Questions for Scotia: Viral Beauty Secrets

Dear Sweet Cherry,

I am going a little nuts from seeing all the home hair and skin remedies that ‘will totally change your life’. I have finicky hair and annoying combination skin so I often complain. People’s initial reaction to my venting of frustrations is to recommend whatever trendy remedy from a viral article; which 90% of the time I find don’t work or do more harm than good because of my unique needs. I would hate to hear of women like me who actually took the recommendations and did something to damage their skin.

Could you please address the issue of skin types and why using proper products for your type is important? And why viral trends are not a good way to care for your face?

Thanks!

I too go nuts when I see all the “magical” gimmicks they have that will make you loose weight, fix your skin, fix your hair, and whatever else that people need help with.

All the time these tips and tricks that go viral are vague as all hell.. yes for some people these do work, or they work with other products (that they don’t tell you about) or they are only for 1 specific problem and to use it on a different skin or hair type it will mess you up!

Sometimes adding these things can be good but when you are looking on how to improve your hair, or skin make sure when you are using google, to specifically address what your concern is.

Bad: “how to strengthen your hair”

Good: “how to strengthen curly dry hair” or “how to strengthen fine dry hair”

Asking a expert in the field is even a better idea because it can phase out just all the fluff. That’s why I am here writing this very article and why there are groups of different experts who can answer questions like: Joico Educators network.

I am going to bring up actually something that bothers the hell out of me when it comes to beauty talk. Coconut, Coco/Cocoa are 2 different things!

Coconut is a nut, that has milk inside, hard to crack.. the flakes people treat like candy and its gross (lol that’s just my opinion).

Coco or Cocoa is chocolate. Coco butter is not coconut oil mixed into a butter. Its the fat from the Cocoa/chocolate nut that is rendered down and turned into a oil then whipped into a butter with other additives.

Fads

I am going to keep going on fads with Coconut and Cocoa for the rest of the article.

Example:  The Coconut Oil fad

I will totally admit that I use coconut oil, from watching documentaries like “Fat Head” for cooking with instead of vegetable oil or corn oil. I tired the oil pulling and I like to use coconut body butters.

“Seems throwing coconut oil around everything makes it explode with awesomeness, so I was considering it for keratosis pilaris. Are there peer reviewed studies or more serious tested proof for its uses?” – reddit : is it bullshit coconut oil

Coconut oil isn’t used in body butters and other beauty products in the way that it is represented. It is used more like this: It is used more as a base, to add other products too. It is also used as a latherer, to make the bubbles.

From my “Consumers Dictionary of Cosmetic Ingredients”

That one I tried but found too stupid. If you haven’t heard:

Okay I will break this down only using my common sense and background in biology, anatomy, nutrition sciences and chemistry:

-whitens teeth: sure you are using something to continuously polish your teeth. But you can do this with a toothbrush.

-strengthens and helps with bad breath: well depends… if you are going to start a oil pulling regiment probably means you are going to start taking care of yourself, which means you are brushing your teeth more. Also your breath will smell like coconut oil mixed with saliva… which is a bland/neutral smell.. not like it smells great.

-relieves headache: no. I got a headache from doing this.

-detoxes the body/acne/hormonal imbalances: 1. no you can’t detoxify your body. that doesn’t exist. 2. Everything else is a placebo effect. You feel better about yourself for trying something new, you are also most likely on a kick trying new things for beauty and health.. which means what else are you pairing this with? You are told this is good for you so you feel good about yourself. This alone can help with hormones and depression.

As for acne.. depends on what kind of acne you have. Acne can be caused by different skin types. Some people are very oily and that can cause breakouts with clogging pores. Some people work/live in dirtier areas (even biggest cities with higher smog rates can see a influx of acne prone skin). Dry skin can also cause acne as it is trying to boost the natural oils in your face but then is too try to do it everywhere so you can acne more in one spot then the others. So yeah maybe oil pulling can help with the last one because you are going to inadvertently swallow some of this oil, introducing it into your system boosting some moisture content.

“While many major health organizations still discourage its use, coconut oil has not only been rehabilitated in the public mind, but all kinds of health benefits are being claimed for it”-https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/coconut-oil/

Example: the Chocolate fad

I know we all wish that food that we have been told our whole life that is bad for you was good.  And even better when we hear that it can fix something about us. The truth is that nothing that doesn’t actually make you die or super sick.. it’s not bad for you in general.  Chocolate tastes good, makes you feel good or other other feelings if you want to get into the adult uses for it haha. It doesn’t make you sick but then again it doesn’t do much then give you some sugar, and fats that your body may or may not need. You can’t base your diet on one thing. You can’t just eat chocolate and you can’t just only eat fruit as “Lord of the Flies” taught us.

This was created by John Bohannon, who in the episode of “Adam Ruins Nutrition” (which I also used in last weeks article about the NoNo! and how I don’t like the day time TV Dr shows) He wanted to prove that these types of tv shows, gurus and websites will post anything that sounds too good to be true that has any sort of sciency background.

http://www.cbsnews.com/common/video/cbsnews_video.swf

If you want to learn more about facebook beauty and diet fads and who to really not listen to here is a great article:

http://dawnsbrain.com/ten-facebook-pages-you-need-to-stop-sharing-from/

 

All this being said: when you read something online that makes you think will help you be prettier, healthier, stronger. Keep in mind that not everything that sounds like its based in science really is. If it focuses only on 1 thing, it is probably too goo to be true.