| Steve Cassidy 2004-10-10, 2:10 am |
| In article
<47542982bb9d80d256264b2913fb5c93@localhost.talkaboutsupport.com>, wait
no@nospam.gmail.com (Daphne) wrote:
> 1.is it ok to exfoliate before applying ointments?
> 2.to get rid of hair scales i just dry my hair after showering. i found
> the brushing and the hot air make it muuuch less scaly!
I don't think "exfoliation" is good; all you are doing is stimulating the
spots to make more scale, thereby having exactly the opposite effect of
the medication you're about to put on. It's a bit of a dilemma; you want
the meds to go to work on the live cells, not the dead flakes, and to get
to the live stuff you have to remove the dead stuff.
My personal balance is:
- distinguish between meds that soften scale and meds that low down scale
production.
- do the softening before the bath (say as soon as you're home from work)
- have the bath and stay in it for a good long while. Add a "neutral" skin
treatment to the bath, like Evening Primrose Oil or olive oil or whatever
works for you. Apologise to the bath's owner for the oil residue
afterwards :-)
- towel off GENTLY with a SOFT towel; in my case I can find little rolls
of removed scale in the towel, softened until they are practically a
paste; the areas exposed by this removal are about as benign as they
get...
- THEN put on your anti-scale-production med. I use Exorex, and it fits
into this regime because the makers actually recommend that you dilute it,
up to 4:1, with water, before application; whatever it is you use, stick
it on while everything's lovely and soft. Based on some of the research I
took part in waaaay back in the 80's, the stuff which can't be diluted is
best washed off after as little as ten minutes - after that allit's doing
is staining up your clothes and runing your social life, so this stage of
the regimen could get to be a really tedious sequence of bathroom-hopping.
Also, lots of doctors just say "err, duh, apply every night" when they
hand over your gunk; this doesn't necessarily follow - there's no easy way
to tell that you have overdone it and the meds are actually making things
worse, not better. Personally, I have gone all the way down to once a week
or ten days with the Exorex, and that seems to give me the best balance.
Lastly, on the sun: I got some this year, on a premeditated,
lie-by-the-pool basis, and it has done a lot of good. Took a week, and I
have a funny feeling the most effective days were the ones spent at
nearly 6,000 feet up in the Rockies, where the air is thin and the UV is
strong, and it was only 25 centigrade. Again, balancing your meds with
your sun exposure is important; in my case, I knew that Exorex makes me
photosensitive, and stayed well off it once I could feel the very
slightest start of a burn developing...
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