heal my skin

My skin’s been a mess lately, so hopefully these’ll help as they did before. I should probably get some more Udo’s oil, too. Dressing up for Little Bro’s wedding in early January will likely mean bare arms, and it’d be nice to have skin worth showing off by then.

I’ve started a course of “Skin Tablets” (seriously, that’s what they’re called), a herbal treatment containing burdock root and wild pansy, both of which are supposed to be excellent for all sorts of skin disorders. Been taking them for several days now and I think they’re starting to help. I’m trying not to get excited yet, but I’ll be so happy if they actually turn out to be effective.

Florida, though, means short sleeves and even swimsuits. The excitement of the last couple of weeks, wonderful as it is, hasn’t been a good thing on this front; good stress is still stress, and my skin doesn’t like stress. I’ve been fighting a last-minute recovery action with intensive moisturising and essential oils, which seems to be helping, and wearing short sleeves to the gym has helped make me less self-conscious. It’ll be far from perfect, but I think I’ll get away with it.

Well, I got away with the dress-and-gauze-scarf ensemble for the Christmas Ball (and had a really great evening :o) ). Of course, by the inevitable operation of Murphy’s Law, my skin has improved in leaps and bounds since the party – if it had been this good ten days ago I wouldn’t have had to worry about it so much.

The next hurdle is the massage I’ve booked for Thursday week. Bare all to a total stranger? Eeep. Hopefully, though, this improvement will last until then – before the revelries of the party season catch up with me and send me right back to square one :-p

It’s a bit depressing how my skin reacts very quickly to any negative influences, but it takes forever to see a change for the better, no matter what I do to try and help. After a slight initial improvement, the insane two weeks at work and my bout of insomnia knocked my poor skin for six again.

The problem is, our office Christmas Ball is less than three weeks away, and optimistic idiot that I am, I bought a strapless dress to wear to it. Last year, I ended up having to wear a little shrug over my dress, which did nothing for it and made me uncomfortably warm as the night went on. I don’t want to have to do the same thing this year.

Moving house, with the associated stress and lack of sleep and not eating well, has taken its toll. My skin is not happy. I’m getting back into taking evening primrose and flaxseed oils, so hopefully that’ll help; and I’ve managed to re-create pretty well the essential oil lotion I got from the aromatherapist. At least it’s long-sleeve weather again :-p

My back and shoulders are pretty much completely clear now. My arms are still fluctuating – they had been improving, but are a little worse at the moment with reactions to the stress and very poor diet of the last couple weeks. And my wrists and ankles are covered in kitten scratches :o) It’s definitely much better than it was when I adopted this goal, though, and I’ll be keeping up religiously with the moisturising to try and maintain the improvement as the weather changes.

mission accomplished.

it took time and patience – and just stopping with the crap and letting the wounds heal.

LITHA comes to mind – leave it the hell alone! – mantra best employed by peole who have just gotten tatoos, to allow healing and prevent causing infection by fucking around with it.

I’ve bitten the bullet and started wearing t-shirts again. We’ve had such amazing weather the last while that it would have been impossible to keep wearing long sleeves. I’m painfully conscious of my skin, especially when I catch someone looking, but I think the exposure to sunlight and air is doing it good. The aromatherapy lotion is helping too – it does a great job of soothing dry and itchy patches. Still a long way to go, though.

Eczema and sensitive skin run in my family, and I seem to have got a very liberal dose of both! The eczema is brought on by stress, hormone swings, poor skincare, poor diet, and sometimes seemingly for no reason at all; but it usually has the decency to stay in relatively out-of-sight areas. Skin reactions, on the other hand, seem to take perverse delight in attacking the most exposed areas of skin. It’s been very bad on my arms and shoulders this past winter, and while it’s slowly improving now, I’m still too self-conscious about it to wear short sleeves – which is a pity now that the weather is turning nicer.

I’ve been ignoring it for ages, but I’m now determined to make a concerted effort to help my skin heal quickly. I’m armed with sensitive-skin cleansers, a bevy of unscented moisturisers, and a bottle of skin-healing aromatherapy lotion I got from my mom’s aromatherapist. The healthy eating plan should help too, and strictly limiting chocolate will definitely help. Bring on the t-shirt weather!