Yep I used to be guilty of this. I was still in the mindset that if I brushed harder, it’ll get more plaque off my teeth. Soo wrong, and I did damage! My dentist helped point this out and taught me how hard to brush too, and to close my jaw when I’m brushing my molars on the outsides so it doesn’t jam the toothbrush too hard into my teeth. I just read this article and wanted to share with you guys!

“As far as brushing our teeth goes, we know to do it twice a day. But how long and how hard should we be brushing? Does brushing harder remove more plaque?

Brushing too hard won’t remove any more plaque than if you brushed gently. In fact, it will only leave you worse off. “Too much of a good thing isn’t good,” says Rutherford, NJ, cosmetic dentist Lee Frost, DDS. “In general, dentists recommend you brush your teeth twice a day, but not many caution against the dangers of overbrushing and applying too much pressure, which can actually wear away your enamel, leaving you with thin, supersensitive teeth. Brushing too hard also puts you at risk of brushing away gum tissues that covers the top part of your teeth, causing your gums to shrink back.”

But just how hard is too hard? According to a study at Newcastle University, the ideal pressure is comparable to the weight of an orange. The study concluded that people who brush their teeth harder than this, for more than two minutes didn’t remove any additional plaque.”

At my last webcam chat, Joel asked if I had any puffy under-eye remedies that I could share and how could I not for a friend? Thankfully I’ve got some, being that some mornings I’m up at an insane hour to shoot I need to get rid of puffy eyes too. Hopefully it’s not an all the time thing, because then it could be your bed, not getting enough sleep, not getting enough water.. the list goes on. But quick fixes are always good so here are a few of mine that I really love:

- Place cold cucumber slices on your eyes. A lot of people think it is the cold temperature that’s helping rather than the product itself, who knows but it works for me! They smell great too, so why not? Slice them into 1/8″ discs and shake them off well before applying to your closed eyes for 5-10 minutes.

- Cold refrigerated used tea bags. Like the cucumber slices, the coolness reduces circulation, but the tea actually has a slightly astringent (tissue-shrinking) effect as well.

- If this is something you need to do once a week or so, try keeping spoons in your refridgerator. Place the back curved part of the spoons on your eyes as you lie down with your head elevated will work too.

- Rinse your face in cool water and pat dry, or at the end of your shower turn the heat down and get cold water on your face.

If this is an every day thing, instead of getting a ton of cucumbers (although it’d be awesomely hilarious to your supermarket cashier to see you walking out with cucumbers every day) then you should start going deeper and figuring out why you’ve got puffy eyes. Our bodies are great at communicating with us, but it’s a language we have to learn and not take for granted. If something is out of the ordinary, it’s for a reason. Here’s a few things to try if you’ve got puffy eyes every day:

- Try grabbing a new pillow if yours is flat, or maybe it’s time for a new mattress if you’re not sleeping well through the night.

- Reduce your salt intake. A high intake of sodium may cause you to retain more fluid than normal, which could be sitting under your eyes! Too much salt isn’t great for your health anyway so it’s not a bad thing to watch your salt anyways.

- Exercise every day to improve your circulation, even if it’s a half hour walk after supper or going for a swim, just get your body moving. It’ll help move fluid through your body and get everything working better.

- Give a reactine/claritin a try, maybe it’s simply allergies. Or it could be caused by a medication as a side effect.

Hope that helps out a little Joel (and everyone else)! If you’ve got a beauty tip request, leave me a comment and I’ll do my best to write a post asap.

I need to write this before I forget and go on to post a different beauty tip! In my last beauty tip blog post, I wrote about St.Ives Apricot Scrub with salicylic acid and how it’s great for keeping blackheads and acne away. While it’s great stuff and does it’s job, some people suffer from worse break outs that the more gentle salicylic acid doesn’t help much. In the end we all want it gone right!

If your acne is more stubborn and won’t completely go away with St.Ives Apricot Scrub (blackhead and blemish version) there’s other products on the market that will help you get rid of those little spots. The active ingredient is called Benzoyl Peroxide (click here for the wiki) which is the key active ingredient in Pro-Activ that’s made it famous. I’ve personally tried proactiv in the past and it didn’t honestly do much for me, but I think it may be because I had already used another product called PanOxyl which in my opinion blows ProActiv way out of the water. I was interested in ProActiv because in Canada at least, it’s the only lotion that contains Benzoyl Peroxide and I wanted to use it during the daytime. The lotion ended up being too oily for my skin.

What’s the difference then, between ProActiv and PanOxyl? First there is the price, PanOxyl can be picked up at your grocery store for around $8 a tube (it comes in a little box in the pharmacy section). Depending on how often you use it, that should last you around 1-2 months. ProActive is around $40 and I think they say that lasts you 2 months and they will kindly re-bill your credit card and send you out new product every two months, and it’s a lot of fun trying to get them on the phone to cancel your re-billing subscription. Second, if you’re anything like me I don’t enjoy having to use a ton of product and take forever in the powder room spending time on my face. Proactive is a wash, toner, lotion, and refining mask. Pan Oxyl is a gel used as an after thought after you gently wash your face (preferably with something mild a la spectrogel or cetaphil) and you apply before bedtime and leave on overnight.

You can buy PanOxyl in different concentrations, 2.5%, 5%, and 10% although I’m pretty sure Canada doesn’t carry the 10%. I’d suggest starting with 2.5% anyway, as this stuff is incredibly powerful and although you have the mindset of “but I want these spots gone now!” the 5% or 10% aren’t proven as more effective than the 2.5% and you will more probably have side effects of burning, peeling, swelling. Yep, it’s powerful stuff.

When you start using it, don’t apply to your whole face. Your skin will have to get used to it (it is a peroxide!) so just spot treat. Definitely get the gel and not the cream, the way to get rid of acne spots is to dry them out, not hydrate them! That doesn’t mean you should skip your moisturizer in the morning, you just need a very light moisturizer depending on your skin type. Through the next week you’ll notice those spots will disappear pretty quickly (I still use this to spot treat and my spots disappear overnight!) but you’ll also have a little peeling with your skin since it’s so drying. Your skin will get used to it and you won’t peel or flake after about a week.

Since this is peroxide, if you accidentally get some in your brown hair you will end up with blonde wherever it touched your hair, your pillowcase may get some white spots from bleaching (I suggest wait the few minutes for the gel to dry then go to bed and you won’t have this problem). Also this product (since it’s a more concentrated dose than any other product I’ve found) is photosensitive, which means the sun will make your skin more sensitive to light (including tanning beds, sorry ladies!) and will either result in burning your skin (much like a sunburn) and peeling or leaving little red dots where the product sat on your face. For this reason it’s best to use this at bedtime overnight, and make sure you wash it off well in the morning (no scrubbing, just make sure you rinse it all off). Also, don’t use this in conjunction with your St.Ives or any product containing salicylic acid, they don’t play well with each other, and will irritate your skin badly and not get any of the positive effects you’re looking for! Since this is so drying, if you haven’t picked up those exfoliating mitts I told you about a while ago you’re going to want to now for a very light rub on your face to get rid of dead skin cells or your pores will get clogged and you’ll end up getting more blemishes that way. It really is easy once you get the hang of it, promise!

Where did I learn about Benzoyl Peroxide? This amazing website acne.org, I didn’t actually follow the guys regimen but noted the active ingredient in the products he used and researched and found some locally. There are some forums on that site though that may help you find other people who have the same issues that you may have which is really helpful.

This product is for the guys and gals out there. It’s a face wash, and the product I use is designed to keep blemishes and blackheads away, but they have one or two other types of apricot scrubs in this line (you’ll see them right beside this one in the drug store). You can grab it from walmart, your grocery store, anywhere really, and it’s about $8-10 (I haven’t needed to buy any for quite a while now since this stuff lasts a long time). The active (medicinal) ingredient in the blackhead formula though is salicylic acid (check the wiki entry here if you’re a geek like me) which causes your skin cells to shed and regenerate quicker which keeps your pores from getting blocked which is blackheads and leads to blemishes. It also gets rid of the bad acne causing bacteria in your skin, and also constricts your pore diameter (makes your pores smaller). I think I just heard girls all over the world squealing with delight

It’s pretty effective at keeping your skin clear in comparison with simple soaps or face washes, and it’s not as harsh on your skin by drying it out as products like pro-active which contain benzoyl peroxide, but we’ll get to that another time. If you’re older this stuff will help your skin appear more youthful because it’s exfoliating any dead skin cells and helping renew them. It has tiny little bits of sand in it which actually feel pretty nice on your skin, but when you’re using it just like anything else on your face, remember to treat your skin like you would vintage lace.. it’s delicate! Just let the product and active ingredient do what it does, don’t worry so much about putting pressure on when you rub, and remember you rub in circles going towards your nose too, it goes against the way your skin and facial muscles naturally go which will at least help wrinkles or fine lines from setting in early. Since it is an acid I’d recommend using it on your face once a week, and on the other days using a very gentle face wash like Cetaphil or Specro-Gel (I alternate between the two every few months). It smells great too!

I swear by this Bio-Oil stuff, I seriously consider it my fountain of youth. When I was a welder I was lazy and never wore overalls so I used to have some tiny little burn marks from flying embers or sparks, and some stretch marks from growing so quickly as a kid and a friend suggested this stuff to me and wow does it work! It’s a little annoying at first because it’s like taking vitamins, you don’t see an effect from them. Anyway, I use this stuff every morning and night on my lips, the outside corners of my eyes and underneath them, to keep aging at bay. If you’ve got stretch marks, scars, any little red marks, give this stuff a go You can grab it anywhere, I got mine at walmart!