Post menopausal underarm hair
Question: After menopause, I didn’t need to shave my underarms any more. Is that normal? Then one day I noticed little black dots that looked as though the hair was growing back. When I checked with a magnifying mirror I saw that the dots were not black hairs growing back, but horrid black heads in the pores. Yuck! What can I do to eliminate them?
Mimi: When you were a little girl you had hair on your head, arms and legs. At puberty hormones caused you to grow pubic and underarm hair. When those hormones diminished, so did the hair in those areas. It is totally normal for the hair to diminish or disappear. Yippee, no more shaving.
The blackheads can look like hair stubble and be unsightly when you wear a sleeveless blouse. So you want to eliminate the dots. During your bath or shower, gently scrub your underarms with a loofah, nylon bath poof, or best of all a Turkish microderm mitt. Your entire body will enjoy a good scrubbing with any of these. Also try a body scrub. Your beauty salon or spa has a yummy variety of scents to delight you. Or mix 2 tablespoons of salt with enough body wash or shampoo to make a paste. Scrub with the paste. Don’t make this up ahead of time or the salt will dissolve. If the salt stings, try sugar the next time.
A clay masque applied to your underarms will help pull the blackheads out. Wash, apply the masque, and let it dry for about 15 minutes. Then wash it off.
The easiest treatment for the blackheads it to extract them the same way that you zap blackheads on your chin. Read my old column on extracting black heads on www:InternationalDaySpa.com. Aha, here’s the problem. With one arm up in the air, you don’t have two hands to get after the blackheads. So, make a 15 minute appointment with your esthetician and have her extract your blackheads. She is the expert. Underarm blackheads are easy to extract. They slide right out.
Mimi Barre is the owner of International Day Spa, 325 Cajon St., Redlands.
Send your skin care questions to her at MimiB@INTLdayspa.com. She and her estheticians are available for personal consultations. (909) 793-9080. Past columns of Ask Mimi are on the web at www.INTERNATIONALdayspa.com.
