Product Review: Aveeno Eczema Therapy Moisturizing Cream

Raise your hand if you have dry, itchy skin.

 Yup, so do I.

My skin has always been relatively dry, but this fall and winter I started noticing that my skin was itchy and I was getting a red, patchy rash on my legs. Sometimes it would go away, but other times the itch was incredibly persistent. I tried moisturizing with lotions labeled "normal or dry skin" but they just stopped working after a time. I also tried moisturizing body washes, but those didn't help either. Some of them were mildly scented, which may or may not have made the situation worse. I even tried smearing Aloe Vera gel on my legs. That did help, but it didn't feel nice to have my legs feel really sticky afterwards.

I finally found some relief with Aveeno body wash. But still the rash persisted. I did a little bit of research and, as it turns out, I have a skin condition called atopic dermatitis. Atopic dermatitis is more commonly known as eczema.

Yes, I have eczema.

Since I figured out what was wrong with my skin, it was time to find a treatment for it, preferably one that didn't involve using cortisone or other steroid-containing creams. I found relief whilst perusing my local Ulta store (for those of you that don't know, Ulta is a beauty supply store). I saw that they had a section of Aveeno products and as I scanned the shelf I saw my skin's savior (okay, maybe that's a little dramatic): Aveeno Eczema Therapy Moisturizing Cream.

This product, coupled with my Aveeno body wash, has been nothing short of amazing for my skin. I started noticing a huge difference in my skin from day 1 of using the body wash/eczema therapy cream combo. The itching went down immediately and my skin looks so healthy. I have no more visible signs of eczema on my legs or near my elbows. I apply this cream straight out of the shower and slather it generously onto my legs, arms, neck, or anywhere else that may be feeling a little dry. Aveeno products are completely fragrance and steroid free and use oatmeal as their active ingredients. The eczema therapy cream does have a mild oatmeal smell, so you might smell like breakfast if you use it consistently.  

The only two downsides to this product are the price and the thickness of it. Since it is technically medicated, it is a little more expensive than your typical moisturizer. An 8 oz tube can run me about $13 depending on where I get it. The other downside is that it is quite thick takes a while to absorb into your skin after you apply it. For  me, it takes about 20-30 minutes. Since I apply it right after my shower, I can get away with wearing loose shorts and a tank top while I get ready and by the time I am ready to get dressed, the product has fully absorbed. 

Thank you, Aveeno for bringing my skin some much-needed relief!

A happy challenge

I am on Instagram and I follow one of my cousins. I noticed that she has recently been uploading pictures every day and hash-tagging them with #100happydays. I got curious and decided to Google what in the heck this hash-tag meant. It turns out #100happydays is a challenge. The challenge is to upload a photo via the platform of your choice (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) of something you did that made you happy that day. To complete the challenge, you must do this every day for  100 days. Apparently, people who have completed the challenge have had positive results. They have experienced changes that range from noticing things that make them happy to falling in love (definitely not holding my breath on that one).

So I decided to jump on board and do the 100 Happy Days challenge. I am really quite excited about doing this photo challenge. I think it will be interesting to see what during each day makes me happy especially because I have a pretty routine schedule so my day-to-day life isn't really unpredictable. Thinking ahead to the next 100 days makes me realize how much I have to look forward to: choreography for a retreat in April, said April retreat, family coming into town, a few birthdays, Skypes with my best friend from college, and maybe some new friendships. 

I encourage anyone who is reading this post to embark on the 100 Happy Days challenge. All you have to do to get started is to go to 100happydays.com and register to do the challenge. Then, start noticing what makes you happy and photograph it!

Broken Hallelujah

It has come to my attention that 2014 is proving to be a challenging year for some people, myself included. Whether it be problems within the family, losing a friend too early, a health issue, extreme cold, or even uncertainty about what to do with their lives, 2014 has not been too kind to the people around me. So how do we find hope and strength in a hopeless and tough situation? For me, it has been through the song "Broken Hallelujah" by The Afters.

The inspiration for this song came to this band from the book of Job in the Bible, specifically from Job 1:15-22. In this portion of Job, Satan comes down and destroys absolutely everything that Job possesses. He loses all his animals, his property, and all his children. If I were in Job's position, I would be extremely pissed off at God. Instead of being angry, Job shaves his head and tears off his clothes, gets gown on his knees and cries out, "Naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I will return there. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1: 20,21). Despite his suffering, Job blesses and worships God.

My favorite line in Broken Hallelujah is "With nothing left to hold onto, I raise these empty hands to you. Here's my broken Hallelujah." When I hear these words, I envision myself on my knees with my hands raised telling God that even though I have nothing left to give and may be angry at Him, I will continue to praise Him because I know that something good is going to come out of this. As I've gotten older, I have found that when everything in my life seems to be out of control, the one thing that I can control is whether or not I continue to worship God. If I choose not to give God my broken hallelujahs, as Job did, I probably would not be able to come out the situation well.

If 2014 has reared it's head at you and is challenging you to no end, remember to still praise God in your anger.

Goals for 2014

A new year is quickly upon us. Going against a classic New Year's tradition, I have not made any New Year's resolutions. Instead, I have set up a list of goals that I want to achieve in 2014.

1. Be more organized.
       I would say I am a pretty organized person, but there is definitely room for improvement. In order to be more organized, I plan to have a chore schedule, which will help me keep track of what I need to do every day, week, and month in order to be more organized and clean.

2. Get a job as a certified nurse assistant (CNA).
         This is more of a needs-to-happen than a goal. Getting a job as a CNA will help me get more experience in a clinical setting, which will help me in my applications for nursing school. It will also bring me more income so I can save up money for things such as trips that I want to go on, buy some necessities, and maybe eventually move out of my parent's house.

3. Get As in all of my classes.
        This is another needs-to-happen since I am retaking classes so I can apply to nursing school. As I learned in my last round of applications, accelerated nursing school is extremely competitive and average grades will not cut it. If I want to be a strong applicant, my grades better be damn near perfect. It would be really awesome if I could get into nursing school this year and start in the fall of 2015 at the latest.

4. Apply to nursing school (see goal #3).

5. Make a trip (or two) out to Chicago.
         There are two things awaiting me upon my arrival to Chicago: my college roommate/BFFL and my relatives. Two of my cousins are graduating high school this year and I would love to be able to make it out to Chicago for their graduations. I also want to spend time with my college roommate in real life and not over Skype (though seeing her on Skype is fantastic). However, my parents have made it clear that if I want to go to Chicago, I must provide my own airfare. Clearly goal #5 is dependent on goal #2.

Those are all my goals for 2014. Hopefully, they all happen this year. 2014 is already looking like an exciting year, but I will take it one day at a time and continue trusting in God's plan for my future.

A Lesson in Time Management

The month of December was an extremely busy one for me. I had at least one event scheduled for every day of every weekend. This is the list of events that I attended in December

• Cirque du Soleil performance
• Jackie Evancho in concert
• Christmas at the Corner (my high school's performing arts Christmas showcase and performance)
• Our Lady of Guadalupe Mass
• Advent prep concert
• Christmas party for homeless kids and teens, put on by my church 
• White elephant party
• Best friend's graduation party
• 5-year high school reunion
• Brother's graduation party

Between all of these events, I still had to go to class, study for an exam and a final that were within two days of each other, finish my microbiology lab notebook, take an online quiz, write a 4-page paper for microbiology, write two essays for my ballet class, bake cupcakes as extra credit for microbiology, and perform onstage for my ballet class. I was pretty busy and stressed throughout the better part of December. But, it was a blessing in disguise because I had to refine my very rusty time-management skills. So if you find yourself in a busyness such as this either periodically or constantly, here are some strategies that I found helpful during the month of December.

1. Set a schedule for each day

        One of my weak points is that if I do not plan what I am going to do with my day ahead of time, I will get little to nothing done on said day. Looking at everything I had to do, it was imperative that I set a schedule for the next day. Most of the time, this meant waking up earlier than usual and getting out of the house to do my studies. 

      Corollary 1: start your day as soon as you wake up. Yeah, I know this sounds pretty obvious, but I like to lay in my bed for a while before actually getting out of bed. Even then, my day doesn't start. For me, the day doesn't start until I take my shower. So by setting a schedule for myself, I gave myself a restricted amount of time to lay in bed and had to get in the shower as soon as I got out of bed. This meant that I was showered, dressed, had my hair and make-up done, made my bed, and had eaten breakfast within an hour-and-a-half to two hours of waking up.

      Corollary 2: Find a study spot where you can actually get work done. Again, another seemingly obvious one. I have found that I do not study well when I am at home. So when I find myself with a heavy load, I know I need to schedule time to get out of my house and actually get work done. For me, these study places are the youth room at my church or a library. These places are ideal for me because it is quiet and there is minimal distraction from both life and the Internet. Let's be real; the Internet is a horrible distraction in this day and age.

2. Make a list

        Whenever I have a lot to do, I find that making a list helps me prioritize. By list-making, I have an organized way to look at what needs to be accomplished. After I write my list, I see what is going to take the most time and the least time and decide from there what I am going to do first. I usually end up doing the things that take the least time first so that I can have the satisfaction of crossing something off my list ASAP. 

3. LADIES: If you have an event to attend in the evening, do your hair in the morning. 

         I found this especially helpful because could cut out a good chunk of getting-ready time by showering and doing my hair in the morning, which was already part of my schedule for that day (refer to point 1.1). Showering and doing my hair in the morning meant that I only had to do/ touch up my make-up and get dressed in the evening, which took a grand total of 25 minutes at the most. I shaved a good hour off my getting-ready time just by doing my evening hair in the morning. The styles I chose were ones that were versatile and could go from day to night without a hassle. 

4. Take some time for yourself. 

         If you are doing a million things every day feeling like a chicken with its head cut off and don't schedule any "me-time", you are going to suffer from a case of burn-out. Take an hour throughout your day to do something that is not on your list of things to do (read: something to temporarily take your mind of your busy life). This could be anything from exercising to watching a favorite show to mindlessly browsing Pinterest. 

The strategies I mentioned really helped me get through the month of December. At the end of it all, I was physically exhausted and took a good 4 days to be a hermit and recharge myself. But I managed to go evenly distribute my time between events and studies mainly by making and sticking to a schedule. 

DIY: Decorative Pillows

Have you ever bought a t-shirt that is either too small or too big but you keep it anyway and don't know what to do with it? This is a great way to repurpose your t-shirt and it can end up looking really cute.

This project is relatively easy, but can be very time consuming if you choose to hand sew over using a sewing machine. I did two pillows and it took me about an hour and a half per pillow sewing by hand.

Here's what you'll need:

• t-shirt
• one 20oz bag of polyester fiberfill per t-shirt
• scissors
• thread to match the color of your t-shirt
• needle (or sewing machine)
• pins or extra needles

 

Instructions:

1. Begin by cutting off the sleeves and collar from your t-shirt. For the sleeves, cut straight along the sides of the t-shirt. For thee collar, note where the scoop of the collar ends and cut straight across. At this point, your t-shirt should be shaped like a rectangle.

     2. Flip your t-shirt inside-out and pin the seams of the sleeves. This will help keep the seams together when you are sewing.

     3. Cut a long piece of thread, thread it through the needle, and tie a small knot at the end.
    
     4. Sew along the areas of the t-shirt that you cut in Step 1.

     5. Flip the t-shirt back out. At this point, your t-shirt should look like this:

 

     6. Take the polyester fiberfill and stuff the pillow to heart's content.

      7. Pin along the hem line once your pillow is stuffed. This will help in the next step.

 

 

     8. Using the pins as a guide, cut off any excess t-shirt material.

 

     9. Take your newly cut "hem" and fold the two sides of the t-shirt into each other and repin to help hold them together.

 

    10. Sew your pillow t-shirt closed.

 

    11. Once your pillow is all sown up, knead the pillow to spread out the stuffing as evenly as you can.

 

 

 

Happy crafting!



A Persuasive Speech

Background: I recently took a speech class and one of our speeches was a persuasive speech. I chose to do my persuasive speech on destigmatizing mental illnesses. I chose this topic because I have dealt with the stigma that comes with have a mental illness/psychological disorder and I think it is extremely important to take steps to decrease that stigma especially when dealing with young people. I present to you my speech.

     There is an illness that is different from any other illness or disease that we know of. This illness has few, if any, outward physical symptoms. Most of the time, we cannot tell that a person has this illness just by looking at them. The illness I am talking about is mental illness am weirdly proud to say that I have been affected by mental illnesses. Over the past week, I have been able to find many research articles on mental illness and what can be done to reduce the stigma of having a mental illness. Today, I am going to be talking to you about the stigmas associated with mental illness and what we can do to decrease this stigma.  Depression, generalized anxiety disorder, eating disorders, etc are more common than one might realize, but they often go unnoticed because of these stigmas. First, I will define mental illness and give you some statistics about mental illness. Second, I will define stigma and tell you about the ways mentally ill people have been stigmatized both in the past and today and why. Finally, I will tell you about some laws that attempt to decrease stigma in the work place and offer suggestions as to how to further decrease stigma.

         In order to understand what mental illness is, it is helpful to have an operational definition of the term. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) states that " mental illnesses can affect persons of any age, race, religion or income" and defines mental illness as " a medical condition that disrupts a person's thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and daily functioning... that often result in a diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life." Using this definition, we can conclude that mental illness is non-discriminatory and is a legitimate condition that affects a person's ability to function in their day-to-day life.  The statistics on mental illness are surprising. NAMI's website gives the following statistics on reported mental illness. Bipolar disorder or manic depression affects over 10 million Americans. Depression affects 5-8% of adults, 1 in 8 women, 1 in 5 teenaged children, 2% of school-aged children, and about 20% of seniors aged 65 or older. OCD affects 1 in 40 people or about 2% of the population. Schizophrenia affects 2.4 million adults over the age of 18. Anxiety disorders affect about 20% of the population. Looking at the numbers gives us a better picture of how common mental illnesses actually are. However, most psychologists believe that these numbers are too low because of the cases that go unreported because of the stigma of having a mental illness.

            The understanding of stigma is that stigma is not something you want to have. An article in the International Journal of Students' Research written by Kah Poh Loh and Hatem Ghorab published in 2011 defines stigmatization in psychiatry as "a stereotypical set of negative attitudes, incorrect beliefs, and fear associated with  the diagnosis of mental illness." Based on this definition, we can see why someone who thinks they may have a mental illness would not report it and have negative attitudes, incorrect beliefs, and fear directed towards them. The stigmatization of mental illness is not something new. In the article "From Sin to Science: Fighting the Stigmatization of Mental Illness" published in August 2012,  Julio Arboleda-Flores, MD, PhD, and Heather Stuart, MA, PhD state that  "banishment has been a consistent societal response to people with a mental illness." Forms of banishment included asylums, being thrown out of the city walls, or being placed in a ship that would not disembark. We can see that, even from a time when it was not well understood, mental illness was something that was looked down upon.

   Stigmatization in today's society comes from media attention and personal beliefs. Arboleda-Flores and Stuart explain that most of the contact that is made with mental illnesses is "through news or entertainment media where people with mental illnesses are depicted as unpredictable, violent, and dangerous." If this type of media depiction is the only way people with mental illnesses are seen, it is no wonder why there is a stigma towards having a mental illness. Adding to the stigma is the weight that personal beliefs carry. A research study conducted by Bernice A. Pescosolido, PhD and colleagues published in March of this year found that stigma does have a backbone. After surveying a total of 19, 508 people across the world, they found that "even in countries with more accepting cultural climates, issues that deal primarily with intimate settings, vulnerable groups, or self-harm elicit the greatest amount of negative response" among other findings. So even if someone is raised to be more accepting,  if there is an issue that harms the people around them, they are more likely to feel negatively about that issue. Mental illness is one of those issues. With all the negativity and stigmas directed towards mental illness, various measures have been taken to try to decrease it.

            Since about the late 1970s, there have been various laws put into effect to decrease stigma of mental illness in the workplace. Janet R. Cummings and colleagues discuss three of these laws in their article "Addressing Public Stigma and Disparities Among Persons with Mental Illness: The Role of Federal Policy" which was published by the American Journal of Public Health in March of this year. The first is the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 which "required large private group health plans that offer mental health or substance use disorder coverage to offer these benefits at parity with medical or surgical benefits in annual and lifetime dollar limits, financial requirements, and treatment limitations." The second is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 requires substance use disorder coverage to "be included in essential benefit packages for insurance plans." The third of these is the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 which protects individuals with mental illness and other disabilities from discrimination "in job application procedures, hiring, advancement, discharge, compensation, and other employment-related conditions" much like the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 protected children from stigma. These laws were enacted to reduce the stigma of mental illness and have been successful in doing so. However, these laws do not protect everyone. Cummings and colleagues state that even though antidiscrimination laws have expanded over time, they do not necessarily protect all subgroups with different types of mental illnesses. Though there has been success in protecting those with a mental illness, there should be more Federal policies to ensure coverage of the subgroups of mental illness.

            Decreasing stigma in the workplace is a positive step forward. However, I believe further steps to reduce stigma should begin in childhood. It is important that children be educated about the signs of a mental illness so they can recognize it in themselves and others and not be ashamed if they fall victim to a mental illness. Adults should also consider educating themselves about mental illnesses. I am not suggesting a full-blown abnormal psychology class, but rather one that covers the basics of common mental illnesses such as what they are, the signs and symptoms, and the risk factors associated with them.

            We now have an understanding of what mental illnesses are, how common they are, how and why people stigmatize, and the laws that have been set to decrease stigma in the workplace. Remember that mental illness is a sickness of the brain and does not have many physical manifestations so it is not easily recognizable just by looking at someone.  I hope that after tonight you all can recognize stigmas within yourselves and the people around you and try to change any stigmas towards mental illness that you recognize. I also hope that you will take some time and educate yourselves about the various mental illnesses out there. If you educate yourselves, it may be easier for you to talk to a friend who is being affected by a mental illness and help them not feel stigmatized.