Skincare Tip

Ah, the years spent trying to find the perfect face cream.

Either they all have too much of this and not enough of that. Or the other way around.

Or they just plain old have too many chemicals in them. That’s how it was for me.

I tried everything from drugstore brands, over pharmacy brands, all the way to organic ones.

And they all gave me some kind of reaction. Not enough moisture, not enough fat, or too much of both. Some felt like a plastic wrap around my face, some I could have just used water, leaving my skin dry like sandpaper. Crazy zits, or a full-blown break out.

But not even once have I found a commercial face cream that does what I want it to: moisturize my face and leave it break out free.

It was actually only quite recently that I was formally diagnosed with rosacea, which is (yet another) auto-immune disease. One more for the list! But I suspect I’ve had it most of my life, to a lesser extent, of course.

To make a long story short, I (of course) left the dermatologists office with a shopping bag full of creams and chemical potions worth more than a small african country’s entire annual GDP. Which I did use for about a month – 6 weeks.

The funny thing is, NOTHING happened. Nothing got better in my face, and the rosacea got worse rather than better during this time. So I went back to the doctors after a couple of weeks, and left again with the advice to try for a little longer.

After six weeks there still was no improvement at all. So I stopped wasting my time using expensive chemical products that didn’t help anyway.

My next question was, of course, what should I use instead? Having tried pretty much every face cream under the sun (don’t get me started on sunscreen!), what was I going to try next with the likelihood of it being yet another flop?

I started researching this extensively. Read pages upon pages of medical research, peer-reviewed articles, blatant advertisements and countless threads on various online forums.

It wasn’t until I hit a blog post by a girl who had similar problems to myself that I found what was to become my thus far most successful face cream yet – coconut oil.

Yes, after having tried face creams that were too fatty, I have joined the chorus on coconut oil as face cream. 

I even use it to “wash” off my make up in the evenings, it removes waterproof mascara like no other. And my skin doesn’t get fat, oily and more prone to breakouts as one might think, rather the opposite.

My skin has another glow to it, it’s incredibly soft, my eye lashes are longer (yay for proper nutrition!) and my rosacea is easier to handle. While it isn’t completely gone, it’s much, much better than with the chemical storm I put it through earlier this year.

I’ve now turned to completely natural skin care, with coconut oil being my no. 1 weapon. I get mine from the cooking section at my health food store. And, as a peeling/skin mask, I use baking soda with a few drops of water, which works better for me than anything else I’ve tried.

By doing this, you know what the biggest bonus is for me, apart from soft skin? All the money I’ve saved. The tub of coconut oil I have in my bathroom now I bought in January (I think), and it’s about half full still. For CHF 10 (USD 11.22  or EUR 8.18). Pretty crazy, right?

Over all, coconut oil is truly an amazing product, both inside and outside the kitchen. And it’s done an amazing job for my skin.

Do you have any skin care tips? I’d love to know what you use!