The Panacea Body Treatment Oil came into existence as a result of sheer panic. Let me elaborate… It was last year, around mid August, and I was in my tenth week of pregnancy. The first trimester morning sickness was thankfully winding down and I was beginning to feel human again, my sense of relief was unfortunately short-lived. One morning I discovered a large, discoid, welted lesion on my abdomen. Over the course of the next few days, one lesion became two, and progressively multiplied until I was covered from knee to shoulders in a scarlet rash.
As most of you will know, few things can strike fear into the heart of a pregnant woman more than a rash. Was it German measles, chickenpox, shingles? My mind was reeling and I had made the cardinal error of googling my symptoms whilst waiting for my doctor’s appointment. Word of advice, don’t ever try play Google MD whilst pregnant. My doctor – bless his heart – managed to talk me down from the point of hysteria. Turns out I had contracted a viral infection know as pityriasis rosea, which pregnant women are apparently quite prone to. He informed me that it’s a generally benign, self-limiting condition that tends to resolve between 4-10 weeks, with minimal risks to me and munchkin. I was advised to frequently apply calamine lotion, and avoid heat as that would aggravate the itching.
Crisis averted, right? Well, yes and no. My baby was in no immediate danger, which was a monumental relief. The issue however, had become cosmetic in nature. You see, I’m olive skinned, a square 4 on the Fitzpatrick scale. And if you were to read up on that, you would be informed that a Fitzpatrick skin type 4 has the following attributes:
- skin color (before sun exposure): olive or light brown
- eye color: dark brown
- natural hair color: dark brown
- sun reaction: doesn’t really freckle, burns rarely, and tans often
The downside of being a 4 is that my skin is prone to hyperpigmentation, particularly post inflammatory hyperpigmentation (PIH). Which is a reactive process triggered by the way the skin regenerates after injury or trauma. The result being darkened marks that remain long after the injury has healed, due to the skin producing additional melanin in response to inflammatory processes. Throw pregnancy hormones into the mix, and I had the perfect recipe for a PIH disaster. And true to form, as the inflammation began to subside; those red, welted lesions began to steadily flatten and progressively darken.
It’s a funny thing, how sometimes the solution can be staring you in the face, yet it takes a while for the penny to drop. My eureka moment was courtesy of a good friend of mine that swears by Panacea Facial Oil as remedy for literally anything dermal related, and I mean anything! Other than using it for its intended facial benefits, she has successfully used it to treat everything from burns, to her little one’s nappy rash, to cold sores, and her husband’s ear dermatitis. Which got me thinking, surely the reparative and restorative formulation could help in reducing the appearance of the PIH that now marked my body? And so I began applying the Panacea Facial Oil religiously. Low and behold, over the next few weeks the brown lesions incrementally began to lighten. Eventually fading to the point of imperceptibility.
