For about 1 in 5 of us, diet can have a profound effect on skin health. For the lucky ones, changes to diet can help alleviate breakouts & for some stop them altogether. For the other four, the difference will be less noticeable. Managing your skin is about focusing on what you can control & letting go of what you can't. Diet is something we can control & its a good step but take diet with a pinch of salt (forgive the pun) - just because dietary changes cleared the skin for an influencer does not mean it will for you. It might, but it depends on the underlying factors of your brea ..read more

It's tempting to do - add a bit of foundation to your favorite moisturiser to make it tinted, perhaps a bit of sunscreen to make it SPF & hey presto your own unique perfect potion. They're all got preservatives in, so what wrong with that? Possibly lots. Whenever you’ve got water in a product, you need a broad spectrum preservative to stop nasties growing. If bacteria or fungi grow within your skincare & you apply it to your skin this can cause irritation, rashes, blemishes & skin infections. The concentration of a preservative is very important, so if you dilute it by mixing diff ..read more

Do you ever wonder why those breakouts somehow always pop on the exact same spot on your face? Why every few weeks you get spots on the jawline again? Facemapping is uberpopular on the internet. We love it don't we - the idea that by looking at the complexion of the face we can gain the ability to see a reflection of the state of the body's organs. It's like reflexology, but for skin complaints and we're told it dates back thousands of years in Chinese medicine. Before we go into Face mapping lets consider Phrenology. Phrenology is a more recent (1800s) process that involves feeling the skull ..read more

Today's spot light ingredient is Panthenol. Never heard of it? Have you head of “Pantene Pro-V”? Yes? Well, Panthenol is the Pro-V Pro-V is Pro-Vitamin B5 or...yep, panthenol. ProV is a moisturizer and humectant (meaning it attracts and retains moisture). When skin care products containing panthenol penetrate the skin, the provitamin is converted to Vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid) and its this vitamin which improves hydration, reduces itching and inflammation of the skin and accelerates epidermal wounds' rate of healing. That means in short, reducing the redness & swelling of breakouts and ..read more

"Boo hiss Silicone! You evil skincare ingredient causing silicosis, cancer & probably killing kittens to. How dare you be in my product!" Poor old Silicone dioxide. It's been around for years, has been hugely researched & shown to be safe but it has a really bad rap. The thing is, it has an evil twin, Crystalline silica. That twin caused SD's reputation to slide. How? A study by the WHO (the health organisation, not the band) in 2000 found inhalation of Crystalline silica led to silicosis and other bad things. Unfortunately that study mentioned the word 'cosmetics' & prompted by ..read more

Sometimes our skin can make us feel trapped. We can feel like life has given us a prison sentence with the only hope being that, with patience and time, our breakouts will clear. If this is you right now, you are not alone. An article in womenshealthuk by @anjalimahto highlighted 54% of British adults who have acne said it had a negative impact on their self esteem while 22% said it inhibited their social life. Acne can take over our thought process for a long, long time. When we are fused with our thoughts we tend to take them very seriously. We believe them, buy into them & play them ou ..read more

There is a relationship between our gut microflora, mental health & acne. Clinically we know that gut microbes &the integrity of your gastrointestinal tract are contributing factors in the acne process. A Russian study reported that 54% of acne patients have marked alterations to the intestinal microflora. People with rosacea are 10 times more likely to suffer from small intestinal bacterial over growth (SIBO), an uncomfortable gastrointestinal condition leading to bloating, diarrhea, abdominal pain, & constipation. A study involving over 13,000 adolescents showed that abdominal b ..read more

As human beings we thrive on achieving goals. After all we get a nice little hit of dopamine, the happiness hormone, when we achieve something. And that's all very well & good, but clear skin isn't a "tick done, move on" type of goal. It comes in waves of good & bad & worse & back again. The goal of "clear skin" is impossible to achieve FOR EVERYONE IN THE WORLD because clear skin can be ruined by so many things - stress, a day of partying, new skincare, too much sunlight, too little sunlight, running out of healthy food, the climate, hormonal changes, your genes and a million ..read more

During the Corona crisis the Belarusian leader prescribed sport, sauna and vodka to beat Covid-19 by sweating it out. Everyone "knows" that when you sweat your pores release toxins from the body - but is this true? Unfortunately, no. It's a myth that your body uses the skin as an excretory organ. Sweat is 99 percent water and contains only very small amounts of salts, urea, and carbohydrates, all of which are natural by-products of bodily processes. While a tiny amount of fat soluble heavy metal toxicants have been clinically detected in sweat, the liver and kidneys remove far more of these b ..read more

Roll up, the ultimate battle in skincare - big industry & their evil mass produced toxic chemical skincare V the honest living off the land natural organic producers making small batches from carefully selected plants. Who should win? The truth of course is that natural, chemical, organic or synthetic are really just marketing words in skincare used to convince you dear reader to part with your synthetically produced (but plant based) notes. There's no difference between synthetic and natural. Neither in law or in practice. Everything is chemicals. Organic skin care is not regulated in th ..read more