Skin Related

I confess. I indulged in chocolate cake.

I actually baked some chocolate cake for myself, and ate a third of it while it was still hot/warm out of the oven. Then I went over to Habib's house (he was also baking, and kept calling with questions, which is why I ended up baking myself for entertainment) and ate another piece of his chocolate cake, which was even better because he made icing with sugar, butter, cocoa, and yoghurt.

Thus, it is a couple of days later, and I reap what I sow. Three painful to the touch red bumps started to make an entrance on my face about a day later. I'm sure you know about those; they herald the coming of a great big zit that will last at least a week if not more. My solution: I attacked those things by putting liberal amounts of Shea Butter (which I had originally bought for moisturising purposes in the dry desert, but later read online a lot of people swearing by it for acne, wrinkles, and just about anything). So two days later, one is all but gone, one is smaller, less red and no longer painful to the touch, only the third stubborn one remains unchanged (it seems smaller but I'm not certain).

This isn't the first time I've used Shea butter for acne. I've been doing this for a couple of months now, and the results are consistent. It's not a miracle cure, but it prevents the majority of spots from coming to the surface and developing those ugly white heads, and makes their life span a few days instead of a couple of weeks. Also, I now get less spots in general when I eat bad because I moisturise my face nightly with it. I've also discovered that it removes those small horizontal lines I get on the sides of eyes (from squinting in the sun) when I laugh. It does not however, to my disappointment remove dark circles from under the eyes, which is why I recently ordered mom's eye cream which I used to use back in Lebanon successfully to get rid of dark circles.

In other skin related notes, I discovered that the rash I got on my leg has a weird name (Lichen Planus) and is not something with a cure. It usually goes away on its own in a couple of years. Steroid creams usually help with the symptoms and make it go down, but what my dermatologist didn't tell (did I mention I've a strong dislike for doctors) is that when you stop using it, it could flare back up. Since I've no intention to use prescription steroid creams for a couple of years, I now keep it under control using again Shea butter (which doesn't cure, but makes it go down a little).