Our skin is probably the most precious part of our body, which is why we love to handle and maintain it as best we can (and spend a lot of money doing it!). The desire for glowing soft skin is the one and only wish for lots of women.

But sometimes our skin just fails to naturally adopt the state we want. Sometimes? OK, maybe, NEVER 🙂

So we reach out and try all the latest skincare products. But, do these products really help to repair our skin problems as the glossy ads say? And how long is it supposed to take for a skin care regimen to actually work? There are so many skin and beauty products available on the market. Each one assures us that our skin will become soft, glowing, hide our aging signs and fix any problems quickly.

Now the question is, does this really happen? Well, yes it can. Within reason. You have to have reasonable expectations to start with. What often happens though is that people change their skin products too soon thinking that “this cream is not working; let’s try the other brand or product”.

Human skin differs from one person to another. Skin products will tend not to show the same result for different skin types and even different people. Some types of product work faster and some may take time to show their magic and make us more attractive.

So how long are we talking about? Here’s some examples:-

Cleansers

There are many types of cleansers and some of them are really great products. The basic results will of course come straight away – either it removes your makeup and cleans dirt from your pores or it doesn’t! The ongoing benefits of using that cleanser however will take up to 45 days to see when used regularly.

Body Moisturizers

OK, so we all use these too. Many people tend to have more than one at a time. I’d recommend sticking with one product at a time though. That way you can really see if it is working well for you. Give it 2-3 weeks after starting regular usage. If you don’t feel or see the benefits by then, that’s the time to try a different one.

Dark Spots Treatment

Lots of us suffer from dark spots around our eyes and on our cheeks. There are different regimens for dark spots around the eye and for the face spots. No cream however can show its magic overnight – these really do take time for any good thing to happen. If you regularly use the best creams it can easily take around 4-5 weeks for these kind of problems to start to fade. Then even longer to see the full benefits appear.

When you start using some particular brand or cream for skin care, observe your skin from day one. Figure out whether the skin is liking the change or not. If you’re getting bad reactions such as redness or sore areas, stop using it and try something else (get a refund too!).

It takes time to eliminate dead skin cells and for fresher newer cells beneath to surface. Give up too soon and you may attribute the benefits to the wrong product! You just need to show patience and wait for the final results.

Have you come across the fascinating beauty idea of ‘chemical peels’?

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty surprised they didn’t come up with a more appealing name for it. Because the very idea of peeling my facial skin just makes my skin crawl…

It all just seems so brutal. Using chemicals to make deep layers of skin peel away to reveal ‘fresh new skin beneath’. Fresh skin? Or just red raw skin because it’s not ready to be surface skin yet..?

Surely exfoliation is all that’s needed here. And I mean gentle exfoliation too, not scrubbing your skin away with sandpaper.

Exfoliation is about gently removing the dead skin cells on the surface of the skin to brighten your complexion AND to allow those pricey moisturizing products to better absorb into the actual skin that can use them (dead skin cells can’t rejuvenate).

So before booking your next appointment to have your facial skin chemically flayed off, try out something like the Dermasuri deep exfoliating mitt first. Not only does it cost an awful lot less than even a single ‘peel’ treatment (we’re talking about $20 for a mitten that lasts for 6 months use vs. $1,000 a go!).

Now I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot more appealing.

I’m not sure if people use peels on other areas of the body as well as the face, but simple exfoliation can help here too. If you want something for the whole body, then have a look at the reviews of the Baiden mitten. This is a more expensive mitt, but it’s still only about $50, and designed to be used for the whole body. And if you watch the videos of how to use it properly you’ll see that dead skin rolls away very effectively without any harsh sandpapering or use of chemicals.

So in conclusion, say goodbye to those scary looking chemical processes, and try going back to good old fashioned exfoliation. Just make sure you try it with a modern exfoliating mitt. Those old fashioned loofahs can be pretty brutal.

Now go check out this for more simple skin care tips.

Love may be blind, but what about ‘attraction’?

Totally different story isn’t it.

You don’t get to the love stage unless the attraction is there to begin with, wouldn’t you agree?

Unless you believe in love at first sight, in which case attraction doesn’t get a chance till a few milliseconds later :-). Or does it – can you have love at first sight without attraction..?

But if you can’t, then surely love isn’t blind, and beauty isn’t just skin deep either!

It’s a complicated world this love and attraction thing, particularly when you see a world full of people altering their appearances with skin whitener cream and the like. I mean it’s all fully endorsed and has it’s own professional industry associations like PBA.

So it must be what the world wants.

Not that we’re taught, trained, cajoled and generally advertised into submission where our appearance is concerned of course.

Right from girls being pretty in pink, to boys being stronger than girls. This kind of stuff starts very early, is totally unintentional for a large part, and hard, even painful to try and avoid. Without sounding like an overly politically correct bore.

But then again, you can always check out those reviews of the Meladerm skin lightener if you like. Maybe they will make improve your chances of love at first sight after all. Or if you want to go even further you can also get into things like whitening your underarm areas, according to whiteningcreamreviews.com. I’m not sure quite how many people will see your skin deep beauty under your armpits, but if needs must, then action must of course be taken.

Or you could just sit back and be happy in the knowledge that your armpits are the color they always were, and they don’t need to be whitened quite as much as your teeth. Which of course for most of the Western world are already about 3 shades whiter than any natural tooth color.

But these trends come and go in the long run. So maybe one day we’ll all be swishing red wine around our mouths just to try and darken down that overtly unnatural whiteness.