The beauty products that changed my life Pt. 1

I go on and on about about great products, bla bla blabbity bla. Sometimes I allude to the greatest, but have never before compiled them all. Now a true beauty addict has more than a handful of must haves, so I decided to split them up for you. I present my absolute hands down love 'em love 'em products for the face:

Image courtesy of Walgreens.com
Prescription Clindamycin: this stuff comes in different forms, and it is your pimple's worst enemy! It is twice as potent an antibacterial as Benzoyl Peroxide, yet has none of the drying, bleaching or makeup caking effects.
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Image courtesy of skinstore.com
Neutrogena At home microdermabrasion: Ah, my first and to this day favorite foray into the world of ultra harsh microdermabrasion. For a scrubphile like myself, the tool is a joke. No I want the full hardness of the crystals, and I want to rub hard. I loveddddd the effects of this from the first day and never did stop. Does amazing things for instant smoothing, but is really for the toughest skins.


Image courtesy of makemeheal.com
Creme de La Mer: You may be asking yourself, what in the world is a crazy oily girl, with ridiculous horrible cystic acne, doing putting on CDLM?!?
Ahh, you underestimate me and my willingness to experiment. And boy was I happy I did this one. After the initial shock to my skin (I could just imagine my oil glands having a heart attack at the confusion, what did she put on? Creme de La Mer???? HALT PRODUCTION!!! And the foreman just says, sorry boss, we already put out a months worth of oil just last night. It's too late. There will be zits.) After the initial "shipment" as I like to call it, my oil glands got the hint. They needed to cut down. They could afford to lay off a few workers. I wanted them to concentrate on downsizing (not just production, but also their plants, as in, my pores). One thing my poor empty wallet always misses.


Image courtesy of sephora.com
My new boyfriend, the Clarisonic. Let me put it this way, this thing gives me the glow of a 100 orgasms (not counting the blush, the blush is my entire existence). Plus it makes pores look smaller, lines look blurred, skin feel softer and smoother, and is making an unprecedented difference in my #1 enemy. The zit. Clarisonic, how do I love thee.


Image courtesy of sephora.com
Can I just say, the formulator of this deserves some sort of skin Nobel Prize. Not only is the SPF equator high (55, and 3 broad spectrum pluses), but it blends into skin without creating a white cast, moisturizes and was the only block that didn't irritate my skin when I was on Renova. My only caveat, very very oily within an hour (is this not what blotting papers are for though). To this day I have not found anything better.

Image courtesy of sephora.com
Jonathan's shower purifier was my very first gadget purchase, and one of my favorites to this day. The effects on hair are immeasurable, I always wish it had a universal nozzle so I could use it in Europe too, because the purified water leaves my hair so much softer, bouncier and shinier than without. Truly a must-have.

So this is my shoutout to Dr. Murad

Would you like to know what these pictures are?


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Before and afters....OF ME!

Ladies I kid you not, this is a few months work. The more yellow toned pictures were taken at the beginning of August, and the more bluish, today.
You may have noticed a measurable difference in say CELLULITE!!!
I know, I amazed myself. Yes it still looks like more in natural light then it does in these pictures (believe me, plenty noticeable) but just to look how far I've come in the course of a few months is incredibly encouraging.

I know you may be pooping yourself and asking what I did. It's called pills, and prescription retinoids. This summer, frustrated with being unable to hit the beach (yet again) I finally broke down and got Dr. Murad's "The cellulite solution". I read it, and well....monumental at the very least. Dr. Murad got down to the very root causes of cellulite, and began to tell us how to relieve them. One of his ways is inside out. That means either eating, or supplementing, the nutrients that skin lacks in order to be able to behave how it should. The other component was treating the skin from the outside, with the correct topicals.

Now I am definitely not the most ardent follower. I stuck to the diet for about 2 weeks (though that IS when I saw the most difference, what we eat ladies, makes a HUGE difference). You cannot get my butt out of bed in time to be able to dry brush myself every morning. I certainly haven't done any healing yoga, or been hitting the gym (um yeah, max 10 times in the last few months). Massage...PFFT! What I did do, was somewhat consistently take the supplements and apply a prescription retinoid cream to the area. This was supposed to alleviate my stretch marks, and it certainly has been helping, but the effects on the celly are much much better.

Dr. Murad, you are my hero. And those of you who haven't read this book, get your hands on it. It may change your butt forever.

I Gotta give you more Linda

Ann Taylor WISHES! This is Linda in a campaign for the brand in '04. Yes, she looks like that at 40. Yes it's Botox, but I would wager to say, this time it was done right!

Image courtesy of levangelista.net

All of my best hair growth tips

Sigh, hair. Is it not the bane of all our existences.

If like me you have colored and heat styled your strands into oblivion, your obsession with growing new hair (to ruin fresh strands) is constant and some of us even measure our hair growth (I am at 19").

Now my hair naturally grows fairly quickly, about an inch a month, but alas, we always want more don't we? So through my years of obsessive coloring, I've also worked on a definitive guide for encouraging fast healthy growth. Wanna hear it? Here goes:

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Get your vitamins: Making sure you have enough iron, zinc, biotin, and silica will encourage your hair to grow, and grow strong enough to withstand whatever tortures you may inflict. I have noticed a great difference since I started taking these supplements in the quality of hair growth. It's less coarse, frizzy and dry. Embrace your food groups ladies!

Embrace the 100 brush strokes. And make sure you get a brush that mixes boar and plastic bristles (or like Frederic Fekkai's, the base is boar and the tip is plastic, AMAZING for detangling and upshining). There's nothing quite like good old fashioned manual stimulation to get the blood flowing and the hair growing (have you ever wondered why the hair on the legs grows so fast, we're always SCRUBBING it). This also goes for the scalp massages at the salon (I tip the shampoo girl big so that next time she feels extra generous with me) and the kind that you can easily do at home. Heck I do them at my desk, so refreshing!

Essential oils can be a miracle. Stimulating ones like rosemary, cedarwood, lavender et al are also known for increasing hair growth (Neal's yard makes a serum based on them that some people worship like a religion). I am also a big fan of tea tree oil, not only does it control my dandruff (I will never, not for anything use a dandruff shampoo) but again, it's toning and stimulating for the scalp. For those with very little sensitivity, it's ok (and expensive) to apply them straight, however, those who are sensitive, better embrace the watering down (combine it with your hot oil treatment!) because essential oils are POTENT!

Maintain the hair you do have: Do your protein and your hot oil treatments. Be gentle with the brushing and heat styling and make sure you're using heat protectants and detanglers. For god's sakes, dye you hair back to your natural color and give it a break for a while (yes dyeing, especially bleaching and dyes, does stimulate and irritate the scalp into more hair growth, but what does it matter when the hair isn't good quality). Remember, the gentler and more split end proactive you are now, the happier you'll be in the end.

Don't believe the gimmicks, all those hair growth pills, or that cutting the hair makes it grow faster (it makes it break less because you remove split ends, but hair is dead, what you do to it at the end is in no way communicated to the scalp).

When I've implemented all these methods on a regular basis I've noticed my hair grows measurably faster (like twice as fast, literally, in the month of september it increased 2"). So guve them a try. Any methods you know of that I haven't covered? Comment away!



Image courtesy of worth1000.com

Fabulous money saving tip

Oh, I think of you all folks in the States during "these economic times". If you haven't yet gotten the latest issue of Allure (get on it, there's an amaaaazing article about the latest anti-agers....isn't there always though?:P) you probably haven't heard about their new program Allure Experts.

It's their consumer review group and it's how they plan to partner with beuaty companies to help them produce, study and release products that are relevant to the beauty addict consumer (sigh, isn't every beauty product relevant to us). If you sign up, live in the States (those of us in Canada are less fortunate) meet their qualifications (there are already lot's of panelists of my age group which is 18-24, so I didn't get in) and participate in the activities, you get free pre-released products to try.

I sooo wish I could participate, what better way to placate my addiction to trying new products while making my wallet happy. You lucky ducks down south, go sign up before your age group fills up! And send them a stern letter that they should allow voracious 20 year old Canadian beauty consumers to participate.

Kiss!
Join up!

Image courtesy of allure magazine

Stalk me

So, for those of you who like my blog (hi mom!) you can visit me on my other methods of communication:

MakeupAlley
Facebook

Or alternatively you can email me at : lela.elena@gmail.com

If you have any questions about my experiences with beauty (10 years of unwavering obsession leads to a loooot of products tried) you can do it like that or simply leave me a comment here.
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Bitchin' ingredient: Ferulic Acid

Ferulic acid is an extract from the simple fern and there's been a FASCINATING study published about it recently.

It is your skin's best friend let me say.
One day while randomly surfing blogs, there was a great post about this study so I went to investigate.
The published study here.
The gist is that adding Ferulic acid to a concentration of vitamin C and E stabilizes the ingredients long enough so they can actually have a visible and measurable antioxidant effect on the skin (much simpler and faster than doing vitamin C powder masks, no?). The study is very convincing and makes sense. Everyone knows that C and E are great for skin, but many don't realize how quickly they degrade and the fact that after they have degraded, they no longer have any effect on the skin.

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Now I had remembered an inkling that a few of my fellow beauty bloggers were in love with a certain Skinceuticals serum, and I remembered something about Ferulic. So I went a-searchin' and YES they do have a serum concentrate that is C and E enriched with ferulic. It's actually been around for a while and has a devoted glowing following (hmmm, maybe they had a hand in the study?). I did hop around and looked at other brands to see if they carry something similar (maybe something UNDER 100 big ones, I'm happy to spend on quality skincare, but believe you me I check around first to see if there's something cheaper that works just as well). Alas no, Skinceuticals are the pioneers on this.

Now here's my plan, rather than shell it out big time, I'm going to customize. I'm going to hit up my favorite cosmetic ingredients sites and the health food store and customize my own serum for a fraction of the price.
I'm gonna do a concentration of 15% L-ascorbic acid (Vitamin C)
5% alpha tocopherol (Vitamin E)
1% Ferulic (you only need a little, which justifies the expense in my mind)
And put it all in a base of phytonadione (Vitamin K) to help with my blotchiness, broken capillaries and dark circles.

Hot darn for customization!

Image courtesy of skinceuticals.com