Hi I got my first epilator (the Braun) after hearing all the praises on this forum. It was great not to have to shave for a month while skipping the mess I made with sugaring and wax.
I did my legs and now my hair is beggining to grow back. I notice that I’m getting quite a few ingrowns. What do you do about it?
Glad you liked it, but sorry to hear about the common prblem of ingrowns. Exfoliating and moisturizing between treatments will help a lot, but for some of us, we need a little more help. You might try a lotion with a lot of Alpha-Hydroxy Acid (AHA), or a product like Tend Skin (I use both).
Oo, I have a special recipe that you might like to post somewhere on your site, Andrea. You have my full permission to do so, if you want. I hope I am not being presumptuous, but it has really reduced skin irritation, red bumps, and ingrowns for me.
I make a special salt scrub at home, and it’s very easy. The salt seems to prevent bacterial infections, and it makes your skin very smooth feeling. I like my own recipe because I don’t have to buy any special stuff like oils that have to be purchased at special stores. You can get everything I use at a drug store. 
I DID buy a salt scrub from a well-known beauty supply store, but it was $20 and that is just SO expensive for something like that. I loved how it made my skin, but I didn’t love the price. I looked at the ingredients list, and created my own recipe. It’s not very scientific or precise, but I hope others can follow it.
That’s it! I looked at the ingredients on the jar of my purchase salt scrub, and it’s not really different than this. I DO have a background in industrial chemistry, and I know someone who worked as a chemist for a beauty products company, and this stuff is really not any more complicated than my recipe. I love that I don’t have to make a special trip to some store to try and buy scented oils or something.
If there’s someone who finds that the mineral oil is too much for their skin, they could also try Aveeno Bath Oil in place of the mineral oil. It’s more expensive, but it is not as intense as the mineral oil. Also, if you just soap up really well after the salt scrub, you can get a lot of the mineral oil off. (I have dry skin anyway, so I don’t have a problem with the mineral oil.)
Use the salt scrub on a day you are NOT planning to epilate. It is mineral OIL, after all, and you don’t want oils on your skin when you’re trying to grab hairs out of your body.
I wouldn’t toot my own horn this much, but it is really the only thing that has worked for me in the way of preventing ingrowns and red bumps, and that purchased salt scrub is just priced outrageously.
Thanks for the great recipe! 
I would only add that consumers shouldn’t use salts on broken or inflamed skin, so wait till your skin looks OK again after hair removal.
Other than that, I’ll be interested if any one else finds this helpful!
I’d be rather interested in knowing if there’s a less expensive product similar to Tend Skin available anywhere. I don’t know why it is that anything related to hair removal always seems so expensive… I know that I certainly can’t afford that stuff, even just to try it.
Tend Skin contains the active ingredient salicylic acid, a beta hydroxy acid. You can get a lot of 2% solutions more inexpensively, but they will not be as potent as Tend Skin. Careful with stronger solutions-- it can eat through skin. In stronger solutions, it is used as a wart remover.
Well, there might then be some improvement just by using my acne wash on my legs, right? Perhaps not so drastic, but something. And since I already /own/ that, it’s definitely worth trying.
Hey Stubby…I happened to have some massage oil and some bath salts that I was getting ready to throw out (since I knew that I would never use either of them)…After reading your post, I mixed up a batch of scrub and tried it out. I am thrilled with the results and the fact that I now have a use for the stuff that I thought I was going to have to throw out! Not only that, but now I can get my exfoliating and moisturizing done in one step. Woo hoo! Thanks for sharing your great idea…it’s so good that I wish I had thought of it first! 
[ December 02, 2002, 04:28 PM: Message edited by: dragonfly ]
Cool!
Yep, I LOVE the fact that it doesn’t cost $20 for this stuff.
And defintately, if you put it on skin that you just shaved or epilated, you will only do that once. It stings like crazy.