Table of contents

Child pages

Skin

Tanning

Sunless tanning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunless_tanning

Teeth

Veneers

• 2017.06.30 - Rachel Cook - Q&A: The TRUTH About Modeling, Photoshop & My Teeth!
  • She says she got veneers. She says her dentist was Dr. Shawn Sadri

My current habit

• I brush my teeth twice a day: once immediately before going to bed (so, when I won't be eating anything else all night), and once approximately 12 hours later, after having eaten breakfast / lunch (so, ~12-1pm).
  
  • I brush my teeth for two minutes: I split my teeth into six surfaces based on the following divisions: top / bottom teeth, front / back of the teeth, and left / right side of the mouth. I count to '15' on each of those six surfaces. I got this idea from the instruction manual for the Sonicare electric toothbrush, and I like it.
    
  • I keep my Sonicare at home and use a different toothbrush while I'm at work.
    
• I also use whitener for ~20 mins while I'm taking a shower in the morning.

Brushing

• Advice on a toothpaste / toothbrush from a dentist I visited, specifically for helping to keep teeth white:
  • She uses vivid white Crest toothpaste
  • She recommends getting a soniccare toothbrush, that's what she uses. She thinks it cleans your teeth better.
• Nimbus is apparently a good brand (rec'd by the dentist I went to in Palo Alto)

Flossing

Whitening

Important: You never stop needing to whiten. For a long time I thought that I would just need to get my teeth totally white and then they'd stay like that, but now I understand that the people you see with very white teeth are probably using whitener frequently to maintain the color. Here's a woman on Amazon admitting to doing this:

Don't put too much whitening gel in the trays. I started to do this and the gel ended up seeping around the front of the teeth and into the part of the tray that's BEHIND my teeth, and then the gel was resting right up against my gums (the part of my gums adjacent to the backs of my teeth).
- Unfortunately there may not be a foolproof method of getting the dosage right; you may just need to go by trial and error.
- In my case, I pulled out my trays when my gums started to really hurt after having the trays in for only a few minutes. I then washed out my mouth and the trays and tried again with a smaller dose. The whitening gel is cheap enough that you shouldn't worry about "wasting" it, so don't feel pressure to keep the trays in if your gums hurt.

Whitening gel has a shelf-life, like food. If buy it and then don't use it for a year, it may not be as effective (or it may not work at all) once you finally open it up. I was annoyed when I was using whitening gel and not noticing any change, and I suspect this was what had happened; I had bought it a year or two before, and never ended up using it all. [Later: I think the gel WAS working, I just wasn't using enough at first and it was taking longer to see results than I was expecting it to.]


Advice on whitening from a dentist I visited:

Here's a 1-page set of instructions that came with my laser-whitening procedure:

Going to the dentist

• http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtop ... 2&start=50

  • wesleymouch:

    The big scam is that you have to see a dentist in order to use the services of a dental hygenist. The fact is that it does not take much to be a general dentist. Its like being a pediatrician. You would be better off getting your teeth cleaned by a hygenist and seeing a dentist only when you have a problem. Dentists get laws passed to prevent hygenists from working independently. They have the hygenist do the work then mark up their services.

    stlrick:

    1. You can't count on referrals from periodontists, orthodontists, etc. They get their referrals from general dentists, and some may recommend just to return the favor.

    2. There is no way a patient can judge, regardless of the number of years they have seen their dentist.

    3. The absolutely best way to find a good dentist is to find a dentist that other dentists send their families to. 

    4. Second best, find a dentist in private practice who teaches part-time, usually one day per week, as clinical faculty at the local dental school. 

    5. If you are going to use students, use students in the General Practice Residency of a hospital, not dental students studying for their DMD or DDS (there is, by the way, absolutely no difference between these degrees).

Hair

• You need to learn what to tell your barber when you go for a haircut. They should be given specific instructions, with pictures for reference.
  
• Look for a particular barber who you think does a good job, and request that barber the next time you go in. If you just use any barber, the odds are that you'll be left unhappy with the results.
  
• Get your hair cut every two weeks.
  
• You'll learn a lot by going to different barbers.
  
  • One barber I went to was Vietnamese, she was no-nonsense, used a buzzer the whole time, I was in and out in 10-15 minutes.
    
  • Another one was a white guy in his 50s or 60s, he took a while, did a typical "Regular" haircut (which the other barbers didn't seem to know about), had some mistakes.
    
  • Another one was a black guy in his 30s at a barbershop tailored to African-style hair, he took by far the longest

Scent

General thoughts

• 2016.09.11 - I had an interesting experience that I thought was worth noting: I've been staying in a hotel room for the past two days. When I first entered it I remember finding it had an unpleasant smell of cigarettes. Now that I've stayed here for about two days, I stepped out into the hallway and said "Ugh, I hate the way the hallway smells", and it occurred to me that I don't even notice the smell of the room anymore; I've become desensitized to it. And that in turn brought to my attention that the same thing can happen with body odors: the odors may grow at the-same-or-slower rate as your tendency to get desensitized to such odors, which is why it would be difficult to gauge whether you smell bad just from introspection / your own feeling.

Showers

• Unfortunately it can be difficult to tell just how badly you need a shower.
• Your best bet is to shower daily if you've walked for more than ~20 minutes straight that day, or if you plan to work out.
• One thing to watch out for: if you haven't taken a shower in a day and then work out, once you start sweating you may smell much worse than if you had showered before you started working out.
  • I made this mistake once while working out with Dev: I had showered the previous day and hadn't done any kind of exercise, but once we started working out I started to smell really bad.
  • Later that week I had a free Pilates session where I hadn't showered since the previous day, and I made sure to avoid the same mistake by showering before the session. I think it ended up saving me from making a bad impression, and the woman ended up offering to forward my resume to her boyfriend! She probably wouldn't have done that if I smelled terrible.

Bad breath

Perfume / Cologne

• I personally prefer to not wear this stuff, and from memory I think I prefer it when others don't as well, but...
• ...I think wearing a sensible amount of a refined-smelling perfume can make a person seem better-groomed, especially if it sets that person apart from those around him/her.
• And so even though I think the scent may be a neutral or slight net negative just on its own, I think the value it can confer by making a person seem well-groomed can make it a good idea to wear the perfume. This was not something that occurred to me for many years. To say it again: you can agree that the smell is distracting and not as pleasant as just using deoderant and nice-smelling shampoo/soap, you can agree to all that, and STILL have it be a good idea to wear perfume, simply because it can have the psychological effect on others of having them think, 'Oh, this person puts extra time into grooming themselves.'
• After spending a few hours reading about it, it looks like you should just buy whatever you'd like to smell like, and don't worry about whether it was labelled as 'for men' or 'for women'. Originally (back in the 1700s) everybody would wear the same stuff.
• The one concern I could imagine is that if you're wearing a common perfume, you may not want your significant other coming across that same scent when they're around people of their own gender. So, for example, if you're a guy, you might not want your girlfriend bumping into women (and ONLY women) who are using the same perfume as you.

Getting it cheap

• Search 'perfume studio' on Amazon. They also have a website: http://www.perfume-studio.com/
  • You'll need to buy 'roller bottles' to roll the oil onto your skin.
  • Someone on an Amazon review rec'd AromaGlide rollers by a company called 'Young Living': "These rollers are smaller than and don't roll out as much oil as do the AromaGlide rollers by Young Living."

How to use it

• Be very careful to not put too much on. I've had it happen where I'll step outside, put two spritzes on my wrist (the recommended maximum for your whole body), didn't notice a strong smell, and so did two more on my neck, then stepped inside and realized I had made a horrible mistake, and rushed to the bathroom to try to wash it off. So be careful!

Great info: HowStuffWorks - What's the difference between cologne, eau de parfum and perfume?
http://lifestyle.howstuffworks.com/styl ... erfume.htm

eBay - Men’s Fragrance Buying Guide
http://www.ebay.com/gds/Men-s-Fragrance ... 583/g.html