Shaving with the grain of the beard

Biggest mistake? Not paying attention to the direction of how your hair grows.

When you go against the “grain” of your beard, you might be thinking all that friction is helping you get a closer shave. Unfortunately, what your doing on this first pass is simply irritating the hell out of your pores.

The trick:
The first swipe with your razor should go with the grain. If the hairs grows downward, follow this natural path with the razor. Now, after you’ve knocked the stubble off and you want a super close shave - try going across the grain. Never against it. This one-two punch gives you the close shave you need but doesn’t lead to ingrown hairs and irritation.

Here’s a few tips to help keep that skin moisturized and looking sharp.

Conserve water
Turns out if you take super hot long showers, you’re washing all your hard work down the drain.  Try and cut back on the time (and save water and energy too). This helps your skin hold on to those important moisturizers.

Get off the couch
Grabbing a run or lifting weights can actually have an added benefit for a man’s dry skin. Everyone knows exercise enhances circulation and blood flow but it can also refresh your skin. Turns out that perspiration stimulates the production of sebum, which is a natural skin moisturizer.

You are what you eat
Interestingly, dry skin can be caused by a slump in the skin’s natural moisturizers that are present in the body. These take the names of antioxidants and essential fatty acids and are two key chemicals to help skin rehydrate. So, how do you get these into your belly and ultimately your skin?  Try scarfing down antioxidant-rich foods such as spinach, broccoli, and fatty oil fish such as salmon.  Hate things that swim?  Go for fish tablets and take them before you go to bed to minimize the nasty burps. These foods can stimulate your cell’s oil production, while the natural fats help to revitalize skin cells.

Drink your 8 glasses a day
No rocket science here…staying well-hydrated helps keep moisture in your skin pores. If you live in a dry climate, consider firing up a humidifier at night to help you absorb more water. Cheapest prevention on the list.

These are a few simple lifestyle tips to help keep your skin looking great.  Any thing we missed?  Put your $.02 in the comments.

Muttering f-bombs is not the way to tackle triage.  Here’s a few tips on how to stop bleeding from a shaving nick…

1. Use constant pressure and a bit of your saliva. This will help coagulate the blood for the short term while you brush your teeth with the other hand.
2. You can’t go wrong with our old friend ice and water. This not only cures hangover face but can slow the flow by causing the tiny blood vessels to constrict and allow a clot to build.
3. Vaseline or Preparation H with its waxy properties will help seal small nicks and give a surface for a blood clot to form up against.
4. A great natural solution is to use witch hazel, which is made from a small shrub.  This is an astringent, which tightens up blood vessels, and stings a bit.
5. Okay, this sounds weird but your deodorant will also work.  Now, you’re putting a substance into an open wound, so having something that’s organic is a good idea.  We recommend trying out Deodorant Dusk by Organic Grooming.  This behaves like a hemostatic agent, which doctors will tell you allows a blood clot to form (seeing a pattern?).

Once you get the bleeding to stop, put a tiny dab of antibacterial ointment to speed up the healing.  If you’ve really gone off and done it, consider a little hydrocortisone cream to help bring down the inflammation and redness.

Are You Kidding?
Nope, these are the kind of tough questions we choose to tackle.  To give this some context let’s start with a simple fact.  Your skin (especially your face), is more like a fishnet than the suit-of-armor you might think it is.  Chemicals are readily absorbed through your skin where they end up in your blood stream.   Meaning that while shaving, your skin, as well as the rest of you, is absorbing a multitude of chemicals - Triethanolamine, Isopentane, Isobutane, Polytetrafluoroethylene, Propylene Glycol, Butylated Hydroxytoluene and more.  You can read more about each of these here.   Granted, it’s not a lot, but over time it can add up.  So what’s a man to do?

The Alternative
The good news is that you don’t need all those chemicals to get a great shave.  Organic and natural shave creams work perfectly well without any sort of nasty chems.  And in our opinion, many are superior to their traditional counterparts.   Made  from a variety of vegetable-based products like coconut and olive oil,  glycerin, aloe, water and other natural components, organic shave creams have all the stuff they need to their job, and nothing they don’t.   And because they’re based primarily on vegetable fats and other natural by-products they contain almost nothing that you couldn’t, uhhh, eat - though we don’t recommend it.  Think about the first time you cursed in front of your mom and she grabbed the bar of soap…

What To Look For
Luckily tthe hard work has already been taken care of.  Most of the shave creams we carry (but not all at this point) are certified organic.  And if you’re looking to pick up some organic shave cream from a local retailer (we’ll forgive you), just look for the USDA Certified Organic logo and/or the Certified Vegan logo.  These logos mean the product have passed strict standards, and are consequently a much safer alternative to your traditional shave cream.

Challenge:
Going in and out of freezing outside conditions to a warm building quickly draws out the moisture from your hair.  Without moisture, you’ve got static electricity build-up (insert 6th grade science memory). Now throw in a cap made of wool and a variation of bed-head quickly follows.

The Fixes:

1. You want to try and restore as much moisture as possible in your hair.  Like most winter moisture challenges, Jojoba and almond oil are great for keeping H2O in your doo.  If you’re one for throwing in a little product in your mane, check out High Definition Hair Pomade by Jack Black as it has Lanolin and natural extracts that provide superior anti-frizz benefits following your shower.
2. Consider changing your cap of choice.  Wool might have to go for those of us sporting longer locks.  A good alternative is the English flat cap that will keep heat in your body but not frizz you up.

Just remember, we’re closing in on the days of spring, where the next challenge will be how to wear your Mathew McConaughey head band without sacrificing your look.

Here’s a few quick tips on keeping your skin together (literally)

Step 1: Suds up with a cleanser that contains a little something with either honey and aloe vera.  This helps clean you up but not harshly dry out your skin.  We recommend Kiehls for Men.

Step 2: Following hopping out of the shopper, be sure to slap on a lotion that contains shea butter, which will rejuvenate your dry skin while its still got a bit of moisture in it from the steam of the shower.  Remember you want to moisturize and not be greasy.  You’re not doing yourself or anybody else any favors with a petro shine on your face.  Premium lotions soak in quickly and don’t invisibly pool up on your skin.

Step 3: Consider bumping up the skin maintenance through the winter and work in a little exfoliation in a few time a week.  Now, here at Qroomer we’re gonna suggest you go for good old Volcanic Pumice, instead of that crap with the plastic shards in it.  The number of men with plastic shard toxicity is on the rise and we want you to support Volcanic Pumice Miners.  Actually, this stuff works great at getting the dead skin off your hide and you can pretend your rolling around on a black sand beach in Hawaii, even when you’re stuck in Toledo.

Well, as we like to say around our office, “If you go out drinkin with the boys, you have to get up and go to work with the men.”  When that screech owl of an alarm clock reminds you that maybe death isn’t so bad after all, you have to get moving, think positive thoughts, and focus on setting attainable goals.

First goal, get the Colonel’s secret tasty seasonings off your cheeks, eyelids, and out of your ears.  If you’ve snoozed and don’t have time to steam the booze out of your pores, follow this old soldier’s trick:

1. Grit your teeth and plunge your face into a sink full of ice water.  Suck it up because this will shrink your pores, force the blood to get moving, and give you a nice healthy flush.  (Not to mention wake your ass up)

2. Now about those red, puffy eyes that are the mirror to your temporarily dark soul.  Take the air out of the bags with a bit of your chosen moisturizer rubbed in.  If you really went big, we hear that Prearation H can do the trick as well but that’s something that usually goes in other places, so be sure you have a clean tube dedicated ONLY to this purpose locked away from anybody else using it.  The only thing worse than feeling like ass is smelling like it.

3. Proceed immediately to get greasy food.  MickyD’s and a big Coke to wash it down.  Psych yourself up for a caffeine fueled day and how good that couch is gonna feel.

Key Insight: The way to fight through a challenge like this is small attainable goals.  Putting socks on before your shoes certainly qualifies.