The Honey Challenge and Ultra-Sensitive Skincare Part 1

The Honey Challenge

DIY skincare for ultra-sensitive and dry skin

January 26th, 2013

I'm 100% all for doing whatever type of beauty regime makes you feel beautiful, and I love to try new products and lotions and potions that come on the market to add to my beauty regime, but lately I have almost entirely switched to DIY beauty recipes, and don't plan on changing, for two reasons:

1. I'm frugal as fuck
2. I have the most angry, sensitive, worst skin type IN. THE. WORLD.
3. I have eczema patches on most of my body, that don't flare up too much except for the one patch on my godamn LIPS.
4. I have thin, half curly/half straight, super dry hair

The reason I like DIY is because I can try lots of different things to find out what works best on my skin and hair without throwing all of my money into the cosmetic industry. It is insanely difficult to find something that will work for my skin and my hair as it is, and almost all products geared towards sensitive skin are priced on the same scale as cocaine per kilo, not to mention the fact that now that I live in Germany the hunt is basically started over completely since all the products are different. GD it. What I have found is that using basic food products works a hell of a lot better for me than any synthetic miracle product.

The patch of eczema on my lips has been rearing its ugly head since I hit puberty, here it is at its worst:

I call it my mustache, but at this point it was more like a beard.
The reason it got so bad is because I always used cortisone, which I never knew actually really damaged the skin around my lips, preventing it from healing itself. Cortisone is a quick fix, but if you have eczema, especially on your face, do not use it all the time. In fact, if you have eczema on your face you should use as little products as possible to keep it at bay, (like a topical ointment prescribed by your doctor, mine is in German so I have no idea what it actually is) Vaseline  and cortisone only when it flares up.  Some people have found that pure vitamin E oil helps a lot if you slather it on before bed, but of course, that somehow dries out my lips, because my skin is an asshole. When I think about how my best friend uses nair on a weekly bases on her face and doesn't have to use lotion after she shaves, it makes me cringe. My skin dries up just thinking about it. Nair on my face? It would melt off and I would look like Two-Face. No no, not Jack Nicholson, Melty-Face Mcgee Aaron Eckhart Two-Face shit.

I've tried hundreds of products. I've tried hundreds of techniques. But really, if you've got sensitive angry skin, the things I listed above are the ones that have worked for me, and the ones I will continue to use. The point of it is, your skin has to be able to heal itself in order to stop from flaring up, and if you use tons of medicated products, it won't ever happen. When it flares up really bad and you have to use cortisone for 2 or 3 days, that's okay, but you gotta just stick out the itchiness with a good old' ice pack and slather that vaseline on your face. Giving up chapstick also helped a lot, vaseline is god's nectar, really.

So in my pursuit to find things that work to clean my skin I discovered a couple face potions that are awesome. There are lots of DIY masks I found as well, but I will save that for another post.

1. coconut oil and sugar. (I use brown sugar because it's just a bit thicker, but sugar is sugar. Hell, use salt if you want, but it won't smell as nice.) Coconut oil is great because it smells awesome and is super moisturizing and non-irritating (and when something doesn't irritate my skin, it's legitimately non-irritating) But like lots of great products you can find in North American stores, you can't find it in Germany, so I just order it on Amazon.

that one of the great things to use is pure, raw honey. Sounds awesome, but where in the fuck can a normal person get raw honey? One of the things I find a little annoying about Pinterest even though it's my second most-used app is the fact that a lot of their 'simple' recipes aren't so simple. Talking about raw honey and trying to find it in a medium-sized town where all you have are normal grocery stores is asking a little much, I'm surprised the recipe didn't say "Now just mosey on over to your local bee farm, suit up and harvest yourself some honey!" fuck you. Not to mention that health food stores have you spending a minimum of 50 bucks when you walk in the door and well, that's a week's worth of food for one person.

Anyway, the reason why raw honey is so good is because it hasn't been treated or pasturized, doesn't have any additives and is just plain, basic honey. You get extra goodness from it being just pure honey, just like you get extra goodness from organic foods in general, but using normal tea honey is also just fine. The more organic and less treated your honey is, the better it will be for your skin, but you don't have to put your hand in a beehive to get the best results. I am using organic "wood" honey, (I liked the color) the only ingredient being honey.

Today I have started what I will call the Honey Challenge. According to a few pinterest blogs and general internet searching, there are lots of great health benefits to honey, and I plan on trying them all. First things first, honey mask. Getting in the tub, setting up my laptop and watching Boy Meets World while I slather honey all over my face like I have a bee fetish and leave it there for 15 minutes, 3 times a week.

Here is my first attempt:

2 days ago: (look at that scraggly-ass hair)

Today after my bath:

I will take every picture from now on in the exact same lighting for consistency's sake. Not much has changed in the one-time use, but my skin is hella soft, including my mustache. The only other thing I noticed was my mustache was lighter in color, (eventaully as you read more of these posts, you will no longer exhale sharply through your nose when I refer to my atopic dermatitis as my mustache, and it will become natural to you, like the water you drink and the air you breathe) and so were the dark circles under my eyes. (Best thing about this experience? My face didn't burst into flames. Win.