depending on age and what you want do exactly- evening primrose oil- balancing hormones( as does clary sage) and excellent skin oil, though costly and can be mixed. Summer is coming, so a carrot oil is great for the sun's rays, carnation oil is excellent for pores- the list goes on- but what is good for the body is not always good for the face.

I like to apply plain cold pressed (virgin/organic) coconut oil to my skin after the shower, when I am still wet, then towel dry.
The oil does *not* mess up the towels ;) and it leaves my skin silky and not greasy.

I'm also use pure virgin coconut oil. I buy it at the health food market. It comes in a little tub container. It's solid and white/tranclucent looking. When I get out of the shower, 1st I dry off, then I lather on the coconut oil over my whole body. I even put it on my face at night time if I shower at night. The only weird thing about the oil is that it's solid unless it's summer time or you live in a warm climate. You can either take a chunk into your hands and work it into your skin, it will start to melt and become liquid, or what I do now is take my hair blow dryer and blast the oil in the tub until enough liquifies so that I can spread it on my body. The only downside to this is that the container that the coconut oil in is plastic so the bottle will start to warp a little from the heat. In the summertime I don't have to do this because it's pretty mushy already.

Oil is SO much better than lotions for your skin because lotions generally contain some sort of alcohol in them and just look at the ingredients to lotions! There is more than likely something in there that you can't pronounce and you have no clue what it is. Oil is a pure whole food. When I think of what I eat and what I want to put on my body, I want to choose something as whole as possible. Your skin is the hugest organ in your body right? I think that's right... it does drink a little bit of what you put on it. Coconut oil is so rich and perfect in my opinion. I've also seen people use olive oil or almond oil but my fav is coconut. It also leaves a nice little scent. It feels great.

I know someone at work that has REALLY dry skin and she couldn't find anything to help but someone at a health food store suggested Coco oil and that is what helped her. Her hands in particular is what she was using it for.

Better circulation will occur anytime you massage anything into your skin. Work towards your heart. So when you start with your legs, massage the lotion up, on your arms massage work towards your heart etc. I'm not sure about healthy pores in your face, you might want to try a cotton ball in apple cider vinager on your face before putting lotion on it to tighten your pores? I have definately noticed that using coconut oil regularly on my entire body has increased the elasticity of my skin. My skin glows and feels great. My husband absolutely loves it.

Another thing that coconut oil is great for is a sexual lubricant. Way better than anything you can buy on the market and once again, all natural. I read somewhere that the best lubricant you can buy uses coconut oil as their main ingredient along with other garbage.

I do use Dr Bronners as my all over body wash. What kind are you using? I use the liquid soap and I use the hemp almond version. I tried the eucyliptus and that stung my body bad. The almond hemp works really well for me and makes my skin feel soft and clean.

this is a great thread; thank you!

has anyone had spedific experience with healing the skin from basal cell carcinoma and/or actnic keratosis (a form of sun damage that sometimes leads to squamous cell arconoma, which isn;t as deadly as melanoma but can metasticize?

I'd been keeping my actinic keratosis udner something like good good control for years, mostly with a combination of a coconut or olive oil infusion of very pure essential pils of wild carrot seed, helichrysum,lavender, frankincense, and rose seed pils, and more recently strong comfrey root I got the original essential oils recipe from Jim Green, author of "male herbal" and :"herbal Medicine makers' Guide," who used a very similar formula on a condition that he said was called "cancerous"on his own face.

there's a strong family history of skin cancer - bth my parents have had basal and squamous cell carcinomas removed nmerous times, and my mother has been especially hard ht by basal cell carcinoma, with some going deep enough to require skin grafts and other plastic surgery. she's also been through radiation treatment fo some recurrent ones. my brother also had a couple basal cell carcinomas that were fairly large removed before he was 35; not sure whether he;s had recurrent problems with BCC.

anyway, in May of this year, so a couple mnths ago, I developed a new lesion on m nose, almost dead center an inch superior o the tip that was crusty and bled easily. i started bandaging it partly to keep the sun off, and quit putting anything at all directly on it (on the idea that if it was a cancerous growth, I didnt want to encourage the' cancer cells to grow, and I know that comfrey, while it helps regranulate healthy tissue, can sometiems be an angiogenic for cancer tissue that "behaves" as it is healthy.); decided to o to a free skin cancer screening - American Academy of Dermatology sponsors these. there was one at Stanford Medical Center. the doctors there, all part of the dermatology department, gave me a good full-bdy check and said almost everythng loooked okay - except that the lesion on my nose was really suggestive of basal cell carcinoma. they recommended biopsy.

it took me 6 weeks to get a financial assistance grant from Stanford Hospital and Clinics (I have no health insureance and rely mostly on botanicals and diet to keep myself and my family healthy) and to get an appointment in Dermatology with them.

meanwhile the lesion started looking EXACTLY like the photos I looked up of classic nodular-tpe basal cell carcinoma.

except about three or four days before I gt in to see the dermatologist...doesn't it go this way often - it healed over and quit bleeding and the nodule dropped off, leaving a small depression-type scar. (about a millimenter deep and three millimeters wide) I really liked the dermatologist, who turned out to be a clnical professor of dermatology at the medical school whose research topic has been basal; cell carcinma. she went ahead and did a biopsy sine it had margins suggestive of BCC - and it came back negative for carcinoma but positive for atinic keratosis!

I asked her whether that was common, that one;s body could actually recognize and heal BCCs - there's nothign i the popular literature abut that - but she said hat it does happen. I have a strong general imune response (e.g., sedom get flu though I;ve never had a shot, don't develop complications if I do get sick, heal quickly after minor surgical procedures such as dental work involving soft tissue).

she did the nitrogen freeze on the place this ugly thng on m nose had een, plus a large thick actinic keratosis on the side of my nose near the bridge, and told me I should have dermatology check-ups every six months.

shealso prescribed a topical chemotherapy stuff for the rst of the AKs on my face - but I'm feeling I want o go back t using pharmaceutical-quality essential oils and botanicals first and see how far I can get with those, then MAYBE give the prescription stuff a try before I go in for a re-exam in late December.

I'd been pretty confident after twenty years that my AKs weren't turning into cancer, and I was unimpressed with the usual medical dermatology approach (burn or freeze or sand them off, they seemed to keep coming back.) it hadn't seemed to prevent recurrences for my mother.

so - since there is such ood information about skin care here, does anyone have direct perience with reversing AK and BCC with botanicals? I'm doing SO much better than m,y family of origin with this, in spie of the strong family history of BCC and SCC and all their medical treatments for it - and I'm a "moderate" about sun exposure, suing a mineral-based sunscreen on my face agin since this started - I was unimpressed with how much good my mother's rigorous use of sunscreen and protective clothing had done, and got concerned about dropping levels of Vitamin D from too much sun avoidance, but on the other hand Ive had other doctors tell me that I ahve "fog skin" - i;d had Aks frozen off by a family physician years ago who said that. they probably didn't go deep enough with the liquid nitrogen to make much difference that time.

I'm relatively fair-skinned, but not as fair-skinned as I was as a child and I anm graduaally but noticeably, don;t burn all that easily any more - type 3 on the dermatology 8-level scale of skin types.

your thoughts? I may get a good juicer, finances permitting, so I cn have carrot juice combi

nations every day. I've been vegetarian for about 38 years - since age 14 - and I eat mostly organic foods, lot of vegetables, beans, and whole grains.I love carrot juice and had a carrot-orange juice combo for breakfast every morning when traveling through Mexiico and Central America when I could, but the juice bars are ubiquitous in Mexico, even in relatively small towns! or at elast they were in the 1970s.) 30-some years ago; i credit it for staying healthy on the road. along with my good resistance to germs and my vegetarian diet.

I use only organic, sustainably harvested plants and plant products, for personal and planetary health and will not deal with "perfume-grade," chemically extracted essential oils.

again, any real experiential knowedge of herbs and botanical essential oils fr serious borderline cancerous sun damage would be appreciated. Dr Andrew Weil has a line of botanical skin care products out now, and I trust his knowledge (I;ve attended a few of his semiars) but this is incipient skin cancer, after all, not just
'alternative beauty oounter at Macy's" stuff to make myself look pretty...

ideas?

some other essential oils I;d noted from reading as good for damaged. mature skin but with which I have limited experience - blue cypress (as above, replacement for sandalwood),german chamomile, rockrose (AKA Cistus), clary sage, galabanum, rose geranium, myrrh, neroli, whic s basically orange blossom essential oil, palmarsa. I have a note about that old hippie standby, patchouli oil, in also being a "specific for mature skin"but somwhow the scent evokes my teenaged hippie years I'm rather sensitive to prerfume-y essential oils (and definitley chemically sensitive and can;t take most pharmaceuticals r use standard-scented personal or cleaning products) anyway and only use this stuff i specific therapeutic skin doses.

oh, according to Simplers Botanicals and their essential oils guide, sandalwood is endangered and we should use substitutes. they ve one they suggest and sell - blue cypress.