June 25, 2010 No More Tears

This issue, I'm not making food.  Well, I'll be making food later, but that's not what I'm writing about.  This time, I've had a beauty breakthrough.  If you've been reading, you know that I have practically every sensitivity in the known stratosphere, and it runs in the family.

My skin is one of my worst sensitivities.  I turn red at the mere touch of a blade of grass, wearing makeup feels like a glove on my face, and most skin creams and lotions either burn or itch, especially around my eyes.  Because of my airborne allergies, my eyes suffer the worst in the spring and summer and turn into crinkled up tissue paper.  Most cosmetic eye creams burn like crazy or itch so much that I have to wash them off.  The closest I've ever come to a facial moisturizer that didn't make me absolutely miserable was Clinique, but that stuff is expensive.  Nowadays, all cosmetics are expensive.  Petroleum jelly works okay, but it's messy.

I know this sounds really unpleasant, but I have found a solution.

I started thinking that if I'm going to cut myself off from petroleum products, one of them would eventually have to be petroleum jelly, which is pretty much the main ingredient of every commercial beauty product.  I would have to go au naturelle.  Vitamin E oil is mixed with olive oil, which is good and natural, but it's kind of thick and sometimes smells a little strong to put on a face.

Since I love trying new things, I bought a bottle of grapeseed oil recently at Whole Foods in the same aisle as the rest of the vegetable oils, right near the olive oil (I haven't checked Rouses yet, but I will).  I tried this with a cotton swab on my eyelids and found that it was light, smooth to put on and had no scent whatsoever.

Then I tried it along with baking soda as a facial scrub.  It worked very well, even on my scratchy eyelids, and it didn't sting at all!  My skin was smooth, and after rinsing it off, I dried my face and put a very thin rubbing of the grapeseed oil on my eyelids. 

This is a pretty impressive breakthrough for me.  Pass it on to another wimp you know.