I thought this might be helpful if anyone else out there has this problem. I'll give my whole crazy narrative as to how I came to this solution, and then a TLDR if you just want the basics.
So I have terrible, horrible cuticle issues. I've posted about them before. This has been a lifelong problem. They crack and get inflamed and become extremely painful. Here's and example photo (which is not even nearly as bad as it sometimes gets). I felt like I had tried everything to fix it- every cuticle cream I could find. A bunch of different moisturizers. I tried those overnight glove thingies. I tried cutting my cuticles, not cutting them, pushing them, leaving them alone, removing them altogether. I tried avoiding soaps and SLSs. I tried hard to protect my hands when working with them. And I was constantly slathering them with Aquaphor or lanolin or Vaseline, etc etc. Nothing even really made a marginal improvement. At least once or twice a week (more in the winter), I'd get one of these extremely painful rips near my nails.
Anyway, so I'd bought a variety pack of My Beauty Diary face masks off amazon just for fun. I'd tried a few of their masks before and liked them and wanted to test a larger variety. The variety pack came with their hyaluronic acid mask. I tried it on my face and it was kind of "meh" but when I rubbed some of the extra essence into my hands it was like a miracle! near instant relief of the painful itchy hangnails I currently had. I put some aquaphor over the essence to seal in moisture. The next day my cuticles still felt better (softer, less rough, less red), so all that week I used the leftover essence on my cuticles, and they actually began to heal! Way faster than it normally takes. When I ran out, my cuticles started to return to normal.
I'm not really sure what exactly in this face mask is so good for my cuticles. I assume it's the HA, but it could be other things in the mask too. It has a lot of ingredients. Because of that, I decided to not take a gamble on buying another product with HA for fear that it wouldn't work as well, and instead just bought more face masks. I've been opening one face mask at a time, "milking" all the essence into a glass bottle, and then storing it in the fridge until it's used up or goes bad. Unfortunately the mask isn't designed for long term storage and has no preservatives, so it tends to start growing things if left at room temperature. Fortunately for me though, it seems I can get away with just using it once a day so I don't have to be constantly reapplying throughout the day (like I had to do in the past with regular cuticle creams). I just apply it before bed, followed by a layer of Aquaphor, and it's all good! Here's what that same thumb I showed you before looks like now- much improved!
I've been using the essence on my hands nightly for about 2 months now and my terrible hang nails have not returned. Sometimes they still get dry, or I'll have minor hang nails, but not of the terrible inflamed painful ones like I used to get. The skin there is still delicate and still rips easily, but it's SO much less painful than it was before. I feel like it's kind of ridiculous that I use a face mask on my hands, and it's kind of a pain in the ass to have to milk out all the essence, but hey- whatever works! If you're having a similar problem, maybe it will help you too!
TL;DR- Solved my problem of terrible painful hangnails using the My Beauty Diary Hyaluronic Acid Moisturizing Mask. I "milk" the essence out into a glass bottle which I store in the refrigerator. By applying once a night followed by aquaphor, I've managed to keep the painful hang nails at bay for 2 months now!
Submitted October 23, 2015 at 01:23AM by marmosetohmarmoset http://ift.tt/1MGX14E SkincareAddiction
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