The Healing Properties of Aloe Vera

I can’t say enough about this miraculous herb. I have used aloe in many different circumstances, and each time it came through with flying colors.

Aloe vera is my #1 sunburn remedy. Whenever you’re going someplace where you’ll be exposed to the sun, I strongly recommend taking a bottle of aloe vera gel with you. It is easy to use and does a great job of healing and soothing the skin. Don’t leave home without it.

You can find 100% aloe vera gel at most health food stores. You don’t want to use a gel that has less than 95% aloe in it. Otherwise, you may get too many unwanted ingredients along with the aloe.

• Simply apply the gel to sunburned areas
• Because it’s a gel, it will dry fairly quickly
• Depending on the severity of the burn, I would apply it liberally and frequently
• It works on any kind of burn, not just sunburn

Keep it on hand for vacations or whenever you know you’ll get extended sun exposure.

Aloe vera gel is also good for dehydrated skin. If your skin has been exposed to the sun for an extended period of time (even if there is no sunburn), applying aloe gel is helpful. Because it is primarily water, aloe vera helps to replace the water lost through sun exposure, rehydrates the skin, and helps to reduce outer tissue damage.

Another way to keep general dehydration at bay on your face is to apply the gel after cleansing and before toning and using your moisturizer. The gel will act as an extra layer of hydration, adding water to the skin without adding oil. Therefore, aloe gel can help with all dehydrated skin, even if you have oily skin. Because of its gel-nature, it might cause a slight flakiness, which is just due to the dried gel. Usually if you apply moisturizer over the aloe gel, the flaking won’t occur.

An obstinate abscess. Years ago, my cat, Grace, was spayed. She kept licking her stitches and eventually developed an abscess due to the irritation. After the vet drained the abscess, he recommended keeping the cat from cleaning the area for a few days. How was I going to do that?

Knowing the healing properties of aloe vera gel, I put it on Grace’s stitches. She didn’t much like the taste, so I thought it would stop her from licking the area. I kept reapplying the gel frequently, and to my amazement, within 48 hours the abscess had completely gone away, and her incision had miraculously healed. I couldn’t believe it. I always knew the amazing healing job aloe could do for a sunburn, but I had never experienced its ability to heal a cut or an incision. Being termed a contact healer, it makes sense it would speed recovery with almost any injury.

Air bag survivor. A client called one day after her friend had been involved in a car accident. The air bag deployed (which was good), but the impact had basically burned her face (which was bad). The sudden speed of something hitting your face like that is bound to cause injury. This lady looked battered and bruised, and a good deal of her facial skin was singed. I recommended applying 100% aloe vera gel liberally and frequently and told her it was to be kept on at all times. I sent some information so she’d know what aloe was and why she was using it. Then I sat back and waited, knowing aloe vera would come to the rescue.

After a few days my client called with the results: Her friend only showed a trace of the accident’s effects. The burned places had healed up within the first day, and she didn’t show any signs of being in an accident. My client went on and on about how she couldn’t believe the difference between seeing her friend just moments after the accident in comparison to seeing her a few days later. They were both amazed that aloe vera gel could do so much in so little time.

The following information about the attributes of aloe vera is being used with permission from the authors of The How To Herb Book, my number one favorite herb book.

Aloe vera is one of the most popular and well-known herbs. It truly is one of the great healers. It belongs to the lili family of the succulent “aloes,” not the cactus as many people believe. Aloes have been used for centuries; they have even been found in Egyptian tombs.

Aloe vera:

• contains a pain-relieving agent and is a “contact-healer,” which means it starts healing on contact.
• is excellent for burns.
• gel is used by nursing mothers for sore nipples.
• rapidly penetrates the three layers of skin, carrying nutrients to all layers.
• juice can be used as an eyedrop to improve circulation and eyesight.
• stimulates circulation in wounded areas, which also promotes healing.
• promotes removal of dead skin and stimulates the normal growth of living cells, which helps wounds to heal rapidly.
• prevents and draws out infection.
• relieves itching in chicken pox.
• expels pinworms. Drink juice for several days.
• moisturizes and improves the skin. Is put in many cosmetics and shampoos. When the product contains other natural ingredients beneficial to the skin, this is wonderful because aloe vera’s penetrating ability helps to carry them through the three layers of skin. But if the products contain harmful additives, chemicals, or colorings, they could also be carried through the three layers of skin. Know what is in your product. Read the label!

I recommend keeping an aloe plant or at least some aloe vera gel (if not the juice, too) in your home. Not only for sunburns or burns you receive in the kitchen, aloe can help keep your skin feeling more hydrated—especially during the colder winter months.

For more information, see:

• My Sunburn Preparedness Kit
• SUNBURN RELIEF COCKTAIL: Important TIPS & help for healing a sunburn—updated
• 21 Years of Grace, if you’re interested in learning more about my wonder cat 

Yoga for Health & Well-Being

David Sunshine, my friend and the owner of the Dallas Yoga Center (www.dallasyogacenter.com), wrote the following article about the importance of yoga. I highly recommend finding a class in your area and giving this type of exercise a try. Yoga is wonderful for young and old alike.

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The classroom is packed with people of all shapes and sizes. A teacher walks through the rows of brightly colored sticky mats as students move through a variety of yoga postures. The teacher calls out the next pose, “downward facing dog,” and suddenly from all fours, hips lift into the air and bodies shift into the position that is similar to the way that dogs stretch into after waking from a long nap. Forearms quiver as the instruction is given to extend their hands into the floor and ground their heels, and skin glistens with sweat.

Until recently, the term yoga brought to mind images of a bearded man sitting on a mountaintop in a posture resembling the shape of a pretzel. However, over the past ten years the popularity of yoga has grown so much that presently more than eighteen million Americans consider themselves yogis. People of all ages, backgrounds and body types are singing praise for what has now become a common household activity.

Yoga originated in India over 4,000 years ago. The term yoga means “union.” The essence of yoga is the unification of mind, body and spirit. Our modern day lives are fast paced and filled with often overwhelming stress. We are overtaxed mentally and physically as we try to make it through our endless lists of things to do. Though its roots are ancient, yoga brings harmony even to our modern fragmented turbo drive inner state of being. And yet, yoga is not just a path to inner health, but glowing healthy skin as well.

The yoga sage, Patanjali, wrote that each person has a light within and yoga brightens that inner lamp. However he also noted that some people, like some lamps, have dustier covers than others. Patanjali explains that yoga is a life long journey that removes the dust enabling the lamp to shine brighter.

Through the practice of breathing techniques, physical postures, positive thought and behavior, and proper diet, yoga reduces stress, detoxes and strengthens the physical body, calms and clears the mind as well as uplifts the spirit. Even after a single yoga class one will notice a deep sense of wholeness, harmony and well-being. Eventually with continued practice, a soft innocence returns to the face and the inner light grows bright emanating outward in a sweet warm glow and youthful appearance.

In addition to inner radiance, yoga promotes an intimate mind/body connection. Yoga expands our consciousness with an acute awareness of each inhalation, exhalation, movement and stretch. As tension in the mind and body disappear, a deeper inner awareness arises, and we begin to appreciate life anew for the marvelous interconnections that make it up. Cultivating our inner awareness creates a feeling of balance, freedom and joy bringing a special sweetness to life known as “rasa.”

Within yoga, “rasa” refers to our “inner juice,” which is associated with health, joy and flexibility. We are born from a place of water, and youth is characterized by both fluidity and resilience. As we age, we often loose that quality of rasa, and life becomes dry, rigid and routine.

The different phases of our lives are reflected in changes to our skin. As we grow old, wrinkles appear, and the skin thins and becomes less elastic. Yoga is designed to reverse the aging process and replenish our rasa. Specific yoga postures bring fresh blood and oxygen to the skin, remove toxins and restore elasticity. Yoga provides the tools necessary to diminish the effects of aging so that a healthy inner and outer complexion is achieved naturally.

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In the past 10 or more years, yoga has grown in the United States with ever-increasing numbers of students and studios. There is every type of yoga class imaginable; from strenuous exercises done in a heated room to restorative yoga classes, which are relaxing and healing to the soul (my personal favorite). You can work up a sweat or relax your body into different yoga positions, depending on the class you take. Personally, I like the more traditional yoga classes vs. high energy types. I find the more traditional type classes help me make the body, mind, spirit connection easier than classes where I am sweating my socks off. The bottom line is do what works for you and your body, but do try yoga—for your health! I know you will benefit from this most ancient form of exercise.

If you’re in the Dallas area, please visit David’s wonderful yoga studio, Dallas Yoga Center. You will be so happy you did!

For more information, see:

• Life in Transition: Take this moment for You
• HEADSPACE: Get your meditation on
• NO SWEAT: What happens when sweat dries on your skin?

Treating Rosacea: Eliminate? Control? Fix? Cure?

How do I fix/control/treat rosacea?

Instead of trying to eliminate rosacea, start thinking in terms of managing it. Rosacea can’t be cured, but it can be controlled. If you are constantly looking for the symptoms of rosacea to completely go away, you may be setting yourself up for disappointment.

I am in no way saying that it isn’t possible for your rosacea to disappear, but realistically it might be more advantageous for you to see rosacea as being an ally, continually relaying messages to you about the state of your internal health. This of course includes the amount of stress in your life.

I am not trying to trivialize something that is serious. I am really trying to guide you to a new way of thinking; I also want you to understand that your body is constantly sending you signals about what it likes, what it doesn’t like, and how it is handling everything you are feeding it and asking it to do for you.

This relationship (between you and your body) needs to be a close, committed marriage of awareness, acceptance, and responsibility. Otherwise symptoms will go unnoticed until, perhaps, it is too late. And I’m not just talking about rosacea. I am speaking on a broader platform about every conceivable disorder caused by a body imbalanced. Rosacea may be burdensome to handle on a day-to-day basis, but if you figure out your body’s language you can cut down the amount of symptoms and therefore the look of rosacea.

Professional help. The experience many of my clients have had at the dermatologist is not a great one. Commonly, dermatologists do not spend much time delving into your history, and rarely if ever do they ask questions pertaining to your diet, skin care regime, and other factors that may be affecting your skin. In part, I think this is because many dermatologists simply don’t believe that you are what you eat. Yet to me, this is one of the fundamental truths about life, and I apply this principle to my work in skin care with all of my clients (and now you). What you eat and drink does affect you, but decide for yourself if you experience this to be true in your own life. I am starting to hear of more dermatologists being alert to the food/body connection, but more often than not it is a quick in-and-out of their offices. You may have to do a lot of the research and investigation yourself.

What I have divined from my clients is summed up with the words “patient, heal thyself.” This is not to say that your skin problems should always be self-diagnosed or go undiagnosed. On the contrary, if you think you have rosacea, I highly recommend a checkup with your dermatologist.* But don’t expect a very long consultation or a great deal of helpful information.

Generally, you will get a prescription for medication, oral and/or topical. Topical medications like MetroGel® or MetroCream® may indeed help to keep the redness down to a minimum. As with so many aspects of rosacea, the efficacy of these medications is individual. Some people have great success with them, while others said these products didn’t seem to help. It’s worth a try to see if you can keep your rosacea at bay.

*Be sure to get your moles checked while at the dermatologist!

You know more than anybody else about how you are affected by food, drink, activity, stress, etc. So truly, I give you the responsibility to get to the root cause of your rosacea more than I expect a dermatologist to do so for you. You know better than anybody what works and what causes reactions. A dermatologist cannot follow you around all day to see what you do, but you are there with yourself and therefore can gather a wealth of information on what creates reactions and what creates a calming of rosacea. “Patient, watch thyself and thy habits, then go forth, and avoid thy triggers!”

Photoderm is a laser therapy that has been found to be effective for rosacea. Photoderm uses an intense pulsed light source that tunes into the blood vessels and can potentially clear up rosacea—capillary-wise. Dr. Geoffrey Nase, author of Beating Rosacea, says “Photoderm was the single best treatment for my facial flushing and rosacea symptoms. Six full-faced treatments resulted in dramatic improvement in flushing, skin sensitivity, chronic facial redness, swelling, burning sensations, rhinophyma, and pupils. I cannot recommend this treatment any more highly.”

I have fairly normal, very fair skin, but at age 38 and with two young children, the skin on my nose, cheeks, and chin gets red and hot. Do you think it is rosacea and if so, do you have any specific recommendations?

Usually hot and red are indications of a possible rosacea condition. My first recommendation is to read up on the subject and educate yourself. After reading enough material, you may find that you have many of the symptoms of rosacea. If so, you really ought to get diagnosed by a dermatologist—to be sure—and then try the different topical medications that may indeed help your red and hot skin. Some people find the topical medicines effective, others do not. Understanding more about your triggers and how to manage this disease (if you indeed have it) is the best first step to helping to control the symptoms.

Rosacea is a very frustrating skin condition. If you do indeed have it, hopefully you have also discovered what your particular triggers are. They will be individual to you, but it is imperative that you know what causes a flare-up so at least you can be somewhat in control of this skin affliction. You may have to let go of or alter anything that you find aggravates the situation. Read as much as you can on this subject. Remember, knowledge is power.

For more articles about this skin condition, read  

• What is Rosacea? 
• What causes rosacea to flare up? Rosacea triggers
• IPL & PhotoFacial treatments for hyperpigmentation, capillary issues & scarring
• PLEASE—No Hot Water

Avoiding all triggers may be easier said than done. If wine is one of your triggers, for instance, drink it! Just know you will most likely experience side effects (a flareup of rosacea) if you do indulge.

Beards & the skin they cover

I ♥ George Clooney—couldn't resist!

My husband has a full beard. I was wondering what he needs to do, if anything, to keep the skin underneath healthy. Is it better for the skin to be covered with hair or clean-shaven?

My husband’s skin underneath his beard is beginning to itch, and it’s driving him (and me) crazy! What is causing this, and how can he remedy it?

Deciding to have facial hair or not is purely personal preference. And although having a beard may seem easier on your skin than being clean-shaven, the skin underneath does go through its own hardship. The hair inhibits some of the skin’s natural exfoliation, whether it be from shaving or just having that skin rubbed or touched throughout the day. Since the hair is in essence shielding any activity in the covered area, this skin needs exfoliation. It will keep the skin from itching and flaking as sometimes happens underneath a beard.

Since exfoliating underneath facial hair really cannot be done through conventional means (scrubs and gommage), this is a good application for AHAs. Fruit acids help to exfoliate just by lying on top of the skin. After you have done your morning or evening routine (assuming you have a skin care routine), take some AHA cream or gel and try to get it onto the skin under your beard by massaging it in with your fingertips. What you don’t want to do is pile on a bunch of moisturizer just because it contains AHAs, so be careful how much you use. Towel off any excess.

Using a manual facial brush can help to exfoliate the area under your beard. You want to be careful not to irritate the skin by using the brush too aggressively. And you always want to thoroughly wash the facial brush after every use. 

Glycerin is another option for getting needed moisture to the skin underneath your beard. Pure glycerin is a runny liquid that can be massaged into the area with the excess blotted off the hair. This should not cause any adverse effects, yet can really help to keep that skin soft and moisturized.

Finally, if you are experiencing severe problems underneath your beard, it may be time to shave it and see exactly what is going on. If you choose to shave, getting a facial before you regrow your beard would be an excellent idea. Getting that skin in good shape before the hair covers it up will help, even if temporarily. If the skin doesn’t respond to exfoliating and moisturizing, you may want to visit your dermatologist and see if there is something more serious going on.

For more information, see:

• What are AHAs? Miracle ingredients or not?
• Is your face in need of extra hydration?
• Sensitive Skin: Q & A

Juicing for Better Health

Juicing is not to be confused with drinking juice. The two couldn’t be more different. Juicing involves taking whole fruits and vegetables (skin, rinds, and all) and putting them through a machine called a juicer. What comes out is the liquid version of whatever you put through the machine. Drinking juice, orange or apple or grape, for instance, usually involves ingesting a manufactured product that has other ingredients in it, not just the fruit juice. Juicing is a way of getting pure vitamins and minerals into your body very quickly and without any preservatives or other chemicals.

I was given a juicer years ago as a birthday present. This was a thoughtful gift, although I rarely used it. In fact, when I was moving to Chicago in 2002, I wasn’t sure if I should pack it up and bring it with me. Why should I? I hardly ever used it! I didn’t have any good books on juicing, and back then I wasn’t very clear on the hows and whys of juicing. So, like many things in life, I just forgot about it.

Then a friend of mine who was a big proponent of juicing helped get me started on the juicing path. It came at a time when I was in the throes of writing Skin Care A to Z (my second book) and had been neglecting my dietary needs; if I wasn’t skipping meals altogether, I was eating foods I don’t often eat—things that were not contributing to a healthy body. My friend’s enthusiasm about juicing spurred me on to develop my own enthusiastic pursuit of juicing for my health.

My Juiceman Jr. juicer

As you will read in an upcoming article, My quest for proper pH (diet-wise), my enthusiasm died down eventually and my poor juicer spend several years in the back of a kitchen cabinet. But recently it has made another (hopefully permanent) appearance, and it happily sits out on my kitchen counter.

There are many juicing machines available. I have a small, inexpensive Juiceman Junior model (under $100), that has a good motor. You can spend hundreds of dollars on a juicer, but you don’t have to. It depends on how much you are really going to use the juicer. If you haven’t done this before, you might want to go with a less expensive machine until you are sure juicing is something you are going to do regularly. I have recently seen juicers on Amazon.com for under $50. It may be a matter of you get what you pay for, but then again one of these less expensive machines may work well. I’ll use my inexpensive machine until it stops giving me daily green drinks.

There are several books on the market describing what juicing is and how to juice different fruits and vegetables. I have read several of these books, but found one to stand out above the rest. You may have seen Jay Kordich, aka The Juiceman®, on TV infomercials. At the beginning of my juicing adventure, it was his book, The Juiceman’s Power of Juicing, that I went to most often. I found the instructions about how to juice, what tools I would need, and even information on juicers to be the most straightforward and easy to understand. Whether you choose to read his book or another book on the subject, I hope you will add juicing to your diet. It is a wonderful way to get powerful nutrients easily and readily into your body—for your health!

I couldn’t end this article without telling you one more thing. I am sensitive to sugar. I also believe that sugar causes breakouts—not just in my skin, but in anyone who is skin-sensitive to sugar. With that said, when you start juicing be careful how much carrot juice you drink. I have found through trial and error that I am highly sensitive to the sugar in carrots and drinking carrot juice can make my skin break out. It tends to give me canker sores as well. I will add a few carrots to certain drinks, but I don’t drink straight carrot juice. So, in your quest to bring the power of juicing into your life, do watch how your skin may be reacting to high-sugar produce like carrots. You may not breakout, but if you are sensitive to sugar, you may.

For more information, see:

• How to alkalize your body first thing in the morning
• Canker Sores—ouch!
• I’m sensitive to sugar—are you?