favor natural products, wherever possible, and why I recommend organic moisturizers for everyone, but especially for those with sensitive skin.

Here is a good post from ABC News about aloe vera and its benefits. As they say, “no one doubts these days that it works.” Here’s the part I really liked:

It doesn’t take a pharmaceutical company to make it work. The plant does it all by itself.

That’s the way I believe many natural products should be approached. We do not need to find the “active ingredient” in them and isolate it and throw away we-do-know-what other benefits it might have, just to make a product that has a longer shelf life or higher profit margin. Natural combines amazingly complex chemicals into simple packages for us.

Aloe vera is a boon for extra dry skin and sensitive skin.

It’s a sensitive topic, I know. We are told that we absolutely must use a sunscreen every day, even when it’s not sunny. Yet a recent scientific study suggests that zinc oxide, one of the most common ingredients in sunscreens may actually increase the risk of skin cancer.

Cell toxicity studies by Dr. Yinfa Ma, Curators’ Teaching Professor of chemistry at Missouri S&T, and his graduate student Qingbo Yang, suggest that when exposed to sunlight, zinc oxide, a common ingredient in sunscreens, undergoes a chemical reaction that may release unstable molecules known as free radicals. Free radicals seek to bond with other molecules, but in the process, they can damage cells or the DNA contained within those cells. This in turn could increase the risk of skin cancer. Science Daily

However, even with this new scientific finding about zinc oxide, the researchers still believe that it is better to use a sunscreen than to go unprotected. You can read more  about sunscreen safety and decide what is the best approach for you. One way or another, we need to protect our skin from sun damage, that’s for sure!

Here is a site dedicated to treating dry sensitive skin with preparations made from seaweed.

Check out the  Seaweed Bath Company if you want to try this natural approach to dealing with dry, flaky skin. The testimonials are impressive, and their mission is very clear:

“to improve the quality of life for severely irritated skin sufferers by offering a constantly-expanding line of high-quality, affordable, all-natural cosmetic products that have soothing, pH-balancing and moisturizing properties.”

Hurray to them, I say!

Chamomile water is a hydrosol created when essential oil is distilled from chamomile flowers. It contains the water-soluble components of the plant left behind during distillation, as well as some of the plant’s oils, so it has a more complex chemistry that the essential oil. It is also milder in its effects, and is well tolerated by sensitive skin.

You can use it directly on inflamed areas to soothe and calm them, provided you have an alcohol-free product. People find it especially helpful with reddened eyes, and to lighten dark circles around the eyes. Plus it is very refreshing and a delight to spritz onto the face.

It can also relieve dry itchy skin and reduce discomfort.

People with very difficult skin conditions got  immediate relief from redness and discomfort when I added colostrum to my organic moisturizer.  One friend had been unable to put his elbows on a desk or table, they were so sensitive. He has taken every option his dermatologist provided, but to no avail. Then, we tried my cream, with a lot of colostrum added to it. Bingo! Immediate relief! Were we surprised – and delighted.

I had read about colostrum’s benefits for the skin, but I was still astonished by how fast and effectively it worked.  So, I went further, and tried it out extensively on all sorts of different skin conditions. The results were consistent. Colostrum is a godsend for difficult skin.

Here is what Anthony Kleinsmith Ph.D. has to say about it:

first milking bovine colostrum is an amazing natural resource of substances necessary to support the development and repair of cells and tissues, including, among other things, the cystine necessary to generate the antioxidant glutathione; assure the effective and efficient metabolism of nutrients; and maximize functioning of the immune system.

You can read much more about the science of colostrum in this post on Dr. Kleinsmith’s blog.

If you have dry sensitive skin, I recommend you look for products containing a significant amount of colostrum. My own ultra sensitive creme could be just what your skin needs.

Choosing the right cleanser for dry sensitive skin can make all the difference. Many cleansers deplete the skin and leave it vulnerable to eruptions and irritation. Fortunately, there are natural oils that can make soaps that are suitable for even the most sensitive skin. Moisturizing cleansers are a must-have item in caring for extra dry skin.

Palm kernel oil puts the suds in natural soaps and creates a bar that stays solid until used. It can also help to make a truly moisturizing soap.

Soap making is a simple but delicate process using a combination of lye and fats. When heated and blended together, these two ingredients create a cleansing soap. Lye on its own is caustic and will leave a searing burn on the skin, but through a complex chemical process, the fats (usually in the form of natural oils) neutralize the lye until it is non-irritating. This is an ancient practice that has been keeping us clean for thousands of years.

The lye element in soap is a constant, but the oil element is where soap making takes on its true creative allure. Olive oil, pomegranate seed oil, coconut oils and even animal fats like goat’s milk can be blended with scented essential oils to create high quality natural soap.

Soap gets its suds from lauric acids. That is where palm kernel oil comes in. Palm kernel oil contains over 40 % lauric acid. There are plenty of chemically derived sources of lauric acid, but for a natural soap, this seed oil is key.

But that is not the only role palm kernel oil plays in a sudsy bar of soap. As a highly saturated fat, it is solid at room temperature. Even when mixed with lye, the oil retains its solid state. The hardness of the soap depends on the levels of saturated fats it contains. A liquid soap, for example, contains little or no saturated fats. Using palm kernel oil in soap creates a bar that remains solid and lathers well once you get it wet.

There are lots of chemicals that can make a bar of soap sudsy and lots of cheap saturated fats that can make it solid, but these ingredients are at best non-nourishing and at worst overly drying and potentially toxic. To create a high-quality soap, a blend of palm kernel oil with other nourishing seed oils, like sesame and pomegranate, makes for a luxurious bar that is cleansing and moisturizing at the same time.

Palm kernel oil comes from the oil palm rather than the more familiar coconut palm. It is derived from the kernel of the palm fruit seed. Palm oil different, even though it comes from the same tree. It is pressed from the fruit rather than the seed and contains less saturated fats and lauric acids than palm kernel oil.

Soap doesn’t have to be drying and all natural soap doesn’t have to be lather-less. It all depends on the ingredients that go into the bar, and palm kernel oil is one of the best for making a luxurious bar of truly moisturizing soap.