Turn this call to action on or off. Link this call-to-action to a page or your choice.Click here

Ground Report

World News & Opinions

Acne, Zits, White and Blackheads

| Health & Science

Share Tweet Pin G Plus Email

Zits, a great comic strip but not on my face!

The following information has been gathered and compiled through personal experience while traveling, teaching T’ai Chi, Qi Gong, Chinese Herbal medicine, martial arts and other health related subjects.  The article also contains feedback from students and anecdotal information from readers of my columns.  The following are my opinions and deductions from those sources.

If you’ve tried all the remedies for complexion problems and nothing works, maybe it’s an inside job.

Once you got through puberty you expected to have blemishes disappear, never to be seen again, just like the ads in the magazines.  Maybe that was your reality, and maybe not. 

No one remedy, just like diet and exercise, works for everyone.  If you have oily skin you need to take a different approach than the person who has dry skin.  If you’re a man, you need a different strategy than a woman. 

Most women wash their faces more often than men, and they also seem to have more problems with dry skin, even if they use moisturizers, which could be the problem where zits are concerned.

As long as your body produces hormones, there will be a potential for complexion problems.  This is particularly true with young and middle aged women. With that piece of study information in mind we need to look at what women do that men don’t, or rarely do, to find the answer.  Your choice of skin care products my be the reason you continue to have problems.  Looking more closely we find that women spend over ten times as much on cosmetics as men.  Looking at labels on those cosmetics, we may find the answer. 

Cosmetics that contain the following ingredients are more likely to clog the pores than others.  Check to see if what you’re using contains: acetylated lanolin alcohols, cocoa butter, isopropyl myristate, isopropyl esters, lanolin, lanolin fatty acid,  linseed oil,  oleic acid, olive oil or steric acid.

Many dermatologists contend that moisturizers are only necessary if the temperature is below freezing, the humidity is very low, or both.  After washing the face, if the skin feels dry and tight, wait about 20 to 30 minutes before applying any moisturizers.  It takes about that long for the oil glands in the skin to replenish the natural oils.  Moisturizers can plug the pores, leading to acne, white heads and blackheads. 

If you exercise, moisturizers can be an even greater problem.  They block the pores, trapping the sweat which aggravates the problem.  Sweat is one of the ways our bodies eliminate toxins, and if those toxins are trapped they will lead to other problems, in this case skin problems.

If you’ve tried everything and still have problems, particularly with zits and acne, you may have to go inside to find the answer. 

The skin is our largest organ.  When the other organs of elimination are on overload from too many toxins, it becomes the skin’s job to rid the body of the poisons.  Diet is the the first place to begin your search if all else has failed.  Fried foods, saturated fats, highly processed foods and sugars all contribute to toxic overload.  By eliminating them from the diet and substituting fruits, vegetables and other whole foods, you may find the answer to your complexion problems.  Internally, oive oil is beneficial, externally it may not be.              

Filed under: Health & Science
Share Tweet Pin G Plus Email

About Larry Miller

I was born in Los Angeles in 1940. My father was a fighter pilot instructor during WWll and we moved from coast to coast, maybe that’s where I got the nomad in my blood. After graduating from high school in 1958 I joined the Marines. That lifestyle wasn’t for me and upon my discharge I went on with my life, and have never looked back. I worked briefly for a Caterpillar dealer in Riverside, CA before moving back to N. California where I was a welder and truck driver for a chemical company. Truck driving wasn’t my calling anymore than being in the Marines, and I went back to work for another Caterpillar dealer steam cleaning dirty tractor parts and welding. They sent me to schools, lots and lots of schools. I spent as much time going to trade schools as I did at work. I went from cleaning parts to apprentice field mechanic, to mechanic to the parts department to satellite store manager in less than two years. They wanted me to move to Sacramento and be a salesman: I moved to Oregon to learn to commune with nature. I went to work for another heavy equipment dealer and was later contacted by the World’s largest Lorraine Crane dealer and offered the position of purchasing agent and general parts manager. In 1967 I was offered a line of automotive parts and supplies and went into business for myself. My business revolved around eleven race cars that we maintained for others, driving race cars professionally and maintaining high end sports cars. I was a championship and regional champion driver. My business was the largest import parts and service, non dealer, in the state until I sold it in 1979. We went sailing in 79, first to Mexico and then Hawaii. I was an award winning Trans-Pacific sailor and sailor of the year, Hawaii, Island of Kauai. An opportunity presented itself in Hawaii during 1981 and I was back in business, importing Japanese auto body and hard parts. I also felt the pull to write and began freelancing for magazines and newspapers in 1982. My main focus in my articles is, and always has been, health, wellness and fitness. Most of us have heard the saying, “Time is all we have.” I disagree. Our health is all we have, because without our health, we have no time. I was a US Olympic team hopeful in racewalking and held all the records for the state of Hawaii. As a sponsored athlete in my forties, I finished first in nine marathons in a row in my division, qualified for the Ironman® and was the state USCF cycling champion five times in Hawaii and Oregon. Celinda and I were married in 1988 after a three year engagement. We sold our businesses and organic farm and sailed back to Oregon. After our sailboat boat was sold, we moved to Joseph, Oregon, two miles from the trailhead into the Eagle Cap Wilderness. We were caregivers for my mother the last ten years she was alive. We moved to New Mexico in 1995 because it was too cold for my mom in Oregon during the winters. Celinda designed, and I engineered and built our strawbale house. I began writing the weekly health column for a local newspaper in 1996, and still do. In 2000, I took the summer off to do a four month, 4000 mile, hike, bike and kayak odyssey. I’d been writing health, fitness and sports articles since 1982 and the journey produced a full-length, nonfiction, first person adventure book, Yol Bolsun, May There Be A Road, which can be bought from Amazon.com and others over the Internet. The summer of 2001 was spent hiking. kayaking, fishing and exploring the southwest. In 2002 Celinda and I spent the summer in Canada learning the hospitality business at a resort in preparation for doing promotion for the resort in the US. Most of 2003 was spent reestablishing the trees and landscape that had died during the stay in Canada. We had a house sitter and the house sitter had an ex-husband, and that’s a long story. In July of 2004 I did a solo kayak trip on the Snake River, taking pictures, writing articles and pencil sketching the journey. I hope to do another kayak adventure on the Snake River during the summer of 2008, on the section I missed in 2000 and 2004. In 2005, I returned to Canada to the resort where we’d spent 2002. I was supposed to be there for the month of June. I’d contacted people I’d met in 2002 and they came back to Canada to fish, hike and spend time at the resort, Echo Valley Ranch and Spa, while I was there. My one month became five and then it was off to Spain to do the El Camino de Santiago as a travel companion with one of the guests who’d returned to Canada in June. During the summer of 2006 a friend from Ireland, who I’d met in Spain the year before, came to visit in NM and we fished, hiked and explored the White Mountains of AZ. He’d never slept out in the wild in a tent before, and it was quite an experience, for both of us. My newspaper articles were put on the Internet beginning in 2002. I was asked to give public speaking engagements, photo and video presentations, on various subjects for the library in Deming, NM and continue to do so. In 2006 I videoed and produced a DVD for the Smithsonian Institute’s travel exhibit “Between Fences.” NMFILMS had a conference by invitation only, which I attended. While attending the conference, I realized that film making wasn’t what I wanted to do but I still wanted to use my sixteen years of experience and enjoyment of videoing and photography. During the winter of 2005, I discovered that no one on record had ever run from the Arizona border to the Texas border, a distance of 165 miles. During the spring and summer of 2006 I trained for the run and the run was completed in October, 2006. In late 2005, I began building and maintaining websites incorporating all the things I enjoyed about video, photography, travel and the out of doors. 2007 has been a summer of upgrading the home and property which resulted in a downgrading of my enthusiasm for being located in one place. If we don’t like what’s happening in our life, we need to change what we’re doing. Celinda and I are ready to pull up roots and move on. I guess I’ve come full circle. I’m ready to revert back to my childhood, and a nomadic lifestyle.

View all posts by Larry Miller

Related Posts

Leave Your Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *