Dollar for Your Skin?

Guess what everybody!

I was at the 99Cent store, that’s the 99Cent store not the Dollar Tree or Family Dollar. There’s a big difference between all these dollar stores. They are carry different products and brands. Well, the 99Cent stores are huge and they carry some big brand products!

I having been going to the 99Cent store a lot more recently and they change all the time. You never know what you might find! That’s one of the reasons why I love going to them, that and the price. :)

So the other I found the AHA Peels by the Alpha Hydrox brand!

AHA stands for Alpha Hydroxy Acid. It is a chemical exfoliant. There are manual exfoliants and chemical ones. You have to try them both to see what your skin likes better. But chemical exfoliants can be more gentle than manual exfoliants, because the manual exfoliant scrubs are often too large, rough and abrasive on the skin.

Then there is BHA, which stands for Beta Hydroxy Acid (or salicylic acid). It is known to clean out the pores and kill pimples. But it can irritate some people and cause pimples. Like me!

AHA exfoliates the surface and helps regenerate the skin cells faster. So it doesn't kill the pimples, but for some reason it helps me not to get pimples so often! Probaley because my skin regenerates faster. AHA also helps fade post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation marks left over from acne, especially the hormonal acne that many adults will get along their chinline and neck. AHA can help sun spots as well, due to the shedding of skin cells.

So AHA works better for me than BHA! It is fading my acne marks and helping acne not to form as well.

Acids do make you more photo-sensitive to the sun. So don't forget the sunscreen!

There are many products out there that contain BHA and AHA. But again you have to look at the ingredients. Acids must be at a correct pH balance to affect you skin. A pH that is higher than 4.0 will not exfoliate your skin the higher it is the less it exfoliates. And a pH of 3.5 of lower can irriate the skin. So make sure that your AHA product has the correct pH or you are just wasting your money! This is for AHA, BHA pH balances are different.

Alpha Hydrox also makes a AHA gel for oily skin too. Glycolic acid is another name for Alpha Hydroxy Acid. So is malic acid, lactic acid, and citric acid. And the gel has 10% glycolic AHA in it. This percentages is enough for every day.

The Alpha Hydrox peels, which is what I found at the 99Cent store is such a steel, they usually cost around $17 and I got it for $1!! And it actually does something! It's all because of the ingredients, just because some is priced really high or really low, does not mean it will work or not.

Anyway, the peels has 14% Glycolic acid, pretty strong, so they should be used once a week. They come as a cloth that you lay on your face for 10-15min. Now I found the cloth hard to fit my face and a hassle. So I just squeeze the liquid out into a container and just pat a little of the liquid all over my face. Doing this enabled me to get three uses out of one mask!

So run and check out your 99Cent store now!

Or just don't forget to occasionally check out the store, because you never know what treasure you might find!