I moved back to India in August of 2014 after years of living in The States. Moving continents, countries, cities is no small feat, and I was ready to deal with massive changes.
The first thing that changed was my skin and hair. “The water is different,” my mother remarked. I noticed that my hair became smoother and softer, but unfortunately the same could not be said of my skin.
My extremely sensitive skin became dull and patchy because it wasn’t used to the air pollution in Delhi. Not a zit in 5 years, and now I was breaking out into acne as if I was a 14-year-old girl on the cusp of puberty, adulthood and teenage angst!
All I really wanted was to get back to clean, healthy skin. Instead, my face constantly felt oily and dirty.
I wanted a fix specially because my brother’s wedding was around the corner. I didn’t want all my photos to get ruined with my horrendous skin. So I went to get a facial and was unburdening my woes onto the lady in the parlor. She suggested a hack – “Use toothpaste on the affected areas every night before sleeping. Leave it on overnight and wash it off the morning after. Try this for a week”, she said.
My brothers wedding was a week away…and I figured it couldn’t hurt to try.
I started doing this every night, even though I felt silly. The smell of the toothpaste was nice and minty, so I didn’t really mind. For the first 3 days nothing happened.
By the 4th night, my skin had dried up completely and by the 5th and 6th day the affected areas had become hard. They were a source of irritation on my face. I kicked myself for experimenting so close to the wedding. Now on top of the patchiness, I had to deal with dryness, lumpiness and discomfort. But I’d gone so deep into the rabbit hole that I had to continue, so I put on toothpaste the night before the first function – the sangeet.
The next morning I woke up and felt the same. I had given up and decided “Screw this, I’m just going to have fun and not care”. Great decision, and I meant it! Except something unexpected happened. While showering, when I was using a face scrub, the dry, lumpy skin started peeling!
It had become so dry that it came off very easily, like peeling off dried fevicol from your hands! And along with it, I peeled off all the patchiness and the dried-up acne. Under it was soft, new skin which was fresh and gave me a natural glow! My skin had undergone a 180 degree transformation overnight.
The toothpaste trick works, but only for a short period to get rid of bad skin cells. It’s because pimple-plagued skin is often oily, humid and dirty. The toothpaste merely dries that out and leaves a layer on top to protect the new fresh skin underneath. Once the layer is off, you need to go back to the basics of hygiene and exfoliation. But it worked as a quick-fix…and really helped me get ready just in time for my brother’s wedding.
My brother’s sangeet was the most memorable function of his shaadi! And the cherry on the cake was that I looked fabulous while hosting it!
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