Dealing with teenage life: February 2016

Monday, February 29, 2016

Fighting Acne

Hi and welcome to my third blog post. Once again I appreciate all the questions I have received. This post topic revolves around a big question almost every teen and even some adults have "How do I get rid of acne?". So basically this blog post will be all about skin care and getting rid of acne without spending all your money.

Alright so to really understand how to treat acne, I personally feel like you need to know what it is first. Acne is a frequently seen skin disease defined by pimples found on the face, chest, shoulders and back. It's caused when the skin pores become blocked with oil, dead skin cells, bacteria etc. The medical term used for this kind of acne is acne vulgaris. Contrary to what many believe, acne can become a problem at any age, which means it can affect adults and in rare cases, baby and young children but usually it begins at puberty and gets worse throughout adolescent years.

The acne chart

Almost 85% of people will have troubles with acne between the ages of 12 to 25. This statistics is super important to retain because it means that you (in you so indeed suffer from acne) are not alone and there are many others that understand your struggles. Over the past few years I've had the great pleasure of experiencing this amazing phenomenon (can you tell I'm just a little bitter and sarcastic about this whole thing?), but I've done my research and learn the main causes of this disease and what I can do to improve my overall skin health.

In order to prevent acne the best we possibly can, we need to know the main causes of this skin enemy. The following will list the biggest causes I've found cause flare ups or breakouts.

Overuse of greasy makeup
Gender: Boys tend to have more severe cases of acne and develop it more often than girls (sorry guys)
History: If your family has a history of bad cases of acne, I'm sorry to say you're very susceptible to experiencing the same problems.
Environment: Depending on your locations, the temperature and sun exposure can determine how the severity of your acne.
Foods: Foods won't cause a long term acne reaction but can cause a flareup in the disease. For example, when my friend eats too many tomatoes, her chin breakout in pimples.
Sleep and Stress: Especially for teens with busy schedules, stress and sleep deprivation plays a big role in the creation of pimples.
Allergic reactions: This is a cause I experience a lot throughout my soccer season because I have an allergic reaction to the material my jersey is made from and heat/sweat only worsens my reaction and leaves me with acne on my shoulders.

Most seen causes of acne

There are many more causes but these are the main ones that most teens are affected by.

Alright so obviously you guys want me to get to the important part : how to prevent and treat acne without going bankrupt. Well there are many many many ways you can accomplish your goal of having a clear face. the following lists will provide you with some of these ways (look at me trying to stay organized):

Stop touching your face: Everytime you touch your faces or pick at a pimple you cause more damage which can lead to scarring. I understand it's hard to fix such a habit because I myself have problems with it but believe me the less touching of your face you do, the healthier and less greasy your face will seem.
Drink water: Drinking water is the best way to flush out all the toxins from your body and helps clear skin.
Sleep: Sleeping is very important to reduce acne because sleep deprivation causes a reaction in your hormones which, if too overactive, can produce unwanted acne.
Wash your face: Every morning when you wake up and right before you go to bed
9 that's two times a day) wash your face with water and soap (i've seen the best results while using warm water and dove soap).
Toothpaste: Ok so this idea might sound weird but I promise it gives good results. Applying a small amount of toothpaste to a big pimple before bed and then washing it off in the morning is known to reduce inflammation and redness of the pimple. Overall the pimple looks smaller and in some cases nearly invisible.
Tea tree oil: Tea tree oil contains antibacterial and antifungal characteristics, which makes it a very good product for acne treatment. You can find these types of products at your local Body Shop and they aren't expensive at all.
Aloe Vera: This product is one of the best anti-fungal products in the business. In addition it reduces inflammation, redness and cools off and rehydrates the skin.
Talk to a doctor: Your family doctor, if he sees a serious issue, can provide you with a medicated crème. My family doctor can me a prescription and it really helped clear up my face (too bad I just finished the bottle last week).

Once again, there are still a number of solutions for this problem but I've provided you with tips and tricks that I've used personally and seen improvements in. Of course there are face washes and full packs of acne treatment kits but those can cost a fortune and studies show that home remedies tend to work better for most people then kits you find in cosmetic stores such as Sephora (I still love Sephora though).

I think it's very important to state that acne is part of growing up. You don't have to be ashamed of a couple little red dots on your face . Everybody knows the feeling and understands that sometimes you simply can't change the changes your body decides it wants makes. Just remember that it will go away and its never as bad as it seems.

With that I conclude this post. I hope I was able to provide you with useful information on how to win your battle against acne. If you have anymore questions about this topic, contact me and I'll do my best to answer them. If you have any ideas for future topics or questions you would like advice for, please don't be shy and leave a comment containing what you would like me to discuss. If you would rather stay anonymous feel free to email me at allib.blogs@gmail.com and I'll answer your question while keeping your identity unknown to the rest of the readers.

What I used as inspiration for this post:

Until next time...

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Dealing with school

Hi and welcome to my first real post on this blog! I've gotten quite a few questions that readers are looking to receive answers for. I'm so thankful you guys are taking initiative and seeking my advice! The first topic I decided to discuss is one that affects almost every teen: school. Throughout this blog ill be talking on how to organize your school schedule, how to deal with the stress and pressure schooling always seems to come with, where to get help if you're having issues in class and more.

So first things first, lets talk about how to organize your school life in order to stay up to date on all your homework, projects and classes in general. When I was in grade school and even my first semester in grade 9 I always did my work the second I received it and tried to finish as fast as I could in order to save myself some homework. When I was in grade 7 and 8 I would actually do all my homework in advance on the Sunday night so for the rest of the week I was really free to do whatever I wanted. Well that all sort of changed when my second semester of grade 9 started. I was so swamped with not only homework, projects and test, but also with the school play, my school jazz band, school soccer and my personal travel soccer team that I started to get lazy and skip on some homework. Well, even though most, including myself sometimes, believe that homework is just busy work given by our teachers it actually has a very important role in our learning of a subject. Many researches have shown that students who do there homework on a daily basis retain more of the information and have an overall higher success rate then a student that rarely does the homework assigned. Knowing that, I started to kick my butt and study and finish off all my homework.

I managed to get myself organized after seeking advice from friends, websites online and adults such as teachers and my parents. Some of the best ways I've found keep you organized and up to date are:

Writing down my homework on my phone calendar and setting alarms to remind myself of what I need to get accomplished.
Separating my various subjects in different binders and the using dividers to organize the multiple units in each class.
Keeping important pages or documents marked with a sticking note or by a highlighter to have easy access.
Planning what time ill do what work to maximize organization.
Typing a revue for each unit on a document (I prefer Google drive) so I have access to all the important information I need. Also this tactic will help when studying for exams because you'll have all your notes in one organized place.

Obviously there are many more ways to stay organized but I've found these to be the best for me since I tend to be a forgetful person and I like having access to my documents from anywhere (phone, computer...)

Next up is how to deal with the stress and pressure of school. I've found that many students feel pressured by their parents who push them to keep a high academic grade or even the student themselves that set a high bar for their success rate. I, myself, am very guilty of setting a high, sometimes unrealistic, goal for my academic grades because I don't know what I would like to become in the future so I'm trying to achieve high grade in each subject to keep all future career paths open and not be limited by some bad grades. Now I'm not saying setting a goal for yourself is bad, never, because it helps push you and drive you to success and gives you a challenge. What I am saying that you should try hard to keep your goals realistic and possible with some effort while still giving a challenge.

The effects of stress

According to Amy Shapiro, Dr. Nancy Heath ( a student and a professor at McGill University in the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology), "Adolescent stress is often a risk factor for poor mental health outcomes such as anxiety and depression". This means we as teenagers need to try and keep our stress levels at a minimum.

Over the last couple of years, I have found out so many ways that help me relieve stress and to give you more exemples because not everybody will distress the same ways I do, I've look online and asked around and I came up with the following list:

Listening to music: this will help calm yourself down and proceed doing your work with a clearer thought process.
While working on a project, break down the big picture and take things one step at a time. Trying to completely everything at once will only cause you to over think and essentially think more about quantity and not quality of your work
Never procrastinate: this will only amplify your stress when you realize how much work you have to get done to meet a nearing deadline.
Take a break: pushing yourself to hard all at once can cause serious headaches and a negative attitude towards your work. When you start to feel overworked, save your work and take a short walk taking deep breath to calm down and relax your mind.
Make sure to get enough sleep: I personally tend to stay up late and wake up early in order to finish assignements (cough cough its 1:30 in the morning right now) but I'm trying to push myself to get more sleep time in order to function better and think clearer on a daily basis.
Make time for fun: it very important to live balanced life so if you see that you're too stressed out, take some time and go run around outside with some friends or siblings, or read a book and relax a bit.
Don't be scared to ask for help: I always try to do things on my own and not have to rely on others but I have learned that asking for help isn't saying your any less capable of doing something, it is merely stating that you are human and sometimes you'll need help in life.

Just like before, these obviously aren't all the ways you can destress but they cover a wide variety of possibilities.

That's the end for this post. If you would like more advice on this topic or would like me to do another post with more tips leave a comment below or contact me by email (allib.blogs@gmail.com). If you have another topic you would like me to discuss you can also leave a comment below with your question/topic or contact me by email if you would prefer to stay anonymous.

What I used as inspiration for this post:

Until next time...

Monday, February 15, 2016

Blog Introduction

Hi, I'm Allison and welcome to my blog dedicated to giving advice on how to deal with teenage life. This blog will be all about answering questions you, the readers, have about anything that you may have to face in your daily teenage life. This means I will cover topics such as friendships, after school activities, time management, how to deal with bullies and really any other subjects you would like for me to discuss.

These days, kids are always so eager to grow up and be considered an adult but they tend not to like all the physical, mental and even social changes that occurs during the long phase between childhood and adulthood.
Just to specify, generally an adolescent is considered to be a person between 13 and 18 years of age, which means that normally they're academic levels vary between grade 7 to first year of university. That is a giant time gap where a person can face so many challenges, go on countless amounts of adventures, overcome an abundance of obstacles and make memories that will last them a lifetime.

The priorities that fill up the brain of a teenager according to My teen life- The teenage brain

With this blog I am trying to make it the most relatable and helpful for my readers which means every post made in my blog will be an answer to a question asked by a reader. In order to give the best answer I'll be using my personal opinion, sharing some of my own experience and stories and using useful information that I've found online. I will always include the sites that I've found my information so that if you would like to do further research you'll have good resources.

With that being said, to make this blog a success I need the help of the readers. If you have any ideas for future topics or questions you would like advice for please don't be shy and leave a comment containing what you would like me to discuss. If you would rather stay anonymous feel free to email me at allib.blogs@gmail.com and I'll answer your question while keeping your identity unknown to the rest of the readers.

What I used as inspiration for this post:

Until next time...