When spots make your life a misery, simple
seaweed can offer help
Undergoing cancer treatment, some people are incredibly lucky. The drugs they take dry up their skin from inside – making spots shrivel up and disappear.
For others, the spots go on, and there seem to be a constant supply of new zits and blackheads making life a misery. For some even unluckier people, they suddenly develop crops of spots, and can’t get rid of them.
There is hope
Scientists have discovered a new use for seaweed, and it is helping clear up skins that suffer from these nasties.
Recently Carol Smillie and her daughter Christie were showing off their skins after using the new seaweed-based Oxy products to help control spot outbreaks.
Oxy Tube with fresh looking packaging
Produced by the Mentholatum company, (makers of Deep Heat and Regenovex), their scientists have been harnessing seaweed off the shores of Brittany, as a basis for the Oxy range.
Now Oxy products are being sold in major chemists – alongside their topical gels such as Deep Freeze and Regenovex. These do a good job of helping relieve pain and help mega-precious footballers – and cancer patients with aching joints. So the ‘stable’ is a good one.
Dealing with Spots
We all think acne is something we get in our teens, and hope to grow out of. Now, this company own the OXY brand of topical skincare treatments, designed to tackle spots, blackheads and excess oil.
For those of us with cancer – spots can be a horrid reminder of our teens as the spots make their unwelcome appearance again.
Seaweed – is this the new miracle ingredient?
Scientists are now using new methods to combat spots, and and a lot of research has gone into using seaweed to combat these nasties.
As a plant, I have been watching seaweed for some time; it is probably the latest ‘miracle’ ingredient, judging by the uses companies are finding for those long tendrils. A friend living in Brighton gathers the squishy brown tendrils when she goes for shore walks, then brings them home to add to her bath. Soaking in the warm, seaweed infused water certainly gives her a gorgeous skin.
This time it is the Laminar or Laminaire (below) variety of seaweed the scientists are using, and also a type of brown seaweed that is helpful – but to get the benefits you need to do a bit more with it than just soak in the bath.
Those clever people at Mentholatum have been working with this at a works by the seashore in Brittany, France, and have now come up with Oxy skincare products that have proven very successful in trials.
I suppose I am lucky – my skin just dried out from cancer drugs, but sitting next to me at the Oxy product launch was a friend who had had horrendous spots as a result of cancer drugs, and she was saying what a benefit it had been.
Celebrity Trials
Another one who is keen on this product is Carol Smillie, and her very pretty teenage daughter Christie.
Carol says “the fact that some of its key ingredient properties come from seaweed ……. I much prefer the thought that as a mum, my daughter is using a product which uses ingredients from nature. My daughter is a normal teenager ….. loves to wear make-up …… Christie’s been using the new Revitalised Oxy ranged for several months now, and it really has the desired effect”.
Oxy skin preparations contain several active ingredients, including Phycosaccharide – harvested from brown seaweed along with others from the coast of Brittany. According to Dr. Carrie Ruxton, this is also a rich source of potassium, sodium, magnesium and iodine – plus also being a good source of anti–inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids. She has been working on a double-blind randomised and placebo-controlled trial at the San Gallicano Institute and Acne Clinic in Rome.
As a result, Oxy has developed a brand new Oxy range, just launched in major chemists. More info: www.oxy.co.uk
After Cancer 