Goopy Face

Hello All!

I'm back again, with more pictures. My acne: not so much better I feel. Especially the lower part of my face. I shaved today and I keep getting razor burn which looks like acne, but is it? I'm 22 I shouldn't be getting razor burn! Then again I've never shaved daily like I have been recently, but that was always because of razor burn! Those nasty bumps on my neck. I can't avoid them because my skin is so sensitive.

Tonight I decided to shave, then wash my skin with the Dead Sea Regenerating Facial Cleanser and then apply the Dead Sea Complicated Skin Resolution Mask. I have post-shave/pre-mask and during mask photos. I think I look silly, but it's fine. Skin getting better? You guys be the judges.

Feeling different in my own skin...

I still can't tell if the new skin products I'm using feel like they're working or not.

However, I will say my skin feels a bit tighter than it did previously. I assume this is indicative that the cells are producing more collagen and elastin (proteins that when degraded let the skin fall loose and saggy, causing wrinkles and signs of aging). I find this interesting that it's happening in my skin as I'm 22 and don't really need to be afraid of this quite yet, but I believe there are peptides (baby almost proteins that the cells need to put together correctly) that are supposed to promote the production of the two proteins.  I think the tightness may also indicate that the skin is drying up a bit, as when your skin's dry it doesn't stretch as much.

Benefits so far:

• I can be less afraid of aging fast
• The skin dryness suggests my skin is not as welcoming to bacteria causing pimples

Having oily/watery skin at the temperature we're at every day isn't really good if you're trying to avoid bacteria. You're basically a giant incubator. Not only do you provide oil/water at a nice temperature, bacteria can just eat all the proteins in your dead skin (presumably).

.... So, my skin's dry. The pimples that are on the surface of my skin seem to be getting to the point where the skin will just sort of flake off. But there are still red marks. And the pimples aren't gone YET. They just seem like they're going to disappear. New pimples don't seem to be bubbling up from deep under the surface either because I don't feel the pressure. That doesn't mean anything yet.

If my acne is eliminated, I'm left with acne scars. Granted I'd prefer acne scars to acne, but I'm trying to figure out how to deal with them when I get them. One of my friends once told me about a complexion evening skin lotion by AMBI and I may consider giving it a try. Unless there's anything else out there?

Products from the Dead Sea

Well, it certainly has been a while!

I've been away, busy with school and assorted things. But I'm back with a new topic of special interest: Acne.

I have struggled with acne since I was about 14. I am now 22 am still fighting acne. I have certainly had periods of clear skin and periods of really bad skin. For example, my freshman year of college my skin got worse than it ever had been before. I think a mix of greasy college food in addition to stress to do well in classes combined to have a net effect of really pronounced/red pimples that went deep. As soon as some pimples were eradicated, there were like another ten starting to blister up beneath the surface.

My breakouts persisted despite my twice daily face-washing regimen and usage of salicylic acid toners, benzoyl peroxide creams and other prescription face creams. At one point I was taking doxycycline antibiotics which is a slow-release antibiotic used to kill bacteria in your skin that cause things like lyme disease and is also used against a superbug that's known as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, multi-drug resistant S. aureus or as many know it, MRSA. MRSA was a huge deal in hospitals and was usually the bacteria getting into open-wounds and causing all sorts of problems and potentially death when patients got home. It eventually makes its way into your blood stream and causes nasty things, and the drugs they give you to treat it usually make you feel weak. But there I go, getting off topic talking about MRSA when I'm really talking about acne.

Doxycycline seemed to work for a while. I was on 100 mg's taken once a day in capsule form at dinner time. I was using a face wash followed by 2.5% benzoyl peroxide gel in the mornings and at night I was using Differin which was a gel containing 0.1% adapalene which is a retinoid-like compound which is used to stop pimples from forming underneath the surface (info at pubmed). This new regimen worked for a while. Within the first week, my face got really red and overly dry and it looked like I recently had a chemical peel. Afterward, my face was perfectly clear and remained clear for a long time. The dermatologist I was saying suggested I stop taking it. I did and my face stayed clear for a while. I had minor breakouts here and there but on the whole things were going fine.

My breakouts got worse again and about the time I started school this semester I decided the medications weren't working as effectively as I wanted them to. I decided I'd start using Noxema products, so I bought a daily salicylic acid based face scrub and an antibacterial face-wash that had 0.3% triclosan which is supposed to help kill topical bacteria on the skin. They weren't doing the job completely, so I also bought a 10% benzoyl peroxide product from Clean&Clear and also bought 2% salicylic acid 2-in-1 Fight and Fade Gel by Neutrogena (a product that's supposed to help dry out pimples and reduce the appearance of acne scars). Needless to say, this combination of products wasn't really helping my skin all that much.

This Saturday my friend Meg and I went to the Providence Place Mall and were just checking things out, not really out to buy anything. We were randomly stopped by a merchant at one of the booths you pass while walking between stores. Specifically, this was the Deep Sea Cosmetics booth. And for those who don't know, Deep Sea Cosmetics is a company selling products made in Israel that uses water and minerals from the Dead Sea. The merchant was offering free samples and I figured why not, I like free things. So he hands me a small packet hand and body lotion and sees my friend paints her nails. He started asking why and suggested it's because she takes care of her nails when she probably didn't always do this. He was dead on and proceeds to show her a new product for nails that worked extremely well and sold her on it. He then looks at my face and realizes I have an acne problem. I allowed him to talk me into buying two products.

The product first is called the Dead Sea Regenerating Facial Cleanser. It's an exfoliating cleanser that has minerals from the Dead Sea in addition to apricot extracts that helps remove dead skin cells and is supposed to help speed up the skin regeneration process. You're supposed to use it twice daily. I started using this product Saturday night (10/09/10) and have used it morning and night since.

The second product is called Dead Sea Complicated Skin Resolution Mask. This product is a facial mask you leave on for ten minutes that's supposed to help remove dead skin cells and pull all the oils and bacteria to the surface of your skin. He made it as though this product is supposed to eliminate my acne for the rest of my life after using the product for about a month or so.

The merchant said this product was guaranteed and that if it doesn't work the way it's supposed to I get a refund, but that I was supposed to be professional about it and document the process with pictures. I am taking his suggestion.

Today I'm posting pictures that I took this afternoon of my face. You will see acne primarily on my forehead and temples. This is after one application of the Resolution Mask (10/09/10) and 4 uses of the Regenerating Facial Cleanser.

 All I can say is I hope these products work like magic, the way he said he would. I'll be most upset if it doesn't because I'm sick of the struggle with acne. The directions say to use it twice a week if you have normal/oily skin. I have my fingers crossed!

Classes: Day 2

So I'm in the middle of my second day of classes, taking a brief break at my on-campus apartment. Currently in my room typing on my ancient Mac desktop:



I'm pretty sure this is from 2004, I bought it off ebay a few years ago. Ebay is great... Anyways, so move-in went pretty well. It was stressful as I worked all day at my lab job and drove 2 hours to school with all my things in the world.

However, school got efficient at moving people in! YAY! We got to use these giant bins to just dump everything into with wheels to steer to the elevator and bring right to your room to drop it all off into your apartment! WOW! Why did we not use this my three years before?!?! This makes unpacking your car and getting stuff into your room easier because you don't make multiple trips! And there's less lifting, hehe. This was genius. Good job school, hoorah!

It's also been pretty great reconnecting with a ton of people I've missed while home for the summer working myself to death. Mostly everyone seems to have had a very busy summer which is great but a little sad because it'll probably be like this for a few more years until we all get ourselves settled in our chosen career paths and can actually take time to ourselves. My rooming situation is going well, my room is set up and my roommates are pretty awesome. One of them I just met but I can already see he'll be great to live with.

Tonight I'm meeting some of my crew for dinner at a local Chinese restaurant and then driving home in the middle of severe weather conditions so I can go to work tomorrow. Oh Hurricane Earl... how can I fear you when your name is Earl?!?! Hopefully I get home alive. I'm sure I will, I have no concerns. Updates will most likely come after work at the lab tomorrow after I drive through today's rain and tomorrow's potential flooding en-route to the lab.

Operation Prep for Move-In

When living on campus, it's important to get the moving-in process going. This involves all the usual packing, making sure everything is accounted for that you need and making the proper arrangements to go out and purchase additional items you need to be functional while at school.

Planning to relocate your life for a few months requires you to go through everything properly and discern what is necessary and what can stay and what can get thrown out. This was not done properly before I came home last semester. Lots of stuff was still in the trunk of my car and was only taken out today. I just went through stuff that did come make its way into the house the other day and it's nearly time to go back to school. Lots of things were thrown out, about 5 or 6 trash bags worth between the stuff from the house and my car combined. My car which has been a trash pit for well over a year now has finally been purged. This is a good feeling YAYYYY!!! I'm hoping to god this lasts.

Now packing can continue to happen as I know what needs to go with me and i have a much better clue of what I need. This shouldn't be stressful, I've done this three times before. Or maybe 5 times if you include the times where I've started a semester when I've been living at school as there are those winter breaks when you move stuff back home because you'll be away from school for a month or so and then when spring semester starts you need to move yourself back in. This isn't rocket science. This isn't science at all. Ironically, I was able to ace organic chemistry and calculus while at school but when it comes to organizing my life I've been somewhat of a failure. My mind's been especially preoccupied the last 6 months or so because of the many things happening in my life. It's time to re-focus.

I have more of a drive than ever to complete school and get out into the work world and become a fully self-reliant, functioning human being. One of my two jobs this summer has been a summer internship at a microbiology lab where I've had a great experience working with wonderful people I've actually grown pretty attached to. I'm hoping to be able to return next summer for the same summer position. I'm feeling very positive about a lot of the things that are in my future. Granted a lot of my friends have left school as they were seniors, some of my friends are traveling far away (outside of the country!) for grad school. It's all very disconcerting at times knowing they won't be right there with me, and that although I hope to go back to my summer job again, if I do, I don't know what I'd do after that position's over. It would only be a summer position unless by some act of god a full time position opened up somewhere, which may not be likely as the economy is so bad. However I'm going to try to go with the flow. See where life takes me. Roll with life's punches. I do feel optimistic though. I think I have a good shot at landing a job somewhere, and although people are far away it in no way means they're gone. The internet makes communication so much easier:-D

First Blog Post

As this is my first blog, I would like to take a second to introduce myself:

My name is Doug and I’m from Massachusetts. I’m a college student, entering my fourth year. I’m a biochemistry major. From what I’ve just mentioned, you can understand two of the three words in the title of this blog.

The other word is somewhat unrelated. Cakes. Well, it just so happens it is related in a way. For me that is. Cakes are what I do while I’m at school and not studying. Or rather, food is what I do when not studying and/or researching and working. I have found that I love cooking for in a way it is science, but it’s not an exact science all the time and if you know what you’re doing well enough measuring turns into guesstimating and turns into all sorts of deliciousness in the end… Unless it turns into a hot mess, in which case you learn never to add ingredients in those relative amounts ever again.

One of the aims of this blog will be to document my food-making ventures and share with you both my triumphs and utter failures… Most of which will be documented with pictures and explanations of what I did and why it failed if it’s known and follow up food experiments if they take place.

Other aims of this will be to post about life at school and updates about my research that will be taking place at school and other tidbits of relevant things in the life of Doug.

I hope this blogging experiment is as enjoyable for you as I’m sure it will be for me!