Viva Woman

Oh gosh.  I just made a revelation while researching on the topic of sebaceous cysts.  The small yellowish dome-shaped lump or bump that grew on my vagina area when I was a teen was actually a sebaceous cyst!  I never got to find out what it was though I’ve long gotten rid of it.  I only found out because I wanted to write about this as my husband just had a 1 cm sebaceous cyst removed from the left side of his face near his ear via excision biopsis. 

I can’t believe I’m getting hooked on the lip glosses from Benefit Cosmetics.  After The Gloss Rave Reviews, I picked up two more new shiny gloss glides under Her Glossiness collection. 

Who Does Your Work! is rather similar to The Gloss Rave Reviews, except that it is glossier.   Because it’s a deep colored gloss, it comes across as very rich on first application.  But once the color sets in, it settles into a nice sheer wine.  I like it but my current favorite is Talk To My Agent, a sugar plum shimmer colored gloss that makes my lips look really sultry.  Nice pinkish touch but nothing too loud and I actually feel incredibly sexy wearing this shade!

I just stumbled upon a very cool website on skincare ingredients by the name of Phoebe’s Ingredients.  It consists of quite a bit of products in the market and the ingredients those products contain.  On top of that, it even rates how well or how bad the product performs in terms of anti-aging, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, hydrating, whitening, exfoliating, drying, irritating and comedogenic going by their ingredient listing.

The website is probably still a work-in-progress as some products, like those from L’Occitane only bears the ingredients but not the ratings about those ingredients.  But if you look up a product like La Mer The Refining Facial, you will see this rating on top of the detailed ingredients:

My face literally beamed with the application of Benefit Cosmetics High Beam.  In fact, it was so illuminating that my face looked really shiny all day long and I’m not too sure I like that very much. 

Little effect on fair skin
According to the product description, I was supposed to get a soft dewy glow with this satiny pink highlighter and to attain a young, radiant and fresh complexion.  Well, the first two times I applied this, I just followed the recommendation by drawing an X on my cheekbones and dab a bit more above my eyebrow and on my chin.  I didn’t see much of a difference to my complexion.  I figured out that it’s because my complexion is too fair.

Despite being busy, I’ve been going to bed really early to catch up on my beauty sleep.  I realized that a few late nights has taken a toll on my face; giving me wrinkles around my eyes, saggy skin around my cheeks and deeper marionette grooves. You can almost say I aged overnight! 

While I know the importance of beauty sleep, I didn’t actually understood the biological reasons behind it and here’s what I found out.

Bad hormones, good hormones
When we don’t get enough sleep, we’re generating more free radicals and our body is missing out on that valuable downtime to repair the cellular damage those free radicals generate.  In addition, lack of sleep causes the body to produce excess cortisol, which is a hormone that breaks down skin cells.  This is also the same hormone that is released when we are stressed.